On the way back from spending the week with friends, Blake and Karen, on Captiva Island, we decided to take a detour to meet up with two other old friends we don’t get to see very often, who happened to be at Walt Disney World. We were heading toward Tampa and re-routing to Orlando would only a few of hours to the trip, so we arranged to have lunch in a pub at Downtown Disney before we had to get back on the road, again.
DetailsWe stayed at a rental house called Otter Banks on Captiva Island, Florida, when our friends got married and invited us down for the week.
DetailsWe woke up in Atlanta, Georgia this morning and decided to go to one of the most sacred spots in the entire Western Hemisphere: The World of Coca-Cola. What might appear as a mere beverage to some is practically a cult in the South. Coke reigns over this city like royalty thanks to the fact…
DetailsPresident Obama’s administration has announced that he wants to impose a one-time tax levy of up to 14% on the $2 trillion in foreign profits American companies have built up and not repatriated in exchange for making repatriation on future foreign profits that were subject to at least a 19% tax rate tax-free, encouraging domestic…
DetailsIf you need something to brighten up your day (or make you feel despondent depending on how you look at it), this is living proof that all you have to do to be successful in life is give people what they want at a price that is higher than the cost it takes you to deliver it to them, with sufficient margins for risk, capital tie-up, and opportunity cost. You can literally fail 3rd grade science and, if you satisfy a want, make six, seven, or even eight figures a year. The system we have now forgives a lot of shortcomings if you prove useful in other areas.
DetailsBack when Dave Thomas left his discipleship of Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame to go off and start the hamburger chain that we now know as Wendy’s (which he named for his daughter, Melinda) one of my favorite things he did was find a way to reduce waste – and thus costs –…
DetailsWe’ve had fun over the years answering the question, “How much money does it take to be in the top 1%?” and even looked at the breakdown of how the top 1%, as a class, generates its money. If you enjoyed those posts, hold on to your seat because there is a new report out that…
DetailsBy now, all of you know what happened recently with the Swiss Franc, Euro, and, as an extension, the price change of Nestlé shares in the United States. It caused a stream of messages to come in through the contact form like I haven’t seen in a long time, all with the same theme. Here…
DetailsOne of the reasons I haven’t been around much this month is I’ve been working with members on both sides of my family, adjusting portfolios now that we are in a new tax year, reviewing plans to make sure everyone is on track for retirement, and dealing with some paperwork that includes a nightmare of an annuity transfer that has gone so wrong, I had to have the annuitant involve the regulators of two different states.
DetailsThe Night Black Wall Street Burned to the Ground When I became obsessed with investing as a child, convinced it offered me the greatest probability of escaping what I saw as an economic dead end due to the community in which I lived, I spent years reading everything I could about any and every event…
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