Behavior

As a psychotherapist well-traveled in the talking cure from both sides of the consultant’s couch, I am no stranger to anxiety. And as a former financial advisor, I am well-versed in how it affects financial choices and in particular the decision to select active or passive funds.
Let’s take your friend Dennis, whose attitude toward investing has been shaped by many different and often conflicting factors. Not a completely naïve investor, he listens to inspirational money-making podcasts and watches the market opening on CNBC while brushing his teeth.

When I was a boy I had an uncle who researched the Quinn family history. He told a family legend about a ancestor who emigrated to Australia from Ireland – more like transported for stealing Trevelyan’s corn. 
In any case, he supposedly became extremely rich even displaying a five carat diamond ring. Ever since I heard this story I have had a recurring dream that I receive a letter from a law firm in Australia saying it has been searching for me for decades as I am the last relative of this fellow –

A FEW YEARS AGO, I came across an announcement for a blueberry festival in Hammonton, New Jersey. My wife is always up for doing something different, so we made our way there one summer day.
It turned out to be a great way to spend the day and learn the history of New Jersey’s blueberry industry. The industry was founded by a woman looking to expand the crops on her family’s farm around the turn of the 20th century.

Even flying by the seat of one’s pants can work. As Nike says, Just do It!
I claim no expertise in investing, and rightly so. I read and listen about the basics like diversification, bonds vs stock and such, but not much more. 
To me the most important thing is to save and invest and keep doing it which I have done since I was eighteen – 63 years.  Probably more expertise would have meant larger fund balances,

WHO’S YOUR FINANCIAL hero? This should be someone whose qualities and character lend themselves to emulation in your own financial life.
Let’s set some ground rules here for picking a financial hero. First, your hero probably shouldn’t be the usual suspect: Warren Buffett. While Buffett is certainly a very successful investor, the investment game that he’s playing is very different from the one most of the rest of us are.
The same goes for folks like Elon Musk,

I WAS FORTUNATE to find enough time during my working years to pursue various hobbies and other personal interests. My part-time work arrangement allowed me to have four-day weekends. I’d hoped that, after retirement, I would have even more time to take on personal projects.
But surprisingly, I found myself with less free time. Not only was I failing to start new projects, such as writing software for the website of the nonprofit I cofounded,

MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” His contention: We should carefully pick the folks who surround us because, over time, we’ll become more like them.
Recent research offers some support for this idea. For instance, if we have a close friend who becomes obese, one study found we’re 57% more likely to become obese as well. If that’s so, we might also want to cozy up to skinny friends who count exercise as fun recreation.

How many of us can proudly say we can cut through misinformation and disinformation, personal bias or prejudice?
As we enter the last month of a new election year, I’m wondering how many voters are truly informed. How many voters actually delve into the politics and issues put forth by the candidates. At first glance, some may sound good, but what are the calamitous consequences of their proposed policies, if enacted.  Have you studied history and educated yourself about the problems some of the policies that they have put forth have wrought?

I thought it might be fun to see if everyone can remember how and/or when they found out about HumbleDollar?
I, myself, am not 100% sure.  Maybe through the boglehead.org forums (which I’ve since abandoned)?  I can’t recall, but I’m pretty sure that since 2018 or ’19 I’ve been a daily follower.

801 US billionaires control a record $6.2 trillion in wealth.The bottom 50% of Americans control $3.7 trillion in wealth.
When 801 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem. So says a long ago Secretary of Labor on social media post. 
I assume, but can’t verify, these numbers are correct, but in any case I have to ask, what exactly is the problem? Sour grapes?
I attempted to learn the answer using AI,

BY THE 1990s, New York City had been in decline for decades. What brought about the city’s recovery? It was, in part, the broken windows theory.
Picture a vacant building with one window broken. Most people wouldn’t think much of it. But this one broken window sends a signal—and, soon enough, others get broken. How do you reverse this decline? It’s easy: You get rid of the broken windows, and make sure things stay that way.

WE ALL HATE LOSING—and life, alas, is full of it.
I’m not just talking about investment losses. There are the career successes we never had, the relationships that didn’t pan out and the purchases that fell short of our expectations. Almost all of us, I suspect, can recall countless situations that turned out less gloriously than we’d initially hoped.
Yet, even though my failures pain me, they don’t stop me from getting up each day and trying again.

I’M RELUCTANT TO ADMIT that HumbleDollar is run using smoke and mirrors. But if someone said that, I’d be hard-pressed to disagree.
I’ve long believed that the principles of sound money management are pretty timeless. What you should be doing with your money this year isn’t a whole lot different from what you should have been doing last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
This notion is baked into how much of the site operates.

I can’t take credit for the headline here. Actually Jonathan wrote it for my section of My Money Journey.  I like it so much I use it on my blog too.
It articulates one word to me – responsibility, in this case financial and related matters.
We talk a lot about financial literacy and the lack thereof, but I don’t see even that as preventing basic prudent decisions about, saving, spending.
My grandson came home from high school yesterday and told his father the teacher in his financial management class told them to always spend on themselves first.

MY RETIREMENT IN July 2020 came at a stressful time. I was recovering from knee replacement surgery and we were in the midst of the pandemic. Luckily, I had physical therapy goals to meet, and I’d already purchased a huge supply of reading material. TV, music and my laptop were also there to distract me. In addition, my wife had retired eight months before, so we had each other for company.
As the pandemic stretched on,