I just finished a run in my neighborhood. Took about 70 minutes. To pass the time, I decided to keep track of how many drivers I ran by that were texting and driving. Based on my very professional, scientific results, I have concluded that basically everyone is spending a large portion of their drives texting.
Continue reading “Everyone is Lying About Texting and Driving”Integrating your Luther Wealth investments with Mint and other finance apps
When I am working with a new client for Luther Wealth, the first thing I do is make them count all their money. It sounds silly, but if you’ve had a few jobs, there’s a pretty good chance you have an old 401k laying around somewhere that you haven’t looked at in a while. In fact, in New York State alone, there is over $15.5 billion laying around in unclaimed, forgotten investment accounts. But the first step in creating a retirement plan is to figure out what you’re starting with.
The Hidden Economic Miracle of Driverless Cars – Way Fewer Dead People
Driverless cars are coming! And along with robot drivers, a lot will change in American culture. One aspect that will change, that I think is underappreciated, is that there will be many more people alive. And it turns out people being alive is enormously beneficial to the overall economy!
You Shouldn’t Invest In The Company You Work For
Young investors usually start off investing in stocks through mutual funds, often through retirement vehicles like 401k funds and IRAs. In many cases, single stocks (stock in a single company) don’t enter into an investor’s portfolio until much later. Often, the first time an early-stage investor owns a single stock is when they are granted some stock in their own employer firm as part of an incentive program.
What should this young employee do with their new stock? They believe their company is going places, and they might have heard some office chatter about how much money their coworkers have made by holding stock during a recent period of rapid growth.
I’m going to make an unpopular recommendation. Do not invest in your own company, and if you own shares already, sell them!
Continue reading “You Shouldn’t Invest In The Company You Work For”Best Financial Reads This Week – 11 Feb 2020
My favorite article this week shows how in the past 20 years or so, the age cohort of American CEOs hasn’t changed at all (i.e. baby boomers). Stay tuned next week for an explanation of why you shouldn’t own stock in the firm you work for!
- The nuclear family was a mistake. David Brooks, The Atlantic. Fascinating.
- The Boomer Blockade: How One Generation Reshaped the Workforce and Left Everyone Behind. Think Boundless. Since 2005, the age cohort of American CEOs hasn’t changed. Pretty weird, right? This has lots of implications for younger workers, and the article focuses on the economics of Gen X / Y / Millennials in contrast to the boomer generation. It occurred to me that there also might be some gender effects as well? It’s well-documented that women are extremely under-represented in C-suites. Is it possible that worker age dynamics are exacerbating workplace sexism? HT Tyler Cowen.
- The Folly Of Bernie Sanders’ National Rent Control Proposal. CATO, Ryan Bourne.
- The Modern Mind May Be 100,000 Years Old. Nautilus.
- ‘The intelligence coup of the century’: For decades, the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries. Washington Post. Daaaang.
Tax Day Is Also Last-Minute IRA Contribution Day
Most people know that April 15th is the deadline for tax returns. But it’s also an important deadline for your retirement savings. April 15th is also the deadline for contributing to your previous year’s IRA contribution limit. This can have important consequences for your retirement savings.
Continue reading “Tax Day Is Also Last-Minute IRA Contribution Day”Reading List – 5 December 2019
Great example of status quo bias in an article about the flu this week. And EU privacy laws are helping a murderer wipe his history from Google. Fun stuff!
- The “Right to be Forgotten” doubles back and shoots the shark. Volokh Conspiracy. Wow! So now EU privacy laws are responsible for something even worse than cookie popups everywhere.
- Why doesn’t the flu freak us out more? Futurity. File this one under “Cognitive Biases: Status Quo Bias”. Same reason why people aren’t deathly afraid of riding in cars.
- Trump Didn’t Shrink U.S. Military Commitments Abroad—He Expanded Them. Foreign Affairs. In my private life I’ve frequently tempered my criticism of President Trump by saying something along the lines of, “But I like that he’s bringing troops home.” I guess that’s just a myth?
- Big Calculator: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class. Medium. Isn’t this supposed to be impossible in a market economy? What prevents competition here?
- How Not To Die. Paul Graham. Personally inspirational.
I Ran A Marathon! Also, Here’s How to Read a Prospectus
I ran the Philly Marathon this past Sunday! It was my first, and I definitely didn’t run it fast, but I finished. I wasn’t a fan of the rain and snow at the end though. Anyway, back to business…
Many investors that I speak with have their savings invested in a combination of mutual funds. Usually, owned through tax-advantaged accounts like 401k’s and IRAs. This is a good way to invest, although I often notice investors don’t know what fees they are paying. This is an intentional feature of the mutual fund market, unfortunately. Mutual fund providers must provide certain cost information in a prospectus, but many providers intentionally make this information inaccessible.
Continue reading “I Ran A Marathon! Also, Here’s How to Read a Prospectus”Reading List – 14 November 2019
The most important financial news of the past two weeks is that scientists have discovered that Jackson Pollock’s technique cleverly avoided a characteristic of fluid dynamics that leads to unwanted curly tails on paint pourings. Finance!
Bernardo Palacios, Alfonso Rosario, Monica M. Wilhelmus, Sandra Zetina, Roberto Zenit.
- Pollock paintings avoid a curly physics problem. futurity.com.
- You silly, silly people. Tyler Cowen. Politics… don’t matter.
- The Myth of the Nazi War Machine. Notes on Liberty.
- Lindsey Graham keeps moving the goalposts to downplay Trump’s Ukraine dealings. Vox. I think a lot of the drama that has unfolded with the Trump administration was fairly predictable in 2016, but one thing that has surprised me is the absolute downfall of Sen. Lindsey Graham as a serious person.
- Stab a Book, the Book Won’t Die. Craigmod.
- Immediate brain plasticity after one hour of brain–computer interface. Journal of Physiology. Brains are so, so cool.
- It’s Time to Take Down the Mona Lisa. NY Times.
- How to Steal a Billion. Oversharing. In the future, it will be good to think back and remember the WeWork saga whenever a financial guy in a suit is trying to tell you he has a special understanding of the marketplace.
You Can’t Beat the Market and You Should Stop Trying
Here are some common questions I get asked as a financial adviser. What’s your system? What’s your investment strategy? Do you focus on market timing or relative value? How do you plan to outperform the market?
These questions are natural. Investors want to understand what advisers are doing with their money. But in a way, these questions demonstrate a lot of the misconceptions about what exactly counts as success in retirement saving.
You shouldn’t try to beat the market. Instead, investors should actually aspire to equaling the market return. Let’s take a look at why.
Continue reading “You Can’t Beat the Market and You Should Stop Trying”