The Scarcity Mindset

In a world obsessed with consumption and excess, there exists a quiet cadre of individuals who navigate life with a different compass—one forged in the fires of scarcity and tempered by resourcefulness. These are the highly frugal people, not stingy by choice but shaped by habits that once ensured survival. Inspired by the shared stories of those who rose from poverty yet cling to its lessons, this novella follows Michael Thomas, a man whose frugal ways define him. Through his journey, we explore seven core habits—though, as life often does, they multiply—that transform necessity into virtue. In Michael's tale, frugality isn't mere penny-pinching; it's a philosophy, a shield against waste, and a bridge to true contentment. Yet, as Michael discovers, the most deeply held personal truths are often just maps, and not the territory itself. His journey is not just about saving money, but about examining the very lens through which he sees the world, and finding the courage to change it from the Inside-Out.

Chinmoy Mukherjee has been working as solution architect for past 15 years.
Over the past 25 years, he has contributed to 50 real-world software projects as an individual contributor. His experience has enabled him to design, develop, and deploy some of the most complex systems, handling millions of transactions per day. As both an AWS and GCP-certified architect, he has not only built 8 systems from scratch but has also successfully re-engineered 7 legacy systems, improving their performance by 15–30%.
His expertise in cybersecurity has led to incredible discoveries—some thrilling, some frustrating. He was listed among the top 100 security researchers in the world for Microsoft (Q4, 2022) and also in Google's Hall of Fame. He ethically hacked Baba Bank, retrieving its entire customer database, and even achieved remote code execution in JPMC & Solana. Over time, he has reported critical vulnerabilities to 50+ Australian companies and received bug bounties from Uber, Apple, Mastercard, Octopus Australia, MagicLeap, and Paysafe. One of his wildest exploits? He found a vulnerability that let him order a Porsche without paying—only to receive a meager $1050 bounty for the discovery.
His penchant for testing boundaries made him the first engineer among 500,000 in HCLTech to complete and download all 1,000 offered certificates. In the industry, he played a critical role in defeating Infosys in 3 major RFPs while being part of underdog teams. Beyond corporate challenges, he took the lead in India's first blockchain token deployment, successfully developing and listing tokens on the Ethereum network.
Innovation has been central to his career. He holds 3 patents, granted in the USA and Australia. Among them, he developed "Patient Analytics," a patented system that underwent successful clinical trials in India. His contributions extend beyond hands-on work—he has written 4 bestselling eBooks (3 technical and 1 parody) and published a technical book via Springer.