Joshua Kennon's Personal Blog

Dec122011

Your Goal Is Not To Die With the Highest Net Worth Possible, It Is To Maximize The Utility of Your Family’s Money

Saving MoneyBy Joshua Kennon December 12, 2011 3 Comments

Saving money is important. Investing money is important. But if you don’t cash in some chips at some point in your life, all of your efforts will have been wasted because those claim checks on society will be taken by the government, spent by your heirs, or redistributed through fees and expenses by professionals such as attorneys left to sort out the inevitable lawsuits that result in the fight over your fortune after you’re gone.

Dec122011

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Illustrates Why Nintendo Is In Trouble

Video GamesBy Joshua Kennon December 12, 2011 1 Comment

With all of the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim activity going on in every corner of my life, I began thinking about the various video game platforms and the video game industry as a whole. Going back to this summer when we were playing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which I bought on a whim, caused me to realize something: No one in my household, or in the households of my extended family, takes the Nintendo Wii seriously.

Dec112011

Charlie Munger at the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting

Investing Advice from Charlie Munger

Portfolio ManagementBy Joshua Kennon December 11, 2011 3 Comments

Here are some words of wisdom I came across about portfolio management and building wealth from billionaire Charlie Munger. We’ve really made the money out of high-quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the…

Dec112011

Everything In Life Has An Opportunity Cost

EconomicsBy Joshua Kennon December 11, 2011 Leave a comment

In economics, opportunity cost is defined as the cost of not choosing the next, best alternative for your money or time. Everything in life has an opportunity cost. If you want to go to the movies with friends it means you can’t stay home and read a good book. If you want to spend cash on…

Dec112011

Group Well-Being Versus Individual Well-Being: Knowing Your Priorities

PhilosophyBy Joshua Kennon December 11, 2011 1 Comment

I want you to take a moment and put yourself in a scenario that will tell you a lot about your thought processes and inner priorities regarding individual well being versus group well being. You are married with three children. Your family is your highest priority. Your life is comfortable. You earn more than $100,000…

Dec112011

Mental Model: The Micawber Principle

Psychology, Saving MoneyBy Joshua Kennon December 11, 2011 1 Comment

Mental Model: The Micawber Principle In Charles Dickens’s novel, David Copperfield, published in 1850, the eternal optimist Wilkins Micawber was known for saying “something will turn up”. He was poor but lived in expectation of becoming rich, sometimes foolishly taking on debts due to the belief. We have Micawber to thank for one of the…

Dec112011

Making Money: Nothing Happens Until Something Is Sold

Making MoneyBy Joshua Kennon December 11, 2011 1 Comment

As Gene Bedell wisely reminds us, nothing happens until something is sold. That is one of the greatest business truths you can ever learn. Get it engraved on the back of a watch, keep it in your pocket inscribed on a small sheet of paper, or repeat it to yourself silently, but learn this principle so…

Dec102011

My Pure Mage Strategy for Elder Scrolls Skyrim Is Based on the Late 1980’s Ganon Character from The Legend of Zelda

Video GamesBy Joshua Kennon December 10, 2011 9 Comments

I ultimately decided upon a pure mage strategy my Elder Scrolls Skyrim character, Azrah Gestahl, based upon the early manifestations of Ganon in The Legend of Zelda series from the 1980’s. Although my character is mostly good, serving as the Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold, a member of the Imperial Army, and possessing a healthy penchant for destroying bandit hideouts, the general composition of skills leans heavily toward a very powerful mage in a robe capable of extreme conjuration and destruction, with very strong illusion, alteration, and regeneration knowledge. I’m not talking about modern day Ganon, mind you. I’m talking about Ganon as he was back then – magic artifacts, conjuring minions, blasting fireballs, all draped in a cowl as he sought world domination.

Dec82011

I Took the Plunge and Bought the Professional Mauviel Copper Cookware Upgrades to the Kitchen, As Well as a Few Stainless Steel Ruffoni Pots and Pans

Food and Beverages, My Day In PicturesBy Joshua Kennon December 8, 2011 5 Comments

The gourmet food posts on the site are probably going to grow exponentially over the coming years. I’d publicly debated various cookware as far back as last year and finally decided to take the plunge as part of the six-month May Day project. Yesterday evening, I bought a set of copper Ruffoni pots and pans, which were going…

Dec32011

How a Family Holding Company Can Be Used to Transfer Wealth and Bind a Family’s Economic Future Together

Business StrategyBy Joshua Kennon December 3, 2011 11 Comments

We’ve talked about how a holding company works in the past, provided a beginner’s explanation of holding companies, and even looked at two high profile private holding companies owned by America’s richest families, Walton Enterprises, LLC and Cascade Investment, LLC. I even gave a very basic explanation over at About.com as to how family members can invest together through a limited liability company. Tonight, I thought I’d go over a very basic, very simplified explanation of a much more advanced concept that isn’t appropriate for most people but will show how a family holding company can be used to gift millions of dollars tax-free to heirs and others, while retaining control of assets and binding a group together economically. This is a high-level, conceptual explanation. Do not act on any of this without consulting with your own tax attorney, tax accountant, and other qualified advisers. None of this is investment advice. None of this is tax advice. None of this is legal advice.

It’s always odd to try and fit your life story into a few lines but here is the short version: My name is Joshua Kennon. I’m 36 years old. My husband, Aaron, and I met and fell in love as teenagers. Neither of us ever even dated anyone else - we knew we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. After graduating from high school, we moved from the Midwest to the East Coast where we studied classical music and a wide range of liberal arts. Later, we returned to the Kansas City area to be near family. During this period, which spanned nearly thirteen years and lasted from our early twenties into our mid-thirties, we started several Internet companies and spent much of our time semi-retired, managing our own wealth thanks to the financial independence those businesses helped us achieve. I also wrote a lot during those years. In fact, the odds are good that you’ve directly or indirectly encountered me many times without realizing it. For nearly 17 years, I was the Investing for Beginners Expert at what was then known as About.com. I am the co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Investing, 3rd Edition. Due to requests from family and friends to manage their capital alongside our own wealth, Aaron and I decided to exit retirement and launch Kennon-Green & Co.^®, a fiduciary global asset management firm that specializes in helping affluent and high net worth individuals, families, and institutions invest their capital around the world. In 2018, as part of our journey to have kids through gestational surrogacy, and the spin-up of Kennon-Green & Co., we moved to Newport Beach, California. These days, we spend our time running and growing the firm, as we plan on it being the institution through which we pass on our own family’s wealth to our future children and grandchildren. The experience, particularly meeting such incredible people, has been one of the most rewarding of our lives. It’s a rare thing to have a career that allows you to not only do what you love for a living, but to do it with people you admire, respect, and like. We feel like two of the most blessed guys in the world. This personal blog is a place where I talk about some of the things that interest me – cooking, finance, entrepreneurship, politics, history, economics. I’m really proud of the community we’ve built, in no small part because the typical reader around here is exceptional. Please note that in preparation of the launch of the asset management business, and to better protect our family's privacy, Aaron and I removed thousands of articles, posts, and comments from this blog, reducing it to a fraction of its former size. This means if you are looking for something that existed prior to us coming out of retirement, the odds are good it simply isn't available anymore.