I am shocked. When sifting through Morningstar for an international index mutual fund, I naturally turned to Vanguard’s popular Total International Stock (VTIAX). I noticcd its expense ratio is .12, uncharacteristically high for the definitive purveyor of low-cost funds. My eyebrows raised, I thought I should take a peek at a comparable Fidelity offering. I discovered the behemoth fund group sponsored a contraption named the Zero International Index fund (FTIHX). Incredibly, that zero refers to the expense ratio. Hey, folks, there isn’t one—your investment is absolutely free! What’s the story? Is Fidelity into self-destruction? Hardly. The company wants a loss-leader to lure you into its financial services empire, just like an office supply store might advertise computer paper at 50% off. Need an annuity? No problem. Want to bask on the beach in Maui? We’ll manage that portfolio for you. What’s with me? Did I flunk high school math? Did I miss the college course on basic logic? I’ll forgive those indiscretions, but I will say I was a financial advisor with another discount broker and have invested my own money at Fidelity for over 50 years. Trust me, I know this stuff. Rather than try to decipher my analysis in a longwinded narrative, I’ve elected to provide the pertinent numbers in a table. I don’t want to lose anyone, so I’ve made a few comments along the way. VTIAX     FTHIX Expense ratio                                     .12               0 Minimum investment                3,000               0 Morningstar style                large blend for both Number of holdings                    8,500      5,000 Top 10 holdings                             10%           12% (Both funds are highly diversified.) Largest sector                financials 20% for both Tech sector                                        13% for both Highest country %       Japan 17, UK 9 for both Risk standard deviation (low=less risk) 17 for both beta (S&P=1.00, low=less risk)   1.03        1.04 (Risk of both funds is very similar to the broad market.) Performance 2022 loss                                         -16%      -16% 2023 gain                                        +15%     +16% 2024 through June 21                 +4.9%     5.0% The verdict is clear: These two funds are virtually identical in holdings, risk and short-term performance. But what about that .12 difference in cost? Is it too small to substantially matter? To address this singularly important question,  I plugged some numbers into the investors.gov compound return calculator. Let’s say you’re 25 (ha, ha) and just starting out. You’ve got, say, 40 years to go to reach the promised land. Let’s use the market’s historical average annual 10% return for Fidelity Zero International but reduce that number by .12 for its Vanguard counterpart. Then, to keep the playing field level, let’s assume no monthly contributions after the initial lump sum of $3,000, Vanguard’s minimum. I am stunned by the result. At 65, the Vanguard investor has accumulated $156,000, a fancy bit of compounding. But the Fidelity account has amassed $163,700, a difference of approximately $7,600! What’s more, the effect of compounding on any monthly contributions would only magnify the size of the discrepancy. To appease readers partial to the very popular ETF alternative offered by Vanguard (VT), its expense ratio is .07.          

"I’VE GOT SOME REAL estate here in my bag," croons Paul Simon, as he consoles his lover in the iconic 1968 song America. The real estate industry’s marketing arm couldn’t have put it better. The industry’s message: If you want to feel secure and be prosperous, get yourself some real estate. Problem is, many people can’t come up with the down payment for a home or rental property. The good news: There’s an alternative to direct ownership. Often referred to simply as REITs, real estate investment trusts are part stock and part real estate. Each REIT is a company that owns and operates perhaps 25 or more rental and commercial properties across the country. In their early days, REITs were confined to an arcane corner of the stock market. But they’ve achieved a certain pedigree by virtue of their designation as a separate entity of the S&P 500. If I were starting over, I would undoubtedly supplement my privately owned real estate with REITs. REITs don’t require a down payment or even a minimum initial investment. Subsequent purchases can be made in any amount and on your own schedule, which can be a boon to investors who fund their retirement accounts through dollar-cost averaging. Nor do REITs have to be bought and sold in one swoop. Say you need some quick cash. Instead of suffering through open houses and contract negotiations, you could simply sell a few REIT shares. Here’s where REITs become not just an acquaintance but a staunch ally in your quest for financial independence: When you buy or sell by pressing a few buttons on your online brokerage account, you incur no commission. That’s right, zero commission and fees regardless of the size of the transaction, though you will lose a little to the bid-ask spread. This staggering advantage to REIT ownership has lured many investors, including those who could otherwise afford the down payment needed for a direct real estate purchase, to instead plunk for REITs as a hassle-free alternative. Imagine this scenario: You want to sell your small duplex for $500,000 and an eager buyer snaps it up. Pretty awesome, right? But don’t forget to deduct the standard 6% sales commission, equal to $30,000, and closing costs of maybe 2%, or $10,000. So you walk off with $460,000, right? Not quite. Remember that roof repair and all the primping necessary to get the duplex in shape to sell? There goes another $10,000, reducing your take to $450,000. Still quite an accomplishment. But if instead you’d sold $500,000 of REIT shares, you would have no commission, no closing costs and no annoying pre-sale expenses. You would keep all of the $500,000, the whole enchilada. Another consideration: Do you have boundless energy and outrageous free time? Are you steeped in the legalese of local rental regulations? Will you have a meltdown when it’s raining and your prospective renter is a no-show? Investor, know thyself. If you just cringed, take refuge in real estate investment trusts. Okay, so what’s the catch? How risky are these REITs? All investments carry risk and REITs are no exception. But large REITs are only about as risky as the broad stock market and both have averaged about 11% annual returns over the past 10 years. But beware the year-to-year swings. You should be prepared for at least one 30% up and one 30% down year during the next decade. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] To neutralize the possibility that one bad apple could be your undoing, consider an exchange-traded fund that focuses on real estate companies. Since each REIT already owns a large number of properties, investing through a fund provides exceptional diversification across many different property types and locations. The taxman looks kindly on both REITs and direct property ownership, though the tax breaks bestowed on in-person investors are usually thought to be superior. But these benefits are sometimes exaggerated. Take the vaunted depreciation deduction. Sure, private property owners get to take it on their tax return, but it’s ephemeral and must be paid back when they sell. I know, I know, it’s still a no-interest loan and it will receive capital gains treatment, but depreciation is not the boondoggle it’s often made out to be. And besides, do you really think all those buildings held by REITs are not being depreciated? Every so often, the price of a single privately owned property takes off, but things can also go the other way. The fact is, the returns from direct investments are less predictable than those from REITs. They’re dependent on the landlord’s real estate aptitude, unforeseen developments and just plain luck. Should inexperienced mom-and-pop investors dig deeply into their life savings to buy one rough-and-tumble piece of local real estate, or instead reap profits from hundreds of properties reaching from coast to coast and managed by industry experts with their own skin in the game? Should you hedge your bets across the two strategies? These are knotty questions that call for professional consultation. Investing in real estate through REITs does not confer bragging rights. You won’t have a grand Victorian to show off. But as a longtime landlord who currently owns a dozen properties, let me remind you of the upside of hands-off real estate investing: You’ll be able to enjoy a life unfettered by late-night phone calls, deadbeat renters and legal nightmares. Steve Abramowitz is a psychologist in Sacramento, California. Earlier in his career, Steve was a university professor, including serving as research director for the psychiatry department at the University of California, Davis. He also ran his own investment advisory firm. Check out Steve's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

IF I SAID YOU COULD corral a yield of almost 12% by holding most of the stocks in the Nasdaq 100 index through an exchange-traded fund (ETF), would you think I’ve been smoking something? Well, you’d be wrong. Global X Nasdaq 100 Covered Call ETF (symbol: QYLD) has pumped out a humongous dividend for more than 100 consecutive months, ever since its 2013 inception. But first a caveat that many will view as a tragic flaw: QYLD is a pure income investment, one that’s best held in a retirement account. The opportunity for capital gains over the long haul is nil. Indeed, QYLD was off 15% for 2022 through yesterday's close, though that’s substantially better than the 26% loss for Invesco’s Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ), which doesn’t sell call options and instead simply tracks the Nasdaq index. Let’s begin by reviewing the covered call strategy’s short but checkered history. It’s been controversial ever since its advent in the early 1980s. Seen as a way to garner high income while still enjoying some modest stock market gains, the strategy quickly became a darling of the brokerage and mutual fund industries, thanks to the commissions and fees it generated. But the roaring bull market that took hold in 1982 soon punctured the marketing hype. A long stock position saddled with short options simply couldn’t keep up with a soaring stock market. How does the covered call strategy work? An investor might establish a covered call by simultaneously buying a stock and selling the corresponding call options. The investor is long the stock but, by hedging with call options, has given up upside in return for the income from selling the calls. How hedged is the investor? That depends on how close the call option’s strike price is to the stock price. The closer those two prices, the stronger the hedge and the less bullish the position. If the prices are very close, the investor will collect a larger call premium, but it’s more likely that the stock will be called away, so the upside is very limited if the stock appreciates. As you might sense, the strategy has many moving parts and can seem dauntingly complicated. Enter covered call ETFs. These funds are as easy to trade as any other ETF. They come with the well-known perks of low cost and transparency. The covered call rigmarole is done much more cheaply and effectively than you could do it on your own. Indeed, I believe a lot of the credit for the rejuvenation of the covered call idea belongs to the innovative folks at Global X Funds, which launched the Nasdaq 100 Covered Call ETF. The company now hosts a suite of three additional covered call ETFs, one each for the S&P 500, the Russell 2000 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Toss in tiny stock market dividend yields, modest interest rates and a bear market, and—voila—we’ve seen a surge of interest in the covered call strategy. QYLD is the most popular ETF of the Global X covered call group, with net assets ballooning from $4 billion to almost $7 billion in less than a year. How might you use option-income ETFs in today’s dour market climate? The big attraction, of course, is the 12% current yield. Payouts from QYLD are monthly and reasonably steady. You might reinvest those dividends in additional shares or spend the income, while you wait for the bull market to return. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] The potential compounding over many years could be very attractive, especially when we recall that the average total return for stocks over the past century hovers around 10%, plus those returns fluctuate more than that of a covered call ETF. Still, we need to put an asterisk next to that 12% yield. Buyers of call options are willing to cough up higher premiums when stock prices are more volatile, as they are today. When the market calms down, so too will the excess premiums, and QYLD’s yield will no doubt subside to a level closer to the stock market’s historical annualized total return. The more jaundiced among you may have noticed I’ve avoided labeling the covered call strategy as “conservative.” Option-income ETFs shouldn’t be promoted as conservative. They offer only a partial hedge in a declining market. The option premiums are only large enough to offset part of a market slide. As we’ve seen this year, holders of covered call ETFs lose money in market selloffs, perhaps suffering losses equal to 55% of their benchmark index. I believe there are two very different covered call ETF strategies that are intriguing in today’s bear market. The first strategy, which I described above, is for investors who are cautious but nonetheless able to absorb much of any further market drop. These investors could either pocket the cash generated by QYLD or reinvest their distributions, letting them compound until the proceeds are needed. Alternatively, folks could get a little opportunistic. Let’s say an investor thinks the bear market is near exhaustion. His momentum indicators say the turn is not as far away as the pundits think. He might buy shares of QYLD and be showered with dividends while he taps his fingers. When his favorite buy signal hits, he can switch into the real thing—QQQ—or its more docile cousin, the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK). Neither fund hedges and both pay only incidental dividends, but they offer a gutsy play on a recovery in tech stocks. I’ll subscribe to the first idea and hand off the second maneuver to those who consider themselves nimble traders. I’ve been programmed to float like a butterfly, not sting like a bee. Steve Abramowitz is a psychologist in Sacramento, California. Earlier in his career, Steve was a university professor, including serving as research director for the psychiatry department at the University of California, Davis. He also ran his own investment advisory firm. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

"AMORTIZATION, STEVIE, amortization. When I make a mortgage payment, part goes to the bank, the rest comes back to us." My father’s cigar flailed as he patted his back pocket. “Listen to a man who worked his way up through the college of hard knocks. Don’t be a jerked-up kid.” Wearing a sharkskin suit, charcoal shirt and wide red tie that preceded The Godfather’s Michael Corleone, my father confused talking about himself with teaching me. Amortization? I couldn’t care less about stupid amortization, or even real estate for that matter. I was worried Sandy Koufax wouldn’t pitch the first game of the 1965 World Series because it was on Yom Kippur. We turned onto the Long Island Expressway for our monthly sojourn to “The Buildings,” two apartment houses inherited by my mother. They were monuments to my father’s cunning and a highlight of family lore. My maternal grandfather didn’t leave a will and, as Jewish immigrants, my parents trusted neither lawyers nor the courts. Unperturbed, my father wrote and signed a will on behalf of his deceased father-in-law. Aunt Sarah and my mother each got two apartment buildings. Enter Uncle Lou, Aunt Sarah’s husband. Louie was a bungler. He proved to be a bumbling landlord and disgraced himself by never making it “really big.” He came close. On one of his misadventures, Louie produced a record by the Aquatones, a rock group he discovered and managed. Their heart-wrenching ballad You rose to No. 3 on the Billboard charts in 1958. The Aquatones had potential, but not with Uncle Lou. He neglected to get a signed contract and lost them, along with his entree to the entertainment world. In the end, Louie frittered away his rental income and had to sell both buildings, a family "shanda." Tired of the ridicule, he tossed a grenade that ensured him a place in family purgatory. Louie reached back some 30 years and accused my father of having taken the best buildings when he wrote the will for his father-in-law. Uncle Lou may have been shrewder than his reputation let on. But in the end, the accusation came to nothing. My father struggled with Louie’s flirtation with fame. “Stevie, how much money could he have made on that record of his?” How the hell did I know what Uncle Lou made? But I hastily guessed about 30,000 records at a 50-cent profit each. “About $15,000,” I blurted out, hoping for a show of approval from someone who regularly beat me in flash-math at dinner. “That’s all, you must be kidding?” He pounded the steering wheel three times and looked up at the sky as if in prayer. It was raining hard by the time we reached 2-0-1, reverential shorthand for our apartment building on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. The black Cadillac Fleetwood with the taillight fins screeched to a stop, with my father bolting from the car without an umbrella, an affirmation of his indestructibility. We went directly to the superintendent’s apartment on the first floor. The month’s only problem was Mr. Schoenfeld in 3C. Ralph Schoenfeld was a widower who owned a toy store and had been a steadfast tenant for many years. But he missed last month’s rent and now he was late. “Okay, Winston, what’s up with Schoenfeld? “Business stinks, short on cash. Says store traffic usually picks up right before Thanksgiving. He’ll include the back rent in his December check.” “On a lease?” “No, month-to-month.” “Don’t jerk me around with that nonsense, Winston. He’s got a week to make things right, including the late fees. Otherwise, it’s 30 days and he’s out.” Schoenfeld out? One bad move and you’re gone? If he could be so easily banished, how safe was I? I was born in 1945, the year after Allied troops discovered thousands of bodies and the mass graves of Eastern European Jews. Like many, my father never forgot. “Stevie, don’t get too comfy in a VW bug. You may be sitting on your grandpa’s hair.” We are all wounded in youth, and spend a lifetime trying to repair and overcome those assaults. Embittered and enraged by the Holocaust, my father resolved to avenge centuries of religious persecution. His belligerence and self-aggrandizement concealed layers of vulnerability and fear. The world was cruel and unpredictable, and he would seize a piece of the dignity stolen from his forebears while he could. By threatening to uproot Ralph Schoenfeld for his rent hiccup, my father temporarily fended off his panic that the dam could break at any moment. Schoenfeld was Jewish, but even that couldn’t spare him from my father’s wrath. Last month, my 36-year-old son asked if I would help him learn about the real estate business. I’d been angling for an opening for several years, but Ryan had been preoccupied with his own dreams, much as I was with the World Series 58 years ago. My grandfather bequeathed a gift to his daughter, my parents paid it forward to me, and I will soon bequeath that legacy to Ryan. When we talk, there won’t just be a treatise on rents, capital appreciation and amortization. Like the rest of us, Ryan needs to control the impulse to retaliate indiscriminately, and to recognize that a sense of protection is an illusion and not a solution. Steve Abramowitz is a psychologist in Sacramento, California. Earlier in his career, Steve was a university professor, including serving as research director for the psychiatry department at the University of California, Davis. He also ran his own investment advisory firm. Check out Steve's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

RETURNING TO NEW YORK for the summer was out of the question. It was spring of my freshman year, and I wasn’t about to acquiesce to my parents’ wishes, not after the whirlwind of college life that included an introduction to pot and dating non-Jewish girls from small Midwestern towns. I didn’t give much thought to what I’d actually do. Maybe meeting girls taking summer school in The Grill or driving all the way to Miami and party, party, party. But when summer came around, these compensatory fantasies of an unsure 19-year-old proved elusive. The days passed slowly and I was desperate to find something to fill the time. Perhaps feeling guilty for having my college experience paid for and yet not returning home, I mulled the possibility of getting a job. I never worked in high school, despite my parents’ urging. They said I was spoiled and needed to learn the value of a dollar. Every morning, I’d read the Chicago Tribune to see how the Yankees were doing. To get to the sports pages, I had to leaf through the classified ads. On one especially cheerless day, I found myself scanning the available jobs. One in particular jumped out at me. I remembered how, as a kid, I’d race home on my bike to catch the Good Humor ice cream truck jingling on my block. The company was looking for a driver. Weary of the summer doldrums, I applied and got the job. It paid $2 an hour for an eight-hour day. When I arrived at the truck garage, I was instructed to put on a white uniform and strap on a belt with a metal coin changer. I was given a map with my route highlighted by a twisting yellow line. My area was on the south side of the city, far from the university up north. An ice cream bar was 15 cents which, I was told, is quince (keen-say) in Spanish. One of the guys had already loaded my truck since it was my first time out. Accustomed to the smooth stick shift of my silver 1965 Corvette, I struggled with the truck’s clunky gearbox. After an hour or so on the road, I became aware that the sound of my arrival didn’t attract the bustle I’d imagined. There was a mother waving from a window high up in a poorly maintained apartment building. Next, the sweaty brown-skinned back of a man in black shorts and bare feet, stooping to change the rear tire of a badly damaged red pickup. Now, a girl in a T-shirt running up with her quince in one outstretched hand and the other pointing to the toasted almond ice cream bar painted on the side of the truck. About midway through the steamy afternoon, a Mexican boy maybe age 10 or 11 walked up and just stood by the truck door all glum. When I looked down at him from my seat, he began to cry. In between sobs, he said his brother had been injured the day before in a car accident and was taken to the hospital. He didn’t ask for anything and was turning to leave. “What’s your name?” “Santiago.” “Santiago, do you have a favorite flavor?” “Chocolate mint, Mr. Good Humor man.” I opened the freezer door and pulled out a box of a dozen chocolate mint bars. “Take this back to your mom and tell her I hope your brother will be okay.” As I drove off, I dropped $1.80 of my own loose change into the metal holder. Almost an hour’s worth of work. The route completed, I returned to the garage and handed the coin changer to the foreman. As I was changing back into my street clothes, he tapped me on the shoulder. “Steve, you managed to bring in $48 in a tough neighborhood. Not much money left over for ice cream around there. Back tomorrow?”  “Sure, Mr. Dugan.” That night, I felt the need to call my parents. I told my dad the whole story, from feeling a little lost to taking the job and what I saw on the route. “We didn’t know why you chose not to come home, like your friends, but I’m thrilled you’ve been working. It’ll make your mother very happy.” “Dad, some people have a really hard life.” “Stevie, they put you in the barrio. The regulars don’t want to go there. No money in it. You’re the rich college kid. They figure their family needs the money more than you do.” “Dad, I think I’m learning the value of a dollar.” “I hope so, Stevie. Don’t go around like a big man just because you grew up on Long Island. The world’s got a lot to teach you. Hope you’re planning to come home for Thanksgiving. We’d love to see you.” “I will, Dad. You can tell Mom.” Steve Abramowitz is a psychologist in Sacramento, California. Earlier in his career, Steve was a university professor, including serving as research director for the psychiatry department at the University of California, Davis. He also ran his own investment advisory firm. Check out Steve's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

Writing has always been my friend. Now uncertain about the direction to take it, I’ve been feeling a little lost. I became aware of this when Alberta discovered my high school yearbook while searching for papers she needed for a book chapter she was preparing. It had been sixty years since I last opened the white book with “Hewlett High School Class of 1963” imprinted in dark blue across the cover. Slowly turning the pages, I became nostalgic reading the comments friends made alongside their postage stamp pictures. I found myself staring for a long while at the future Frankie Berlin envisioned for me: “Hey Abe, I look forward to seeing you spouting your bombast in the sports section of the New York Times.” Well, I never quite made it to the Times, but not long after I arrived at college I found a part-time job as a sportswriter for the Skokie News, a suburban newspaper covering a small upscale city northwest of Chicago. Serendipity had shined on me, but I was too young and immature to appreciate it. The editor liked my first few articles on the high school football team, but I balked when he suggested I attend all the road games and interview at least one player after each game. I didn’t quit outright, but I became an unreliable reporter. I invented final exams as an excuse for my dalliance, but was fired by a no-nonsense boss. Apparently, the real world was not going to be as forgiving as my parents. Humiliated and enraged, I retaliated by changing my major from journalism to psychology. As my father said during Christmas break, “Stevie, you just may have bitten off your nose to spite your face.” For each of us, a turning point comes when we must choose one career path and leave or set aside the other. I became a psychologist but never abandoned my writing. In academia, I published furiously and ghostwrote my colleagues’ research reports. But I became alienated from the bureaucratic excesses and interpersonal politics of university life and soon departed. No longer stultified by the dictates of academic writing, I plunged headlong into magazine freelancing. The highlight of this endeavor was a “promising” rejection of my article, “How to Sabotage Your Affair,” by Penthouse. Without the structure of a defined job, I took refuge in my family’s real estate business and immersed myself in a new passion—the challenge, math and money promised by the stock market. But whatever future this interest had was waylaid by a series of family crises that included a suicide, a homicide and, soon after, my midlife depression. The illness was debilitating and for twenty years my writing languished. A little over two years ago, I accompanied Alberta to a writer’s workshop in Aspen. Whether by curiosity or a twinge of competitiveness, I decided to search for personal finance magazines and sites that accepted articles from writers outside their own editorial staff. One popped out at me because of an unusual focus on placing financial issues in the context of personal experience—that was, of course, Humble Dollar. After reading a few articles, I thought I might have a shot. After Alberta left the next day for an early morning seminar, I planted myself in a coffee shop and began to write an article on the resurgence of interest in the option-income fund, where an investor sacrifices considerable upside potential in return for a monstrous dividend. Later in the day, I submitted the draft to Jonathan who, after a series of edits to which I have become familiar, accepted it. I was ecstatic and emboldened to follow-up with more pieces. Over the last two years, I have contributed many articles to Humble Dollar, basking in the grit and joy of writing and the acceptance of the community of readers. I confess I was also gratified by having Jonathan’s approval, something I never got from my father. But there has been a shift. The site now has a special place for traditional domains of personal finance like how to navigate the labyrinths of Social Security and Medicare, as well as education in how to navigate the money landmines of retirement. But I am woefully uninformed about the nuances of many of those domains, fluent only in the basics. Investing for many readers is a means to a coveted end--to lay back hands-free, travel, enjoy the grandkids and prepare for the possibility of a heath catastrophe. But it’s not necessarily a devoted pastime by itself, as it is for me. It’s that 10% of retirement assets in which I give myself permission to roam. Why am I so stubborn, always trying to force my square peg into a round hole? I feel like the guy who left the party early, a misfit, just like I felt in my family. Are my fellow contributors the brother and sister my parents preferred? I feel like the quarterback flushed out of the pocket. I need to move my MO closer to the investment needs of readers desiring to be educated in how to cope with the often daunting and unexpected financial demands of the senior years. Apparently, I was not ready to surrender. Out of curiosity, I submitted a manuscript to an online site that educates doctors and dentists in how to invest their prodigious cash flow responsibly without being fleeced by financial advisors. I was a great fit, a shoo-in, or so I thought—a psychologist who worked at a medical school and as a maverick investment advisor for Charles Schwab. Enthused, I rifled off an article. A positive response would come in three weeks. Of course, spoiled by Jonathan’s whirlwind response time, I figured I would hear in a day or two. Well, it’s been over six weeks and I’ve stopped expectantly scouring my emails. In the meantime, I have been orienting myself to benefit from areas of personal finance in Humble Dollar outside of mutual funds and ETFs. One article in particular was eerily timely. I came across DrLefty’s thoughtful post on making final arrangements just as Alberta and I were about to depart for purchasing two burial plots about 500 miles from where we live. Running away from home with $44 was no picnic, and my journalistic adventures were no walk in the park. So good to come back home, fresh and chastised.