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Cole Brantley

Cole Brantley writes Man Bucks: an Ohio guy who has run pressure-washing, mowing, and flipping side businesses and publishes the ledgers to prove it.

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Cole Brantley writes every article on Man Bucks from Ohio, where he's spent the last decade-plus running weekend businesses alongside a day job: pressure washing driveways, mowing a two-neighborhood route, flipping furniture and tools on Facebook Marketplace, and doing the kind of odd-job handyman work that teaches you exactly what an hour of your Saturday is worth.

He is not a financial expert and doesn't play one online. No CPA license, no real-estate empire, no course to sell you. What he has instead is receipts: a cost-per-use spreadsheet for everything he owns over $50, mileage logs going back years, and the buy-and-sell records from every flip — including the treadmills he'd rather forget.

How Cole works

  • Every price gets checked against a named US retailer or published cost survey while the article is being written, and updated when readers flag changes.
  • Every earning claim gets a ledger — startup costs, consumables, time, and the realistic range, with the break-even point called out. If the math can't be shown, the claim doesn't run.
  • Every hustle gets its downside printed: the taxes, the insurance question, the no-shows, the month it rains.

The full editorial rules are on the about page, and the legal fine print lives in the disclaimer. To argue with his math — which he genuinely enjoys — use the contact page or hello@manbucks.com.

Everything Cole has published

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