Despite my protestation, we went to a big box store today, COSTCO to be specific.
I am not a fan of these stores. They don’t save people money, they encourage spending and for some people waste as well. It’s all hard to resist, but I try, yet sometimes fail. Today I bought a three foot bag of popcorn and a bag of dried apricots-I never bought those in my life). 
These stores encourage people to buy what they don’t need and in volume that may not be able to use.

While researching Jonathan’s early years, I came across this article he wrote as a teenager for Saga, the magazine at Bryanston School in England. Years later, Jonathan would say this was his “entrée to becoming a journalist.”
Reading it today, I was struck by something unexpected. Although he was still a teenager, I could already hear the voice that millions of readers would later come to know. He wasn’t simply writing about a school pipe organ.

During the last couple of months I’ve saved around $1000, and I’m not very happy about it. It’s money I really didn’t want to save. I’d rather have blown it big time. My most earnest efforts and hopes to do so were thwarted by circumstances entirely beyond my control.
During this timeframe I’ve had the misfortune of being hit by a string of low level, unrelated plumbing issues. A shower diverter valve jammed, a toilet cistern flush button broke,

We have recently considered buying another property closer to family.    Since selling our current home may take some time we were thinking we could possible use a retirement Roth account to come up with purchase price rather then take a bridge or other loan.  We also do not have enough after tax money in regular accounts to cover the total purchase.  We have been here for many years so it meets tax deduction for primary residence sale. 

IF YOU’RE IN YOUR early 60s and retired, you probably have a lot of financial questions on your mind. The next few years may be among your lowest-income and lowest-tax-paying years. Your salary and bonus years are behind you. Social Security and required minimum distributions from your IRAs and 401(k)s have not started yet. You are hearing advice about doing Roth conversions during this low-tax window, and the arguments are compelling. You may also be thinking about consulting or part-time work to stay active and bring in some income.

AS WE CELEBRATE 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, I’m reminded of an expression that’s popular in the investment world: “This time is different.”
The phrase dates to a 1993 publication titled “16 Rules for Investment Success,” authored by the veteran investment manager Sir John Templeton. Rule number 11 included the following admonition: “The investor who says, ‘This time is different,’ when in fact it’s virtually a repeat of an earlier situation, has uttered among the four most costly words in the annals of investing.”
Templeton’s message,

Last week I was driving home after finishing the grandkids’ school run when an amber engine warning light flicked on. Being the type of guy I am, I didn’t wait around wondering about it. I drove straight to my local mechanic to get it checked out.
They plugged it into the diagnostic system and gave me the likely verdict: the timing chain was starting to stretch. Nothing was confirmed yet, since they wanted to do a proper mechanical inspection first.

It’s been almost 58 years since my parents decided to immigrate to the U.S. for a better future for me. That’s the reason they gave as to why they uprooted our  lives in Athens, Greece.  I did not like their decision and for years afterward I let them  know that I preferred my life in Greece.  My parents knew what I didn’t know which was that America was a land of opportunity and I could educate myself and eventually have a better standard of living than in Greece.

“Does any part of your busy schedule stem from a feeling that you need to be busy?”
That sentence is part of a question posed by Edmund Marsh to Dr. Lefty. It ties in with an article I began to formulate a while back.  
Should I Start a New Business?
The obvious answer is a resounding NO. Still, there’s a little gremlin inside me who        sometimes shows his ugly little gremlin head; you should buy that building,

If stocks don’t win, everybody likely loses.
Stocks are a gauge of the global economy’s health. Are share prices in a multi-year slump? The world’s economy must be in the dumpster—and that’s bad news for all investors.
Conventional wisdom says we can avoid stock-market mayhem by hiding out in bonds and cash investments, and that’s usually true. But if economic growth stalls out or even reverses for multiple years, it won’t just be stocks that suffer.

My dad’s brother passed away two years ago. I liked him, but I didn’t really know him well; the last time I’d seen him was at my mum’s funeral, about a year before his own. I’d kept my distance from that side of the family; ours was really just a wedding-and-funeral relationship. My uncle was a character. A dodgy character.
Here’s one example of his pedigree. Unbelievable as it sounds, back in the 60s and early 70s,

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my retirement after a 35-year career as a university professor. Since I wrote it about it several times leading up to that day, and another one after six months, I thought I’d add some thoughts about the first year “out” has gone for me.
Overall, it’s been great. Maybe my biggest surprise has been how little I miss my job. My identity was so intertwined with my academic career for so long that I worried I’d have one of those loss-of-identity depression spirals that you read about.

Would you “waste money” on something of questionable value? Something that receives only a passing glance or less, that is fleetingly or not at all appreciated, that is mostly discarded within days and is often a mere obstacle to the prize within? I bet you would and have, possibly multiple times a year.
I try to resist, but it is fruitless, we are cornered. There are other ways to approach the situation, but most of us are trapped by convention.

More than forty years after we first met, Mrs. Dolezal sent me a letter shortly before she passed away.
By then I had long since finished school, built a business with my twin brother, retired, and settled into a comfortable life. The years between us had quietly slipped away.
As I read her letter, one passage stopped me in my tracks.
“You are like a son for me. I shall never forget the kindness and strength you showed me after the devastating shock of my husband’s death… You were a young man at the time but you took on a heroic task… I shall never forget what you did for me and my children.”

For the past seven years, I worked in contemporary art. Four months ago, I left galleries for a financial institution. I expected to discover a world governed by fundamentals rather than stories. Instead, I found different stories being told with greater precision.
Many people classify art as “speculation” while assuming publicly traded securities are “investments.” But numerous financial assets—meme stocks, cryptocurrencies, SPACs, and even highly sought-after private companies like SpaceX—derive a substantial portion of their value from narrative,