What’s Your Legacy?

In John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem  A Legacy it’s clear that he wants to be remembered for his friendship, although, together with his mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, he spent a large part of his life fighting against slavery and is remembered today more for his poetry than for anything else. If, as Lucretius said more than […]

How Many Things Don’t You Want?

Because life is simpler in the wilderness, most people learn quickly that taking too much gear with them on, say, a backpacking trip, is dysfunctional and potentially life threatening. With diligent planning the solutions are usually obvious. For example, if you are feeling cold in the wilderness you can put on every single piece of […]

Investors At The Edge Of The Fiscal Cliff

The fiscal cliff is a combination of large spending cuts and tax increases that are scheduled to be automatically enacted at the start of 2013. There is nothing unusual about any of these spending cuts and tax changes in isolation, but it’s the sheer number of them happening simultaneously at the beginning of next year that’s […]

Backpacking Lite: The Secret To Real Wealth

Last week I was asked why, as a financial planner, I am writing about everything from happiness and parenting to dying and character development. The clue is in the subtitle of the blog, “Financial, economic and wealth related issues in the broadest sense of the word.” The origin of the word “wealth” is the old English word […]

Sudden Wealth

Your life-time partner dies, you sell your late stage technology start-up to a larger company, you receive a large insurance settlement following an accident, your employer lays you off with a large retirement package. These events all have one thing in common, they are life changing in a significant way.  Your identity, your relationships, your self-image […]

Playing The Game Of Life

During a long career as a financial planner, I have had the privilege of looking through a window into the intimate lives of hundreds of individuals. Many of these have played the game of life with consummate skill and have achieved considerable success in their chosen endeavors, both financial and non-financial. However, it is also clear […]