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I haven’t seen any comments about the very recent WSJ article regarding Jonathan’s grim healthcare diagnosis. So, I will lead off by expressing my shock but also gratitude for creating this wonderful, informative website for financial advice.
Jonathan we communicated a few times while you were a WSJ reporter. We are both transplants from England and I was happy to read that you will be spending some more time there in the very near future. Wishing you all the very best, you have a wonderful attitude towards this crisis. I admire you very much.
Successful investing is not about knowledge or skill. It’s about temperament.
Save pennies and the pounds will follow.
Costs matter.
Once you you’ve won the game stop playing
It’s a great quote and the hardest financial challenge we personally have. Like the golden handcuffs, hard to resist.
“Some don’t want to get rich slowly.” Warren Buffett, when asked why many ignore his advice to invest regularly over the long term in an index fund.
As far as I can tell, these are my own words: Save for the future but be sure to have some fun along the way if case you don’t make it that far.
“No one ever made a dime by panicking.” — from that guy on TV who everyone hates, at least in the financial services industry, so I won’t mention him by name. His show is *not* about stock picks – that part is just for fun – but the first 10 minutes, where he says, this is what happened in the market today, this is what the hedge funds and the big guys are doing, this is why they’re doing these crazy things, and reminds us that no one ever made a dime by panicking! Hate him if you must, but he saved my bacon during the 2007 crash, just by talking me down off the ledge every day, and preventing me from selling everything because I couldn’t take the pain, which would have locked in my losses. Instead, I did pretty much nothing, and ended up recovering with the market! I used to love Jonathan’s “Getting Going” column, by the way! 🙂
This quote is pretty good—the only profane one by the grave Dr Bernstein:
“The best money in the world, if you’ll allow me the book’s only F-bomb, is “fuck-you money”: that used to buy time and autonomy.”
— The Four Pillars of Investing, Second Edition: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William J. Bernstein
https://a.co/evqMfIF
I’m not sure if this would be labeled a financial quote but :
If your children want for nothing, they have too much : Jonathan Clements
Not exactly a “quote, but very early in my financial services career, I became “an early adapter,” when PCs were concerned. I bought my first PC in the summer of 1986.
Soon thereafter, using a 300/1200 Baud Modem, I began using AOL to get online. In those days screen names were limited to a certain number of letters and numbers, so my screen name and therefore my email address was/is “Sav4later@aol.com”. There was no room for the “e”after “Sav” but all my friends, and later clients, understood the meaning.
“I can’t time the market. I don’t know anyone who can time the market. I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who can time the market.”
Jack Bogle
“Don’t do anything. Just stand there!”
Jack Bogle
“Stay The Course!”
Jack Bogle
This is a quote from a British mathematician/statistician, but it is true for financial models and predictions:
All models are wrong but some are useful – George E. P. Box
one of my favorite quotes. The key is knowing how to extract use from them.
“To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.” – Graham
“When it comes to financial advisors, you get what you don’t pay for.” — Bogle
“Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist.” – Morgan Housel
“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” – Warren Buffett
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
A stitch in time saves nine (Francis Baily, 1797).
[Don’t skip those oil changes when due, people!! Best $50 – $100 you will ever spend on your car! This useful reminder is just as true in relationships… ;<)
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
Live below your means
Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. Warren Buffet.
When you say I have no money, do you mean I have to be careful at Saks or I can’t afford toothpaste? (Barbra Streisand in The Main Event.
Soooo many from my John Bogle, my investing icon, but will contribute this, “Dont try to find the needle in the haystack, just buy the whole haystack”. Meaning is you are unlikely to find and buy the newest, hottest stock (Nvidia anyone?) so just buy a broad index fund/ETF and buy the whole market. We have a large portfolio with broad market ETFs, and per Morningstar portfolio X-ray our largest position is in Microsoft a mere 1.75%!
“The greatest wealth is to live content with little” : Plato
“Don’t just do something; stand there.” Attributed to many, but has a unique meaning within financial circles.
Ah, please give John Bogle his due!
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/22/stand-there/
Yes, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t originate with Jack.
Sorry, I guess I should have been more clear what I was saying Jack should get credit for associating the quote with investing, not the quote itself.
Indeed, Jonathan taught me to research my quotes. This one may have originated in the theatrical arena. But it still can be applied towards financial wisdom. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/22/stand-there/
That quote by Mr. Macawber in David Copperfield about living within your means..too lazy to look it up and too long to memorize verbatim. 😊
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
Yes! Thank you, Ginger!
Enough is as good as a feast.
“I never cared much for what money could buy. I only like it for what little security that it gives me by having it.” My mother said that and I quote it often.
Once you spend money it’s just like its gone. Maybe my own.
Always pay yourself first. My Father
You fail to plan, you plan to fail. Warren Buffet
Buffett: Never depend on a single income. Make an investment to create a second source
Live like no one else so later you can live and give like no one else. – DR
“It won’t hurt you to want”!
“Money is the root of all evil”
No sorry. That is the often misquoted version.
Here is the real quote:
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
1 Timothy 6:10English Standard Version
Momento Mori – We will all die
One that I believe is my own. “Be happy in life…..do what you do best and hire out the rest”
A man, J. Paul Getty said, ‘Hire people to make you money’ 😉
Don’t fight the Fed.
Like Jonathan, my favorite quote came from Henny Youngman, which is: “I’ll have all the money I need, if I die at 4.”
ellevine
“All I want is a little more than I’m going to get.” My sales manager used to say this when he was setting quotas. I finally realized it works well as a pointed remark about money.
“Investment is the discipline of relative selection” (Sid Cottle)
“Nobody knows anything”. I also like “Invest for the long term, be diversified, watch your costs, and let compounding work its magic” – Barry Ritholtz
Everything would be so much better, if I had just a little bit more money.
Stay the course
Maybe a little long quote, but I found this interesting story in John Bogle’s book, Don’t Count on It:
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, the late Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, author Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel, Catch-22, over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have – enough.”
Fly first Class or Your Kids Will
Too easy: Buy low, sell high.
Your portfolio is like a bar of soap – the more you handle it, the smaller it gets.
Eugene Fama said that. Great quote!
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” It’s true in everything from physics to finance, and keeps me from getting overly exuberant when the pitch sounds a little too perfect.
As a tax preparer I have worked with many advisors who I have great respect for, but my 3 favorite financial quotes come from my dad, who was a welder by trade. They are:
1 Timothy 6:10
Warren Buffett, commenting on a company he had reviewed for investment:
“The assets were questionable, but the liabilities were solid.”
Once you spend money it’s just like it’s gone.
“No one ever went broke taking a profit.” — Philip Schneck
(My late maternal grandfather, sometime in the 1980s. Definitely was investing during the Great Depression, when he was a dress salesman, and was able to retire young in the 1960s. I wish I knew if he also bought on the way up in the 1920s — I only know that he was younger, and so would have had less capital to commit.)
I like that quote as well. I think it goes well with “trees don’t grow to the sky”, which I think comes from a german proverb.
“save, save, save” … my father
“Don’t Allow a winner’s game to become a loser’s game”. “Successful investment is all about common sense”. John Bogle
Americans are getting stronger. Twenty years ago, it took two people to carry ten dollars worth of groceries. Today, a five-year-old can do it. (Henny Youngman, on inflation)
Excellent!
“Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.” Albert Einstein
In the short run, the market is a narrative machine, but in the long run, it is a narrative-debunking machine. -Barry Ritholtz
You can be right and still be a moron -Daniel Crosby
I’m going to cheat. I have two:
Probability interests me, and so I have a particular liking for Keynes’ “The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
Plus I think anyone who loves learning sees the truth in Franklin’s “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Fear and greed are the enemy of good investing
“When you’ve won the game, stop playing with the money you really need.” William Bernstein
“Exiting the market after a decline – and thus failing to participate in a cyclical rebound – is truly the cardinal sin in investing.”
Howard Marks
“Time in the market beats timing the market.” I don’t know who coined this adage.
Stocks in the short term are a voting machine, in the long term they are a weighing machine. – Graham
This is a good one. I always wondered at what point the short term becomes the long term, and how does one know??!
The general concept is useful, though.
” The secret to the stock market is to buy a stock that’s going to go up in price. If it doesn’t go up, don’t buy it.” — Will Rogers
Another Will R quote, ‘Find out where people are moving and buy land there’
People first, then money, then things. – Suze Orman
‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’
Attributed to Benjamin Graham by Warren Buffett
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“When your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep becomes your downfall.” Rick Rule I really like this one.
I like this one by Warren Buffett because it touches on an important topic in a funny way:
“Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”
“Enough” by Jack Bogle. One word and concept packs a powerful punch.
“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison. After too many years of investing, I have realized that even if beating the market long term was possible, I do not have the discipline or desire to put in the “perspiration” required.
Almost anything from Jack Bogle, but probably none better than “Stay the course.”