Joshua Kennon's Personal Blog

Sep262011

Mail Bag: The Ethics of Gingerism, Racism, Serosorting, and Discrimination in Relationships, Dating, and Sex Due to Assortative Mating

Mail BagBy Joshua Kennon September 26, 2011 2 Comments

Today’s mail bag question deals with the ethics of the mental model called assortative mating. This refers to the phenomenon whereby individuals choose to engage in relationships with others who are like themselves (positive assortative mating) or dissimilar (negative assortative mating). There are strong economic arguments that the perceived rise in income inequality is due to assortative…

Sep242011

Intuitive Thinking Versus Reflecting Resoning

Do You Rely on Intuition or Reflective Reasoning When Drawing Conclusions?

PsychologyBy Joshua Kennon September 24, 2011 10 Comments

There is a quick test that can help you determine if you rely on intuition or reflective reasoning (intellect) when making decision. Answer the following question as quickly as possible: “A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” Do you…

Sep192011

What Does It Feel Like to Fly Over Planet Earth?

SpaceBy Joshua Kennon September 19, 2011 2 Comments

This clip has gone viral over the Internet, generating nearly 700,000 views since it was posted. It shows what it would feel like to fly over Earth if you had a spaceship. Watch of for the lightning and thunderstorms. We live on a beautiful planet. The original poster of the video had this to say:…

Sep192011

Wendy’s Brilliantly Relies on Mental Models from Psychology to Reinvent the Classic Wendy’s Cheeseburger

Case Studies & Profiles, PsychologyBy Joshua Kennon September 19, 2011 5 Comments

Wendy’s recent commercial introducing the remade cheeseburger named after founder Dave Thomas is one of the best examples of marketing and psychology I’ve ever seen. It’s brilliant; mental models applied in a constructive way. I’m not going to take the fun out of it, but be on the lookout for some of the clues…

Sep162011

Top 1 Percent of Net Worth and Wealth in the United States of America

How Much Money Does It Take To Be In The Top 1% of Wealth and Net Worth in the United States

Economics, Making Money, Saving MoneyBy Joshua Kennon September 16, 2011 135 Comments

What does it take to be in the top 1% of wealth in the United States? Many of you write me and ask that question, hoping someday to make it into the top 1% of net worth but not sure where that line gets drawn. I thought it might be useful to provide a reference to which I could point people in the future whenever they write, as well as make for some interesting afternoon reading for those of you who are curious about the nature of the economic world in which we live.

Sep162011

My Birthday In Pictures – September 16th, 2011

Cool Stuff, My Day In PicturesBy Joshua Kennon September 16, 2011 Leave a comment

Family and friends celebrated my 29th birthday today. Also, the stained glass Monopoly lamp arrived to match the ceramic Mr. Monopoly bank I bought in the middle of night when I couldn’t sleep due to working out too late in the evening and not being tired.

Sep142011

The Ceramic Mr. Monopoly Bank Arrived

Cool Stuff, My Day In PicturesBy Joshua Kennon September 14, 2011 6 Comments

The ceramic Mr. Monopoly bank I bought the other day (er … middle of the night) arrived earlier than expected. I love it. I wish there were Monopoly art and collectibles to the same degree there is with Scrooge McDuck thanks to the work of Carl Barks.

Sep132011

Hanging Out in the Hospital

My Day In PicturesBy Joshua Kennon September 13, 2011 Leave a comment

My early afternoon today was spent in a hospital visiting someone very close to me recovering from surgery. As I was looking around at the capacity of the facility, it dawned on me that the quantity of coffee necessary to serve all of these people would require a reconstitution, grind-free system that had a reasonable…

Sep132011

Mental Model: Calibration Errors

PsychologyBy Joshua Kennon September 13, 2011 7 Comments

Mental Model: Calibration Errors Calibration errors are when people lack the genetic or cultural ability to calibrate communication based upon the situation, people involved, or other contextual clues. To understand calibration errors as a mental model, it might help to give you three real-world scenarios that would require the observer to calibrate the hyperbole. A…

Sep132011

How To Be a Success In Your Profession: Testable Fluency in the Basics

Making MoneyBy Joshua Kennon September 13, 2011 1 Comment

The key to being fantastic at your chosen field is to reach what Charlie Munger called “testable fluency” in the basics so that you are able to perform the higher ideas like a meastro. This concept is simple: Mozart was able to compose so brilliantly because he could play almost anything by sight or ear.…

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.