John S. Lemon, President of Tootle-Lemon National Bank in St. Joseph, Missouri (the city near the farm town where I grew up before moving to the East Coast at the end of my teenage years), died on March 17th, 1905. According to Volume LXX January to June 1905 of The Bankers’ Magazine: “He was born…
DetailsI’ve been talking a lot about trust funds lately. I calculated that if someone put $50,000 in a trust fund today, 70 years from now, they could have a dynasty trust paying each of their heirs a $25,000 cash check (in today’s dollars, net of taxes) at Christmas. There are a lot of assumptions that may not pan out in that figure, but it’s a decent guess.
DetailsTrust funds are terribly misunderstood. They are one of the most flexible planning tools to nurture, create, and pass on wealth ever known to man. They can be as rigid or as flexible as you desire. Even more importantly, you don’t have to be rich to use trust funds. These structures are not relegated to the realm of the Rockefeller and Walton families.
DetailsYou all know that Peter Lynch was the first investor that made the stock market make sense to me during childhood. He is one of the greatest investors of all time, having compounded the mutual fund he ran for 13 years at 20%+ annually, generating an absolute return of more than 1,000% for his…
DetailsReuters just published an awesome article about songwriter Franke Previte, who lives in New Jersey, and wrote the hit songs “Time of My Life” and “Hungry Eyes” for the movie Dirty Dancing. The copyrights have turned out to be a lottery ticket for the composer, providing him with a substantial stream of profits upon which…
DetailsI really enjoy paradox, especially in areas of science, religion and philosophy. There are all kinds of paradoxes in life – some are paradoxes of logic, some of self-reference, some of mathematics, some of statistics, some of probability, some of decision theory, some of physics. The world is full of paradoxes. [mainbodyad] What do I…
DetailsA new addition to the Scrooge McDuck collection joined the office today. It was only released in Europe but I liked it so much it had to join our Carl Barks compendium.
DetailsAccording to a new story out by the Associated Press and posted on Yahoo, “Blacks struggle with a 72 percent unwed mothers rate”, the out-of-wedlock pregnancy crisis in the United States has become unfathomable with single mother pregnancies accounting for between 17% of pregnancies in Asians to 72% of pregnancies in African Americans. Why should…
DetailsSitting on my desk in front of me, as I type this article, is an analyst report by Morningstar for Wachovia dated December 31st, 2007. This is the bank that was built almost entirely on the foundation of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in Winston-Salem. At the time, Wachovia common stock had closed at $38.03 and was paying a very rich 6.31% dividend yield. The analysts at Morningstar valued the shares at $61.00, indicating they were nearly 40% undervalued. Within 10 months, those same shares of Wachovia were trading for $1.00 following a catastrophic collapse.
DetailsA family member of mine was looking at houses and I started thinking about Charlie Munger when he said it is important to keep a lot of the “silly needs” out of your life. (This particular family member is doing a great job managing his budget, but in general, it made me wonder about society…
Details
