MY WIFE NEEDED KNEE replacement surgery a few years ago. Her health plan, which was provided through the school district where she worked, was a preferred provider organization with a large network of doctors. After some research, my wife decided she wanted her operation done at New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery.
I love hearing about people’s lives. I’ve long read biographies to learn how others gained their fame or fortune, hoping for pointers that would help me with my own life.

IN MY ENGLISH CLASS in junior high school, we read a play called I Remember Mama. It was a story about a poor Norwegian immigrant family living in San Francisco in the early 1900s.
The mother ran the household while her husband went to work and the children went to school. The mother was in charge of the family’s finances. Any time a family member needed extra money, he or she would have to ask Mama for it.

MY FIRST DAY IN the investment industry was—unfortunately—not so great. On the morning of Sept. 15, 2008, the investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, sending the stock market into a free fall. The rest of 2008 was equally ugly, with the S&P 500 losing 37% for the year. But that experience provided investors with a valuable lesson—about the power of recency bias.
Recency bias is the mind’s tendency to extrapolate. When things are terrible,

“I NEVER MEMORIZE anything I can look up.” Albert Einstein, it seems, said this or something similar. I first heard the quote in my freshman physics class. The teacher asked a student to recite a formula. The student’s response: “I never memorize anything I can look up.”
I’ve adopted the same philosophy. My wife loves to point out that I don’t remember the names of streets in our neighborhood. But I don’t need to know them.

MY SON AND I WALK the streets of our town, so my son can pick up trash and recyclables. He’s obsessive-compulsive about trash. He impulsively picks it up even if he isn’t wearing gloves or doesn’t have his grabber available. To reduce this behavior, he and I go out daily looking for trash, so he feels there’s less trash out there.
We do find trash, but we also find things that I wouldn’t classify as trash.

I KNOW FOLKS WHO consider their income to be the best measure of their wealth. Income, however, doesn’t gauge whether you’re making headway toward financial independence.
What does? My financial statement provides everything I need to measure my progress. At the end of each December, I gather the dollar amounts for my assets and liabilities, and assemble the details on a spreadsheet that compares my current standing with prior years. If you’re inspired to do the same,

“SO STEVE, WHAT BRINGS you to therapy?”
“I’ve been moody, sluggish and short-tempered lately. I think I’m depressed.”
“Any guesses what might be going on?”
“I do, but it’s so silly. My wife Alberta needs to make her first required minimum distribution in a few months. You know, when you reach that point in your 70s where they make you withdraw from your retirement accounts. I don’t think it’s about the tax liability. We’ve planned for that.”
“Then?”
“This is going to sound strange.

SOME FOLKS SEEM HAPPY to tell the world how much they earn, how much they have in the bank and what their portfolio is worth. Not me.

If I were to share my income and net worth, I’d expect some serious consequences, and not just from local thieves. In fact, I’m so cautious I have a plan not to tell anyone, except my wife Connie, if I win the lottery.

To be sure, overt sharing often isn’t necessary.

WHEN I WAS A KID, a popular expression was “same difference.” It meant that two choices were essentially interchangeable. It turns out the idea can be helpful in financial planning.
While some financial decisions are very important—and thus warrant careful analysis—others make far less of a difference. In those cases, additional analysis typically contributes little. According to one study, it can even be counterproductive. Below are several topics where extensive analysis is often less important than it might seem.

BILLY JOEL WROTE a song that declares, “I love you just the way you are.” But as parents, sometimes it isn’t easy to say those words about our children.
We’re supposed to train them to succeed in life. We all probably think we’re excellent trainers, so—when our children don’t get it—it must be their fault. We did our part, so why don’t they learn?
For parents of special needs children, things are different, but also similar.

MY FAVORITE CLASS freshman year in college was introductory psychology. I found the lectures interesting, the textbook fascinating, and the course much less time-consuming than my engineering classes. Based on my positive experience, I decided I’d take a class called psychology of personality as an elective. What I didn’t realize was that many students considered the professor to be something of an oddball.
My first—and only—day in the class was surreal. The professor kept repeating that his class was “designed to be a real system.” Multiple times,

WHEN I VISITED INDIA after working in the U.S. for a decade, it struck me that people seemed happy, despite harsh living conditions.
How could that be? “People compare themselves with others,” my brother said to me. “That’s human nature. If they’re better off than their immediate community, they’re happy. It doesn’t matter how bad their situation may be compared to more prosperous countries.”
That made sense. I was making the mistake of applying U.S.

HEY GUYS, DO YOU carry a rifle like Clint Eastwood when you invest—or are you a vulnerable romantic like Hugh Grant? My contention: Most of us lean toward a traditionally masculine or feminine orientation when building our portfolio, similar to how we handle many other life choices, from career to sports preferences.
This gender orientation is, I believe, a pervasive bias when buying and selling mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), not unlike the behavioral-finance biases you’ve likely read about,

REGULARLY CHANGING the oil is the most important step you can take to extend your car’s engine life. Oil is the engine’s life blood and changing it is one of the least costly maintenance steps. It’s also one of the dirtiest, crummiest, least pleasant jobs you can do.
Before I got married, I lived in a six-story apartment building in Brooklyn, with a parking garage in the basement. A friend of mine lived in the same building.

WE ALL HAVE BAD DAYS. But for some folks, it seems every day is a bad one. No matter how good things seem to be, they’ll focus on the one bad thing. Think about the negative thoughts that you have:

Are they helpful?
Are they true?
Does the bad in your life outweigh the good?
Has negative thinking become a habit?
Do others really need to know about all the bad things in your life?