Financial Planning

You may have never heard of him, but last week Warren Buffett’s business and investing partner at Berkshire-Hathaway, Charlie Munger, died at the age of 99. He helped Buffett build the company into the 7th most valuable in the U.S.

On his recent podcast, the New York University Finance professor and investor, Scott Galloway, revealed his very personal thoughts about his own money. He explained his anxieties about money, his thoughts on marriage and how it relates to money, his approach to investing and what financial independence means to him.

My Great-Grandma Tootsie was born in 1880, just 15 years after the end of the Civil War! She lived to be 98 and died when I was 14 so I not only met her but I knew her and remember her well. On the day she died, she picked up some of her younger, 80-something year-old friends in her Studebaker and drove them to lunch.

Charles Schwab Co. released the results of their recent survey that sought to quantify how much Americans think it takes to be wealthy. While the numbers are certainly interesting, what I found fascinating and refreshing was that the survey indicated most people include non-financial factors when quantifying their own wealth.

I recently purchased 6 copies of The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel for my son and his college friends. I told them to consider this their first graduation gift – a year early – and I decided to provide it in advance in hopes they would all start thinking about their financial futures now. Why now?

I steadfastly ignored articles about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the new ChatGPT – the language processing tool that can assist you with composing emails, essays and, yes, blogs. I ignored it until I listened to a podcast that described some of the ways AI may help transform the economy. Autonomous vehicles is an obvious one that leaps to mind.

A bank used to run a TV ad during the SEC Game of the Week where a man, talking about retirement, says he plans to do “absolutely nothing.” His wife then leans in and says, “He means it.” That’s not a plan for retirement, that’s a plan for a vacation. Be careful not to confuse the two.

My inbox gets pounded like new shingles after a windstorm on a daily basis. Mutual fund companies, firms selling technology “solutions” to problems I didn’t know I had, financial advice columns, etc. Recently, on successive days, I received emails with the following headlines from two different publications:

I recently read a blog titled, A Few Beliefs, by Morgan Housel. He wrote the book, The Psychology of Money, that describes views toward wealth that are quite similar to those of us at Moneywatch Advisors. Below are 10 of Housel’s beliefs that I think are spot on and also timely:

The Serenity Prayer contains the following phrase: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Not only good life advice but outstanding investing advice, particularly during a declining stock market as the first four months of 2022 have been.