An Example of Why a Free Press Is Vital to the Lifeblood of a Free Nation Imagine you go to the doctor. He discovers that you have a deadly disease that will cause you great physical harm if left untreated and, ultimately, an early death. Your brain will begin to degenerate and, eventually, your heart…
The most important part of success in life is: Get Started. Too many people wait until things are “perfect” or until they are completely confident in themselves. They are paralyzed by fear. They worry about the judgment of others; about public embarrassment if they fail. Don’t. Set your sight on your future and what you…
Due to our disciplined value investing philosophy, coupled with our insistence upon diversification of income and assets, we haven’t experienced a lot of big losses. When we do, we try and study what went wrong so we can understand if there was a structural problem or a blind spot in our mental cognition that should be avoided in the future. We never want to have to “return to Go” in Monopoly terms. That is just intelligent portfolio management.
Over at Above the Law, Elie Mystal wrote an article called “Earning $250,000 Does Not Make You Rich, Not In My Town” … even though that income level means earning more than 97 out of every 100 households in the United States.
Today, I was sitting at the dining room table, drinking a cup of coffee wearing the Brooks Brothers pajamas I picked up on my birthday a few days ago, and watching the stock market skyrocket when it occurred to me that, given the secret project and some other things going on at the business, I want to build some cash and bond reserves at one of the individual operating companies; maybe put aside money a little at a time, let it build and do something fun with it three or four years from now, like design and build a row of townhouses or whatever.
There was an article three weeks ago in The New York Times that began with the following paragraph: Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, but when Allison Brooke Eastman’s fiancé found out four months ago just how high her student loan debt was, he had a particularly strong reaction: he broke off the engagement within three days.…
The best advice I ever received came when my parents dropped me off at college. As they were getting in the car, my dad looked at me and said, “Your mom and I have done everything we could for you. We fed you, we clothed you and you have a high school education. From now on, it is your responsibility to make your dreams come true. We can’t do it for you, and no one else can either. If you want it, you have to do it on your own.”
When it comes to diversification, you have to look at your entire life and not just your portfolio. Several years ago there was a book I really enjoyed that dealt with this topic called Are You a Stock or a Bond?: Create Your Own Pension Plan for a Secure Financial Future. It provided a valuable framework for understanding how the stability of income in your life should inform your approach to asset allocation.
When I was 16 years old, I was sitting in the hallways of the local high school, waiting for class to begin, discussing the state of the world with Molly. She stopped me and asked a simple, direct question: “Do you believe that the life of an American is more valuable than the life of…
In Surprising Facts About America’s Population, I pointed out that the top 25% of people in China – the gifted students who out-test 3 out of 4 of their classmates – exceeds the entire population of the United States. This raised some concerns about my enthusiasm for the rise of China. I thought it would…