Funding the Adventurous Life
When we make important decisions, we are often not as rational or objective as we’d like to believe. The base rate fallacy is the tendency to misjudge the probability of a situation by not accounting for all relevant information. This cognitive bias affects everything from first impressions to voting preferences to broad market behavior.
Continue reading “The Psychology Behind Poor Investments and Other Important Decisions”
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Dave Rosen is a climber and ophthalmologist in his final year of residency. And Dave grew up like so many of us: broadly exposed to the importance of money and taught a thing or two about saving, but investing was a foreign concept and his lack of knowledge was a source of shame.
While Dave skimmed over it, he’s no slouch as a climber. He has bagged a pile of double-digit boulder problems up to V12, sent 5.13c, and developed numerous boulder problems, particularly in the South Mountain area near Phoenix where he and his wife lived for medical school for four years. He is hard-working, analytical, and pragmatic in his career and life approach.
In this conversation, we discuss how Dave found climbing from the world of canyoneering, his early exposure to money and how that has markedly changed in recent years, the constant pull of greener grass, working backward from an ideal lifestyle, and the ethical and moral dilemmas of early retirement.
Continue reading “The One Time to Be Average with Dave Rosen”
Mike Piper is a CPA and the creator of the Oblivious Investor blog, where he teaches a philosophy of simple and low-maintenance investing.
Mike’s simple philosophy distills down to three primary principles:
Mike began his career as a CPA before realizing he could support himself by writing books. Surprisingly, he left his secure job during the 2008 financial crisis. He has gone on to publish seventeen books and is widely considered an expert in social security, tax, and a number of other personal finance topics. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Morningstar, to name a few.
Continue reading “Mike Piper: Down To The Essence Of Smart Money Management”
Since the financial crisis of 2008, two dominant views on stock market investing have emerged:
The Great Recession produced a decline in overall equity values in the range of 50%+ from 2007 to early 2009. The event created a lasting and widespread change in mindsets around personal finance, even what it means to be securely middle class. However, for those that stayed the course, the subsequent Great Bull Market produced exorbitant wealth for almost anyone investing in almost anything.
If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that market growth and declines are cyclical. These cycles are influenced by a complex blend of fiscal policy, business practices, and perhaps most important of all—animal spirits: human behavior and emotion. To balance risk and reward, one should invest broadly in the market as a whole and increase the investing timeline. The latter in particular is easier said than done. In this post today, we quantify the power of longevity in the market. We have reason to rejoice, so long as we can hang on!
Continue reading “The Great Comfort of Longevity in the Stock Market”
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The 4% rule suggests that a retiree who withdraws no more than 4% of their portfolio each year could have provided for a 30-year retirement window during most historical retirement windows. And that is true! The problem is that the FIRE community, however, perpetuates at least two misconceptions when discussing the 4% rule. Today, we address those common misconceptions about utilizing investment income. And, most importantly, we discuss how to use a flexible withdrawal strategy to weather bear markets and/or reduced future returns.
Continue reading “Can The 4% Rule Actually Work For Early Retirement?”
We’re back to the digital mailbag to answer your questions!
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To date, 2022 has been a bad year for the stock market. As long-term investors, this is the wild ride we signed up for.
Continue reading “This is the Wild Ride We Signed Up For”
Brice Karickhoff is a climber and development economist with a passion for charitable giving. In this episode we discuss the importance of balanced saving and giving, the utility of the donor-advised fund, and broader macroeconomic trends that affect us all.
Continue reading “EP 30: Charitable Giving and Macroeconomics with Brice Karickhoff”