What if the smartest investment you could ever make was in your own life?
Solving Life
Master uncertainty. Optimise every decision. Build a life worth reliving.
Ebook now available. Hard copy launches in June 2025. Sign up below to get exclusive insights and a limited free chapter.
Get free chapterThis book is a thought-provoking guide to making better choices—backed by investment wisdom, psychology, and real-world insight.
Book Summary
A Father's Advice Using Investment Principles
What if the principles that guide the world’s leading investors could unlock the most invaluable investment of all—your life?
Every decision you make shapes your future. Yet, life—like investing—is governed by randomness, uncertainty, and constraints beyond our control.
Just as elite investors navigate volatile markets to optimise returns, we, too, must navigate life's complexities to maximise our potential.
This book introduces the Cheap Options strategy—a powerful decision-making framework, using high upside, low downside investment principles to help you manage risk, capitalise on opportunity, and make choices that lead to extraordinary outcomes.
Rooted in decision theory, behavioural psychology, and a father's advice to his sons, Solving Life teaches you how to back-solve from your ultimate goals, master life's inevitable trade-offs, and optimise the only portfolio that truly matters: your own future.
What Experts Are Saying
Endorsed by leaders in finance, investing and strategic thinking.
"The book I wish I'd grown up with—a guide to navigating life's complexity with clarity, courage, trust, and compassion."
Roxana Mirica | Partner, Apax | Trustee, London Music Fund & Apax Foundation | Co-Founder, Leveraged Finance Fights Melanoma in Europe
"A seasoned investor’s heartfelt guide to his sons—and to all of us. This book transforms timeless financial wisdom into a clear and compassionate philosophy for living well."
Florian Hager | Senior Managing Director,
Blackstone"Smart investors know how to spot value, manage risk, and position for upside so why not take the same approach to life? This book offers a strategic guide to thriving in uncertainty and making the most of your greatest asset: time."
Lucio Di Ciaccio | Co-Founder, Heritage Holdings | Formerly at Hg Capital, SoftBank, and Carlyle | Forbes 30 Under 30
Meet the Author
A Journey in Decision-Making
Pavlin Kumchev is a Managing Director at Brigade Capital, a leading global investment manager. His career spans two decades at the world’s preeminent financial institutions, including Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, and Carlyle, across diverse markets and economies.
Born behind the Iron Curtain, the author has experienced extreme contrasts—from economic scarcity to navigating high-stakes investments around the world. He has travelled to over 50 countries across six continents and lived in four of them, gaining insights from diverse cultures, challenges, and opportunities.
Educated at Colgate University in the U.S. and the INSEAD Business School in France and Singapore, Kumchev combines investment expertise, psychological insights, and lived experience into a transformative approach to decision-making.
follow @pavlinkumchevauthor
What Solving Life Will Teach You
For everyone: Learn to apply investing wisdom to life’s biggest decisions.
For investors: Deepen your edge with fresh insight into value investing—and how its principles shape a well-lived life.
- Turn uncertainty into opportunity using proven investing principles.
- Master risk & decision-making with the Cheap Options strategy.
- Back-solve from your biggest goals to design a strategic life roadmap.
- Develop resilience & adaptability to thrive in a chaotic world.
- Optimise your choices for maximum upside, minimising risks that derail success.
- Find out why doing good is the best investment.
Key Takeaways & Core Ideas from Solving Life
Life Is the Ultimate Investment
- The principles that guide the world’s best investors can help you optimise the only portfolio that truly matters—your own future.
- Just as investors manage risk and maximise returns, we must navigate uncertainty with a strategic mindset.
Randomness Governs Life—But You Can Tilt the Odds in Your Favor
- Most people underestimate how much randomness influences their success and failure.
- Instead of fighting randomness, learn to navigate it wisely, like an investor managing market uncertainty.
Risk Is Not the Enemy—It’s the Key to Growth
- Taking calculated risks is essential for progress. The key is controlling the downside while keeping the upside open.
The Cheap Options Strategy: Minimise Downside, Maximise Upside
- The best decisions have limited downside and unlimited upside—this is the essence of the Cheap Options strategy.
- Make choices that protect against major losses while keeping you open to life-changing opportunities.
Average Outcomes Are Misleading—Pay Attention to Outliers
- Averages can be deceptive—outliers define success in investing and life.
- Whether in investing, career growth, or personal choices, the biggest breakthroughs come from rare, high-impact events.
Every Great Outcome Starts with Reverse Engineering
- Solve life backwards—start with the end goal and work your way back to the steps that will get you there.
- Elite investors think in terms of outcomes first, then devise a strategy—you should do the same with your life decisions.
Cycles Rule Everything—Prepare for the Highs and Lows
- Everything moves in cycles—markets, careers, emotions, and success. Life does not move in a straight line, and you should not plan as if it did. Anticipate cycles, don’t fear them.
- Whether in investing or personal life, understanding cycles helps you stay resilient and make better decisions.
Play the Long Game
- Success is a function of staying in the game long enough to take advantage of opportunities when they arise.
- Your most powerful advantage isn’t just talent or luck—it’s the ability to survive setbacks and keep going.
Life’s Trade-Offs Are Inevitable: Choose Wisely
- Every decision has an opportunity cost. You can have anything—but not everything.
Book Quotes and Food for Thought
"Don’t flip a coin with disaster stamped on one side."
"The key to resilience is simple but powerful: make sure potential outcomes, no matter how rare, are never devastating."
"Acts of kindness and empathy are the ultimate no-risk, high-reward investment."
"The most likely outcome may be the unlikely one!"
"To achieve something spectacular, you must have the courage to do something different from everyone else..."
"Self-comparison to your prior performance... generates higher well-being and life satisfaction."
"Luck is a fickle friend, but having it early in life is better than having it late."
"Success isn’t about avoiding risk but ensuring the rewards are worth the sacrifices."
"To achieve something exceptional—a dream, a goal, perhaps even a miracle—you must first have the freedom to imagine it."