ON DEC. 31, 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a lease to take over a defunct brewery in Dublin. What was unusual was the lease’s term: 9,000 years.
It didn’t take long before Guinness and his landlord both realized they’d made a mistake and agreed to end the lease. Guinness needed more space, and the landlord realized he’d neglected to account for inflation. The rent was fixed at £45 annually for the entire 9,000 years.
The Guinness case is notable because it’s so extreme,

AT THE 2016 SUMMER Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, South Africa’s Chad Le Clos challenged Michael Phelps for the gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly. A famous image emerged from that event: Throughout the semifinal, Le Clos repeatedly looked over at Phelps as he struggled to keep up. Meanwhile, Phelps just kept looking forward. The result: Phelps ultimately won the gold, while Le Clos trailed in fourth place.
I believe there’s a parallel between what we saw in that race and what we see in the investment world.

AMERICA’S HAPPINESS plunged during the pandemic. I’d assumed that survey result was an aberration, and perhaps that’ll still prove to be the case. But recovery sure hasn’t come quickly.
There was no General Social Survey in 2020, when COVID-19 struck. But the following year’s survey found that just 19% of Americans described themselves as very happy—the lowest reading since the survey was first conducted in 1972. The “very happy” group rose to 25% in 2022,

IT’S TIME TO PAY IT forward.
That’s a phrase I often use when talking about helping the next generation. But my efforts have been mostly focused on my children and grandchildren. What about others in future generations, especially those from less affluent families?
Welcome to the Jonathan Clements Getting Going on Savings Initiative and the accompanying book, The Best of Jonathan Clements: Classic Columns on Money and Life.
The savings initiative aims to get young adults started in the financial markets with $1,000 contributions to Roth IRAs,

I’M ALL IN FAVOR of striving. But I’ve also belatedly come to see the appeal of acceptance.
Should we strive for more, or should we accept what we currently have and what’s currently on offer? As I’ve noted in earlier articles, there’s great pleasure in striving. We love the feeling of making progress, even if our achievements don’t make us happy for long. It’s an instinct we no doubt inherited from our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

NINE MONTHS AGO, Jonathan Clements shared with readers that he’d been diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer. It was devastating news, especially for longtime readers, many of whom regard Jonathan not only as a journalist but also a friend. I count myself among them, so I was grateful that Jonathan agreed to sit for an interview to share more about his background, his early years and his current thinking. 
You’ve joked that,

MILESTONES MARK the growth of a child as she moves from infancy through school age. In similar fashion, we adults tend to measure our life’s progress with “firsts” or other significant events. Perhaps we remember the feeling of maturity that came with our first kiss or our first job. Milestones help us attach meaning to the course of a life that sometimes seems beyond our control.
Financial milestones often command special significance, like my first “real” job at age 15.

WE’RE ALWAYS STRIVING—the next pay raise, the next consumer purchase, the next self-improvement goal. But to what end?
Our time on this earth is fleeting, our impact minimal and our legacy quickly forgotten. A decade after we’re gone, we might be remembered by family and close friends, but not by many others. And yet we keep pushing forward.
Does death’s approach shed any light on this curious behavior? Far from it. If anything,

MANY FINANCIAL IDEAS are tough to embrace. But perhaps the toughest can be summed up in one simple word: enough.
Will we ever feel like we have enough and that we’ve accomplished enough? Accepting that we have enough and done enough might seem like worthy goals, a serene acceptance that’s possible for those at peace with themselves and the world around them. Indeed, for many, “retirement” and “enough” seem to be pretty much synonymous,

I’VE BEEN THINKING a lot about my mortality. I’m sure it has to do with Jonathan’s battle with cancer, along with losing some close friends over the past few years. Maybe that’s one reason I’ve been thinking about contacting some long-lost friends.
Roger was a college friend who I’ve considered getting in touch with. I believe I’ve found his current address, and I was going to reach out to him by sending him a Neil Young album with my phone number attached.

WHICH FINANCIAL dangers should we focus on? The possibilities seem pretty much endless. In fact, five years ago, I decided to make a list—and ended up offering readers 50 shades of risk.
Yet our notion of risk used to be far more circumscribed.
In the late 1980s, when I started writing about personal finance, insurance was considered important, but it wasn’t much discussed. Instead, the only risk that seemed to merit serious analysis was investment risk,

WHO OWNS TIME? WE speak of “my time” and “your time” as if it were a possession we hold in our hands. But we can’t stash it away for future use, nor can we trade or transfer our allotment to another person. Is it truly ours? For the moment, let’s say that it is.
Appraising time. How much do we value our time? Some days, we treat it as a precious commodity. On those days,

I LIKE TO THINK I’M rational in the way I spend my dollars, and I suspect most readers do, too.
We are, of course, deluding ourselves.
Spending is never simply about buying what we want or need. Instead, behind every dollar that leaves—or doesn’t leave—our wallet is a complex mental dance that reflects how we feel that day, the influence of others, how we want to be perceived, and our own financial history. We might declare that we’re using our money to buy happiness.

MY WIFE WENT TO New York for five days with a friend. I don’t mind because I could use the rest. Over the past year, we’ve traveled from the West Coast to Europe three times, flown across the country to visit my sister and brother-in-law in Tennessee, and taken a number of car trips.
My wife loves traveling and has a lot of energy. Because of all the air miles she’s logged, she’s now qualified for United Airlines Premier Gold status.

IT’S THE ONE ASSET we’re all born with, and it pretty much defines our financial life. I’m talking here about our human capital, our ability to pull in a paycheck.
That paycheck—or the lack thereof—drives our ability to save, service debt and take investment risk. It also dictates our insurance needs and how much emergency money we should hold. Put it all together, and our human capital should arguably determine how we manage our money over our lifetime.