Patrick Brennan

Comments

• Thanks for sharing Mark. So much in life we benefit from is only apparent much later. Those of us in our 60s and early 70s have a great deal to be grateful for. Starting around 1982 or so, the stock market has been one heck of a tailwind for those saving for retirement. Folks starting a regular investment program in the early 80s, and sticking with it, have done remarkably well by investing in equities. The WWII generation, which my Dad was a part of, had mostly defined benefit plans. It was a good thing they did because inflation wrecked stocks from the late 1960's till the early 80s, right before they retired. If they had to rely on 401Ks to retire then, well, good luck. The 401K came about in 1980 and as it grew to replace the defined benefit plans, and with boomers being such a large cohort, lots and lots of dough piled into the market from the early 80s to the present. This 'passive bid" now plays a huge role explaining the inflows into equities. Will a time come when the boomers must cash in and shift to income producing investments? Will our kids and grandkids have this same tailwind boomers have had for over 40 years? My gut tells me they won't have it so easy and I've had many discussions with my children about preparing for this future.

  Post: Luck, Stupidity, Automation and Inertia

  Link to comment from July 4, 2026

• They make really good window air conditioners these days that are more quieter and efficient than the old ones. I would think that might be the best solution. I grew up in Eugene, Oregon in a home built in the 1950s without air conditioning. You need it there now. When I was young, we would run fans in the house at night. Now I live in the Deep South with the A/C running almost constantly right now. Awful. 🥵

  Post: The Price of a Cool Pillow

  Link to comment from July 3, 2026

• I'm retired now and sometimes I'm haunted by the idea of being productive. I think most Humble Dollar readers suffer from this same affliction. My solution: take a nap. A good nap cures just about everything including a poor night's sleep, boredom, general crankiness, etc. After the nap you are rejuvenated so you can now read a book, watch the World Cup, plan dinner, wash the car, get some exercise, you know important stuff. 😅

  Post: Haunted Head

  Link to comment from July 3, 2026

• Mr. Quinn, I couldn't agree more on the price of the cards. My wife and I hit Dollar Tree, Dollar General, or the cheap card section at Wal-Mart. To each his own, but it's what inside the card that matters.

  Post: Exercising true frugality 

  Link to comment from July 3, 2026

• I'm about 65 YOA, have an MBA, and yet, until about 2 or so years ago, did not really understand how the Fed creates money, injects it into the financial system, growing the money supply. In other words, how money flows through the system. They don't teach that in grad school. They also never mentioned the Cantillon Effect, by which those closest to the money spigot get first dibs on the money flowing into the system and thus benefit to a much greater extent than wage earners. Think banks, hedge funds, private credit, private equity, large corporations, etc. The trickle down effect is highly overrated. And so we end up with this "K" shaped economy whereby those owning assets benefit at a much greater extent than wage earners trying to survive. There are certain aspects of our financial system you simply have to learn on your own.

  Post: How financially illiterate are Americans?

  Link to comment from June 21, 2026

• Ahh...the deferred gratification gene. A great gene to have. I wonder if our iPhones and how we live today is causing trouble for that gene.

  Post: How financially illiterate are Americans?

  Link to comment from June 21, 2026

• I held the Fidelity Floating Rate Fund (FFRHX) leading up to the Great Financial Crisis. It tanked over 25% very quickly as the market crashed that fall. It was a sobering lesson for me as I thought I held something that was less volatile than that. That said, it's a very good investment for those desiring income. I would just caution that one needs be ready to sell it if we have another crisis. It lost about 18% in a blink of an eye during the Covid financial panic. I have a history with the fund I'll now share. My father in law, an immigrant with little to no understanding of money, came to me with $30K and asked me to invest it. We used a Fidelity account in my wife's name and invested it in the FFRHX in about 2005. Every quarter my wife would give him the dividends in cash for which he was always elated and grateful. He had never put money to work before. We paid the taxes which were invisible to him. Then the crisis hit, the fund dropped, and he passed away a while later. A family member came to me and said, "Where is the $30K?". I explained there was this thing, the GFC, and the $30K was now $24K." He said, "Give me $30K back." I suppose I could have said the money is in my wife's name, sorry, or he would have wanted us to have it--that sort of thing. Instead, I wrote the check and took measure of the man. When people die without a will, and there is reliance on the good faith of certain family members, well...all kinds of things can happen. So there you have my complicated history with the FFRHX fund, a lesson learned.

  Post: What’s in your portfolio ?

  Link to comment from June 20, 2026

• I've been wondering this week if the Space X IPO along with those coming from Anthropic and OpenAI will mark the peak of a manic market cycle sort of like the AOL/Time merger in Jan, 2000. Underlying all this is the passive bid which keeps powering the market higher, higher earnings revisions, etc., so it's impossible to call the top. That said, I don't want to be exit liquidity for all the VCs that bought into Space X. My hunch is that Space X will see a pop after the open and then a decline down to a more reasonable valuation as those who can sell will. That's my 3 cents, which is up from 2 cents due to inflation. 😊

  Post: SpaceX IPO: Is Margin Optional?

  Link to comment from June 6, 2026

• I've come to the conclusion that we U. S. citizens simply do not like to pay taxes. Remember the Whiskey Rebellion? And here we are today, 250 years as a nation, unable to collect the taxes we need to fund our spending.

  Post: Billionaires, taxes and you

  Link to comment from May 30, 2026

• Thanks Mark. The first big step towards saving for retirement is to find employment whereby one can earn enough to spend less than they make. Then, they need to compound as much money as possible, for as long as possible, at the highest rate possible. Easy, right? Well, I'm 65 years of age and it was, I believe, much easier when I was adulting to reach the objectives above than for my 4 adult children today. From 1982 to 2022, for the most part, interest rates went down, asset prices went up, and those of us able to buy assets profited greatly. Unfortunately, I don't think the future will be anything like the past for many reasons, and I also don't believe Social Security will be able to provide nearly as much support as retirees receive now. Thus, the rising generations may need to save even more to have a decent retirement.

  Post: Don’t Kick The Can Down The Road

  Link to comment from May 30, 2026