The 30-Day Money Cleanse

Michael Covarrubias is a personal finance educator and writer based in Austin, Texas. His work focuses on helping people build sustainable financial habits through behavioral change rather than rigid budgeting systems. He believes that most financial advice fails because it asks people to suppress their desires rather than understand them, and his approach centers on awareness, intention, and values-based decision-making.

Michael's interest in personal finance began in his twenties when he found himself earning a good salary but feeling perpetually stressed about money. After working through the same cycle of budgeting, failing, and shame that so many people experience, he realized that the problem wasn't his discipline—it was his approach. He began experimenting with simpler, more compassionate systems for managing money, and over several years developed the framework that would become the 30-Day Money Cleanse.

Before writing full-time, Michael spent a decade in product management at technology companies, where he led teams responsible for consumer-facing financial tools used by millions of people. That experience gave him a front-row seat to how financial products are designed and, more importantly, how they often fail to serve the people who use them. It also taught him that good systems—whether in software or in personal finance—are defined less by their features and more by how well they adapt to real human behavior.

Michael has written for *The Wall Street Journal*, *Forbes*, *Business Insider*, and *The Globe and Mail*. His newsletter, *The Money Habit*, reaches over 40,000 readers each week with practical essays on earning, saving, spending, and the psychology of money. He lives in Austin with his wife and their two dogs, and when he's not writing or speaking about personal finance, he's usually trail running, reading history, or attempting to perfect his brisket recipe.

*The 30-Day Money Cleanse* is his first book.