Category: Money
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Systematic misbehavior
Since the tragedy of Anthony Bourdain’s recent suicide I’ve gone back and watched some of his old show on Netflix, Parts Unknown, and last night I watched an episode where he goes to Congo. At one point toward the beginning of the show he visits a fishing village that had…
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How much should you give?
Yikes this one got hairy before I even got to the body of the blog. Giving is not about philanthropy. Giving (and receiving!) is, in its essence, a way of drawing into communion the rich and the poor. Giving, then, should cost something, and it should cost something in an…
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Financial fakery
Leaving straight forgeries aside, any discussion about the “authenticity” of an artwork opens suddenly, like a trapdoor, into the murk of semantics. On the sliding scale of attribution that art historians use – painted by; hand of; studio of; circle of; style of; copy of – each step takes the…
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It’s Not About The Money
I have money conversations with people every day, working with them to solve problems that are–on the surface at least–money problems: how much to save and where, how to align an investment process with a set of objectives and goals, how to navigate scary transactions, how to identify opportunities that…
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Competitive Meditation & Dangerous Proxies
There is a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “Competitive about Meditation? Relax, Everyone Else Is, Too,” which reads like satire from The Onion while managing to be too ridiculous for anything other than real life. Here: In one online group, members regularly check a leader-board to see who…
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Divinely Discontent
Across the street from my office is an elementary school full of kids, and as I write this they are having a field day. An actual field day. Some of the students are shooting basketball, some are hula hooping, some are having a dance party, some are getting their faces…
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Imminent Downturns and Regrettable Decisions
Although it feels like an eternity ago, it has been only three years since the Ebola virus sent a jolt of physical devastation through several countries in West Africa, and a jolt of fear through the American psyche. I recently revisited a piece from The Atlantic which dealt primarily with the…
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A Word About Cryptocurrency and Risk Management
Here are two articles that came across my desk on Wednesday of this week: one in the morning entitled “Nearly a Third of Millennials Say They’d Rather Own Bitcoin Than Stocks,” and then one that evening entitled “‘$300m in cryptocurrency’ accidentally lost forever due to bug.” [As an aside, you’ve…
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Vulnerability and money
Here’s a story from my marriage: But let me back up: I hate watching movies at home in the dark. Like, who decided that when we sit down to put a movie on in the living room we have to go around turning all the lamps off? Oh, is it…
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The trouble with being rich
The trouble with being rich is that since you can solve with your checkbook virtually all of the practical problems that bedevil ordinary people, you are left in your leisure with nothing but the great human problems to contend with: how to be happy, how to love and be loved,…
Meaningful Returns 