After graduating from college, Aaron and I have regularly visited and vacationed with our close friends as a way to keep in touch. There are many times this included 1,000+ miles road trips and weekend home stay, and other times, visits to theme parks, such as Cedar Point, the North American roller coaster capital. In…
One of the weekly traditions in my life, the family get-together of four generations, rolled around again today and it was our turn to provide the food, meaning the kitchen was a flurry of activity for three or four hours as the dishes were prepared. The menu was set as follows: Main Dish 1: A…
After publishing my newest About.com article, What is a Mutual Fund Family? as part of a new group of content focused on very, very basic financial concepts for beginners, I spent the morning over a cup of coffee in my home, curled up at a desk in a side room with reading lamps (it was dark…
If I were thinking about starting a small business from nothing or I were actively operating a small family company, there are eight questions that I would immediately ask myself about any entrepreneurial idea I had. These eight questions are: How do we make money? (What product or service do we provide at a profit? What…
Very early in life, I had three important insights that helped me achieve the things I desired within a year or two after graduating college. These three insights were based upon my observation of the world and years of sitting in a reading chair by the fireplace pouring over history, accounting, economics, philosophy, psychology, ethics,…
Though I very rarely talk about my personal life on the blog due to privacy concerns, I will say that for years, I have attended a flexibly-scheduled weekly family dinner that rotates among the members’ households with the host cooking for the guests. This is an extension of the tradition that began during my childhood…
In the most recent Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter, Warren Buffett remarked that the three best investments he ever made included his home in Omaha (the other two were wedding rings). He conceded that he would have had more money if he had instead rented and invested the cash, but the utility of the home far outweighed the opportunity cost. Now that I am in my late twenties, I understand what he meant.
Tonight, I reorganized the master bathroom at home and came across several bottles and products of Brut. The company, once a luxury brand, has become one of the cheapest two-buck-chuck colognes in the United States and sells for a couple dollars at Wal-Mart. Although I’m normally known for my obsession with high-end fragrances, even going so far as to special order scents from overseas and paying hundreds of dollars per ounce just to sample a new perfume house offering, this infamous brand still sits proudly on my shelf along with the most expensive and exclusive fragrances in the world. Why? Because it reminds me of my grandfather. It was his cologne of choice and the moment I smell it, I’m instantly transported back to my childhood.
After meeting my newborn nephew for the first time, Aaron and I went to grab lunch at Houston’s steakhouse on the Country Club Plaza. We had planned on going to Ruth’s Chris but everyone else was too exhausted so just he and I headed over to the shopping district because we wanted to look at…
We finished our business on the East Coast, though you only saw the personal parts of the trip, and flew back to Kansas City this afternoon. I’m finally starting to feel better. Most of the way home, I read magazines such as Architectural Digest and the Harvard Business Review. I also listened to my iPad…
