I got a bottle of Maker’s Mark as a wedding gift. That’s old Kentucky Bourbon. The thing that makes it old is 2 things, really. First, it’s fermented with 150 year old yeast. Secondly, it sits in a barrel for a very long time. You can’t make whisky very quickly. And, if you wanted to […]
Archives for September 2020
The myth of actively managed mutual funds
In Michael Mauboussin’s book, “More Than You Know”, Mauboussin measured how many actively managed mutual funds successfully beat the S&P500 index. This is super-useful information for anyone trying to decide whether or not it makes sense to invest in index funds. Maybe you’ve heard (or maybe you haven’t) that popular opinion is that something like […]
Would you protect your business to the death?
My wife told me a story recently about her 5th great grandfather (which she got from the Commemorative Biographical Record of the Counties of Harrison and Carroll, Ohio): James Gibson, father of Mrs. Nancy Morehead, was a captain in the English army prior to and during the American Revolution. His sympathies, however, were with the […]
Don’t let anyone should on you
Let’s rap about the “tyranny of the should”. “Should” is a word that haunts a lot of folks because it’s this moral ball and chain that hangs around your neck. It’s there, constantly telling you… what you *should* do. And, if you don’t do it… you’re somehow magically a bad person. Like… “you should save […]
How to find an unbiased financial advisor
When we moved to a small town in North Carolina, an unexpected surprise was that my regular mechanic now lives too far away to service our vehicles. I say it’s a surprise because he’s a mobile mechanic. He drives around to wherever I am (except here, apparently) to fix cars. Really super-handy, by the way. […]