Howard Beaumont

About

Thirty years in public accounting teaches you to trust the numbers more than the story. So when I started forgetting things — a client's name, a quarterly filing date, the dosage of a medication I'd taken for three years — I did what accountants do. I opened a spreadsheet.

I'm 55, suburban Dallas. Spent my career as a CPA auditing financial statements for mid-sized businesses across DFW. Never thought about brain health until Q4 2022, when I blanked on a long-term client's name mid-meeting — someone I'd billed quarterly for eleven years. I knew the man's coffee order and his kids' school district. His name just wasn't there. Third time that month. I took early retirement in early 2023, partly because the math allowed it, and partly because the precision I'd spent a career building was starting to feel unreliable in a way I couldn't blame on bad sleep or a long week.

That winter I started testing brain supplements. One at a time, three to four weeks minimum per product, a new tab in the spreadsheet for each evaluation cycle. The spreadsheet now has twenty-three tabs. Sandra — my wife — noted last month that it has more tabs than our 2019 joint tax return did, and that return had a K-1 complication that cost me four weekends. She said it as a dig. I put it in the notes column as a quality benchmark.

My method is straightforward: a short log every morning before coffee. Same four questions, same time of day — word recall, processing speed in the first hour, effort required for routine tasks, any noticeable side effects. Cost-per-day tracked alongside the subjective entries, the same way you'd track a marketing line item against output. If something costs more than a decent lunch per day and I can't detect a consistent signal above background noise after a full testing window, it goes in the rejected tab.

The rejected tab has eighteen entries. One of those was a formula I'd had on Subscribe-and-Save for two months before I admitted the data wasn't supporting it — that one stung a bit, financially. I canceled the subscription on a Sunday morning. Logged it the same day.

Not a doctor. No neuroscience training. No affiliation with any supplement company or retailer. I check third-party testing resources and ingredient transparency records before I buy anything — the auditor's reflex runs deep and doesn't switch off in retirement. Talk to your own doctor before making decisions that affect your brain health, especially if your medical history involves anything that intersects with cognitive function.

Posts by Howard Beaumont

• Improving Working Memory After 50: My 12-Month Neuro-Thrive Data Log
• NeuroPrime for Stress and Focus: My 6-Month Spreadsheet Analysis
• Best Brain Supplements for Afternoon Fog: My 90-Day Data Audit
• Best Natural Brain Supplements for Concentration: An Accountant's Data
• Brain Supplement ROI: An Accountant's Analysis of Cost Per Cognitive Gain
• The Brain Song Review: My Data-Backed Verdict on Mental Clarity
• The Neuro-Thrive Audit: Why This Formula Earned a Five-Star Rating
• Sleep Quality and NeuroPrime: Analyzing the Rest-to-Focus Ratio
• Testing The Genius Song: My 30-Day Productivity Performance Audit
• Neuro-Thrive vs. NeuroPrime: A Side-by-Side Spreadsheet Comparison
• Spotting the Placebo Effect: How Data Revealed My Real Winners
• Caffeine vs. Natural Supplements: What My Morning Data Reveals
• The Accountant’s Guide to Structuring Your Brain Health Spreadsheet
• Tracking Verbal Recall: How I Fixed My Mid-Sentence Word Search
• The Cognitive Audit: Why My Spreadsheet Rejected 6 Leading Brain Supplements
• Does Frequency Beat Formulas? My 56-Day Spreadsheet Analysis of The Brain Song
• The Spreadsheet Doesn't Lie: My 90-Day Memory Audit and the $54 Dividend
• The Spreadsheet vs. The Fog: How 225 Data Points Proved My Brain Wasn't Actually Broken
• My Cognitive Audit: The Day My Brain’s Ledger Didn’t Balance and How I Tracked the Recovery
• My First 30 Days Testing Brain Supplements — An Accountant’s Audit of Mental ROI

Disclosure

Some links on this site are affiliate links. Buy through one, I earn a small commission — your price stays the same. The commission doesn't influence what gets tracked here. Eighteen entries in the rejected tab. Zero of them paid to be there.