Ethical Investing

https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/12055951-seriouscat/5380107-ethical-investing

Summary

I am a talking cat on the internet. Not a financial adviser.

I have no idea what I am doing or talking about. If I did, I would have better uses for my time.

Is Wealth Worth It?

https://www.quora.com/Is-getting-rich-worth-it-9

Anonymous

I made $15m in my mid-20s after I sold a tech startup. I talked to a lot of people about this question, and thought a lot about how to stay the same person I was before and after making money.

Here's my answer: being rich is better than not being rich, but it's not nearly as good as you imagine it is.

The answer why is a bit more complicated.

Cho tôi nán lại tuổi 20 - Triết Học Đường Phố

https://triethocduongpho.net/2014/08/17/cho-toi-nan-lai-tuoi-20/

1. Tuổi 20 là thời điểm tốt nhất để yêu. Có người con gái đã cùng bạn đi từ 20-25. Phải biết trân quý… Ở tuổi đó các chàng trai có gì? Một nửa đang loay hoay tìm việc, một nửa vẫn còn ngồi ghế nhà trường, có đôi gã khờ dại phải làm lại từ đầu… Và hết thẩy – vẫn còn mê chơi. Còn phụ nữ, họ có tất cả, đủ đầy cả thể chất lẫn tâm hồn. Ánh mắt đủ trong trẻo, con tim đủ nồng thắm. Phụ nữ sẽ dành cho bạn thứ quý giá nhất của đời người: Thanh xuân. Những gì tươi đẹp nhất của người con gái đều đã dành cho bạn. Sau này, bất kể chuyện gì xảy ra, xin đừng làm cô ấy tổn thương.

Anne Scheiber – Secret Buy and Hold Dividend Millionaire - September 25, 2018 by MG.

http://moneygrower.co.uk/anne-scheiber-secret-buy-hold-dividend-millionaire/

Today’s secret millionaire story comes from the vault. It starts all the way back in 1893, the year our secret buy and hold millionaire Anne Scheiber. Like most other secret stock market millionaires, Scheiber did not come from a family of means. In fact, her early childhood was worse than most.

Anne grew up in poverty. Her father died when she was very young. As a result, she was forced to began to work in her teen years. Through sheer determination and graft, she saved some money, put herself through law school and began a career’ at Internal Revenue Service’ – the tax department of USA.

The Curious Case of Grace Groner - C.J. MacDonald, CFA Senior Vice President, Westwood Wealth Management

https://westwoodgroup.com/insight/the-curious-case-of-grace-groner/

Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes, really, pressure and time. ‘Red’ Redding, The Shawshank Redemption

I don’t know much about Geology, but I do know that the growth of long-term wealth is the result of time, compounding and patience.

Just look at the curious case of Grace Groner, who died in 2010 at the age of 100. She was orphaned at a young age and was raised by kind neighbors. She later lived in a tiny one-bedroom cottage in Lake Forest, Illinois. She shopped at rummage sales, loved to walk everywhere so never needed a car and worked most of her life as a secretary. She never married and had no children yet had many friends who loved her for the happy person that she was. So it was surprising to her alma mater, Lake Forest College, to learn that upon her death she left a gift of $7.2 million to the institution to start a scholarship program for students with big dreams but little money.

Grace did not inherit her wealth, nor did she scrimp and save for decades while denying herself the comforts that she really needed. In 1935, at age 25 and in the depths of the Great Depression, she secured a job as a secretary at Abbott Pharmaceuticals and worked there for the next 43 years. In her first year at Abbott, she bought three, yes three, shares of Abbott stock for a total investment of $180. She held onto the stock for the next 75 years and reinvested all dividend payments. Her Abbott stock split many times over the next 75 years, and together with her dividend reinvestment in shares, she died with over 100,000 shares of Abbott stock. No one knew that the unassuming elderly woman had amassed a fortune, until after her passing. The head of the school endowment “nearly fell off his chair” when told of Grace’s generous gift to the school and future students.

The story of Grace Groner can teach us many lessons about life and wealth management:

Herbert A. Wertheim: Bettering the World - Trudy E. Bell (2014)

Herbert A. Wertheim, O.D., D.Sc., Florida Beta ’62, was a physically abused truant who couldn’t read. He went on to found the world’s largest manufacturer of optical hemicals and measuring instruments and became a philanthropist.

 I kept running away because I didn’t want to get beaten by my father , ” Herbert Wertheim stated flatly. After his Jewish parents escaped from Hitler’s Germany in 1936, they fled to New York City and then Philadelphia, where Herbie was born in 1939. After moving to South Florida, the family was so poor that the boy had to share a bed with his two younger brothers above the bakery his father opened. By high school, Herbie was adept in art and in wood and metal shop and was “pretty good” with numbers, but he still could not read well: words seemed to jump around the page or appear backwards. “I didn’t realize I was dyslexic,” Wertheim recalled. “Those days [early 1950s], everyone just thought I was dumb or wasn’t trying hard enough. I cut school because I could not be successful and was made fun of” and ran away to avoid his father’s strap or broomstick.

Hyperbole Much? - David Crosetti

https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/874941-david-crosetti/5273153-hyperbole-much

Summary

It's fun for some people to make outrageous statements.

Everyone's doing it, so it must be fun or why would they do it?

Or perhaps they just don't know any better as we become dumber as a nation, relative to critical thinking.

Introduction:

These days, I read a lot more Seeking Alpha articles than ever before.  At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, one of the things that I notice more and more is how many authors will make a statement that causes me to stop, scratch my head, and think, "Seriously?"

The Most Precious Dollars - Bogumil Baranowski

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4242363-precious-dollars

Summary

• The money we CANNOT afford to lose.
• From a paycheck to your pocket.
• From your pocket to the piggy bank.
• Start early, start small.
• When taxation works for us.

What does counting pennies have to do with keeping and growing a family fortune?

My fiancée Megan and I recently spent an entire evening watching an old movie while counting coins. We’d been letting them collect in an oversized fishbowl. Megan had run to the bank earlier that day to get paper tubes to sort the denominations. I know there are easier ways to do it, but we wanted to have some fun with it. We were both eager to know how much we had amassed. Among hundreds of coins, we found one big surprise that made it all worth it! More on that in a little bit.

The money we CANNOT afford to lose

That experience made me think of the process of saving and building capital. It also reminded me how precious that saved or inherited capital really is, and how difficult – maybe even impossible -- it might be to replace. Any inheritance represents the savings of past generations. Each dollar of inheritance or savings is a dollar that went through battlefield after battlefield, and each dollar required to replace it will have to take an equally grueling path.

With that humbling observation in mind, we at Sicart make each and every investment decision for the sake of the life savings or inheritance entrusted to us. We always say: “This is the money our clients cannot afford to lose” and we treat it with the utmost respect and care. This idea is unfortunately shared by fewer and fewer money managers these days. Among them, though, is the thoughtful Swiss-based investor Anthony Deden, who says this about family wealth: “Respect the fact that is really irreplaceable. It represents a lifetime’s worth of savings.”

From a paycheck to your pocket

Let’s explore for a minute that grueling path taken by each dollar of those savings before ending up safe in an individual’s bank account. That dollar probably starts as $5 or maybe even $10 on a paycheck. It’s slashed by an employer’s payroll tax contribution, and then by the employee’s payroll contribution, only to be taxed at the federal, state, and local levels. If you are a fortunate high earner in a high-tax zip code, the total taxes subtracted from your paycheck could amount to 15% (total payroll) plus 37% (federal) plus 12-13% (state and local). That’s as much as 65% (or almost two-thirds!) stripped away before you see your dollars. Each ten-dollar bill ($10) turns into three single dollar bills and 2 quarters ($3.50) at today’s marginal rate in the U.S. (It could be even less in some higher-tax countries around the globe.) If you now subtract the cost of living and a few modest pleasures, you could end up keeping as little as 20% of your pre-tax pay. (By the way, earning less to fall under a lower tax bracket doesn’t really promote our savings goal here.)

From your pocket to the piggy bank

For this hypothetical $2 out of each $10 earned, the metaphorical journey to the bank isn’t even over. The biggest obstacle is our undying desire to spend! Behind every dollar that’s been successfully saved are endless feats of self-denial or personal sacrifice. For a child, this might have meant no ice cream. In the adult world, sticking to a savings goal may mean keeping an old TV or an iPhone longer, driving an older car, or foregoing a family trip. These may be the wise choices but they’re hard to stick within a world where (as savings guru Dave Ramsey puts it) “We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.”

Start early, start small

Speaking of ice cream and childhood, the first money I saved was through a school savings plan. This was in the late 1980s Cold War Poland. We children were encouraged to put money away and monitor the progress of our savings in a little green book. (The plan was actually started in the 1920s, and continues in some form today.) On the back of the green book was the motto “Learn to save. Even little amounts can grow to big amounts.” Even communist Poland promoted the habit of saving money!

Listen to your Grandma

As meticulous as my little entries to the green book were, I learned my frugality less from government initiatives than from my cost-conscious Grandma. She had grown up during the hardships of WW2 and lean post-war years. Following her example, I hardly ever pay full price for anything, from a pair of shoes to a scuba-diving trip. (And believe me, she still asks and keeps track!)

Old ideas come back in style

Frugality is in fashion again, among young and old alike. For some it’s a conscious choice – they want to start a nest egg and worry less about the future. For others, already burdened with student debt, frugality is necessary. The FIRE movement is catching on: “Financial Independence, Retire Early.” Minimalism is shaping a new generation of consumers, while their parents downsize and learn the art of tidying up.

Why we can’t afford to lose it

Every dollar of savings, whether inherited or squirreled away through personal sacrifices, is the money we just can’t afford to lose. Why? Because it is so hard to earn it, save it, and grow it all over again! Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner, has been the source of much common-sense financial wisdom. In Damn Right!: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger, author Janet Lowe writes:

"Munger has said that accumulating the first $100,000 from a standing start, with no seed money, is the most difficult part of building wealth. Making the first million was the next big hurdle. To do that a person must consistently underspend his income. Getting wealthy, he explains, is like rolling a snowball. It helps to start on top of a long hill—start early and try to roll that snowball for a very long time. It helps to live a long life.”

And it helps to remember the immense effort it took to climb there, and how painful it would be to do it all over again. How do we stay rich then? Here’s some more folk wisdom: “Rich people stay rich by living like they are broke. Broke people stay broke by living like they’re rich.”

When taxation works for us

Once you have savings or inheritance, it pays to invest it not just because money makes more money. In addition, the tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends are substantially lower than taxes on earned income, in most countries around the world. In the US, for example, taxes on long-term investments are roughly half of the rates we pay on earned income. Thus, our invested capital compounds faster. That’s yet another incentive to save.

***

To go back to that fishbowl full of coins – Megan and I counted up a grand total of $255 in nickels, dimes, and quarters, quite a heavy load to take to the bank. Among hundreds of coins, we found a real treasure in the form of a 1940s quarter! It looked more tarnished than the later quarters and made a higher-pitched sound when dropped than the contemporary copper ones. It reminded me of the big heavy silver coins from 1930s Poland that my grandparents showed me when I was little – because U.S. quarters were made of 90% silver before the mid-1960s. So, the metal alone makes this quarter worth $3 today, 12 times what the denomination would imply!

Now, the big decision for us remains: what should we do with our casually accumulated $255? Obviously, the fishbowl is neither the only nor the main way we save, but the growth of capital felt very real and tangible that day. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, “a penny saved is two pence clear.” So let the money double, and let your nickels, dimes, and quarters turn into hundred-dollar bills, where Franklin is waiting for you with a smile. Turn those Benjamins into shares of companies that will grow and prosper over a lifetime.

If no inheritance is coming your way – start saving, and if you have savings or inheritance already treat them with the utmost respect and care – it’s the most precious dollars you could ever have.

They are truly irreplaceable.

Happy Investing!

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Additional disclosure: This article is not intended to be a client‐specific suitability analysis or recommendation, an offer to participate in any investment, or a recommendation to buy, hold or sell securities. Do not use this report as the sole basis for investment decisions. Do not select an asset class or investment product based on performance alone. Consider all relevant information, including your existing portfolio, investment objectives, risk tolerance, liquidity needs and investment time horizon. This report is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to predict or guarantee the future performance of any individual security, market sector or the markets generally.

The Spectrum of Financial Dependence and Independence - Morgan Housel

https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-spectrum-of-financial-dependence-and-independence/

“I did not intend to get rich. I just wanted to get independent.” – Munger

Place yourself, your business, and other people you know, on this list.

The Biggest Returns - Morgan Housel

from https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-biggest-returns/

The biggest energy story of the last four decades has nothing to do with oil or gas. It’s not wind turbines or solar panels. You can’t touch it, or even look at it.

“Many would not even think of it as a fuel or an energy source. Yet in terms of impact, it certainly is,” Daniel Yergin writes in his book The Quest.

It’s conservation and efficiency.

PERFECT FAILURE - Paul Tudor Jones

PERFECT FAILURE

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO GRADUATING CLASS OF THE BUCKLEY SCHOOL

June 10, 2009

https://www.scribd.com/doc/16588637/Paul-Tudor-Jones-Failure-Speech-June-2009

When I was asked to give the commencement address to a graduating class of 9th graders, I jumped at the chance. You see, I have four teenagers of my own and I feel like this is the point in my life when I am supposed to tell them something profound. So thank you Buckley community for giving me this opportunity. I tried this speech out on them last night and am happy to report that none of them fell asleep until I was three quarters done. When composing this message I searched my memory for my same experience back in 1969 when I was sitting right where you are. I realized that I could hardly remember one single speaker from my junior high or high school days. Now that could be my age. I'm old enough now that some days I can't remember how old I am. But it could also have been a sign of the times. Remember, I was part of the student rebellion, and we did not listen to anything that someone over 30 said because they were just too clueless. Or so we thought.