Jonathan Clements's Blog, page 102

Pizza, Anyone?

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING completely different: I'd like to try a HumbleDollar meetup on Monday, March 4, at 5 p.m. at Pizzeria Vetri, 1615 Chancellor Street, Philadelphia.

All attendees will be responsible for their own bill, but it shouldn't be wildly expensive, not least because happy hour runs through 6 p.m. I believe Vetri has the best pizza in Philly. The restaurant doesn't take reservations, but the manager assures me that things should be quiet at that time. Be warned: Pizzeria Vetri has more than one location, so make sure you go to the right one.

If you plan to attend, please shoot me an email at jonathan@jonathanclements.com. That way, if there's some glitch, I can let you know ahead of time. If the March 4 meetup proves popular, I'll do it again over the summer—and it could even become a regular event here in Philly and perhaps an occasional event in other cities, depending on my travel plans.

For those with good memories—and there seem to be a lot of you—I had mused about holding a HumbleDollar conference. I even got as far as checking out a few venues and getting pricing. But it became clear that I couldn't pull it off at a price point that would appeal to a broad swath of HumbleDollar's thrifty audience. Indeed, even the excellent Bogleheads Conference—which I'd recommend—costs almost $600, plus travel, hotel room and meals, including $100 for the Saturday night banquet.

Still, what strikes me about the Bogleheads Conference, as well as others I've attended over the years, is that folks enjoy them less for the financial insights and more for the socializing. With any luck, pizza in Philly will (pun intended) satisfy that appetite.

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Closing Doors

MY FAVORITE CLASS freshman year in college was introductory psychology. I found the lectures interesting, the textbook fascinating, and the course much less time-consuming than my engineering classes. Based on my positive experience, I decided I’d take a class called psychology of personality as an elective. What I didn’t realize was that many students considered the professor to be something of an oddball.

My first—and only—day in the class was surreal. The professor kept repeating that his class was “designed to be a real system.” Multiple times, he exclaimed, “The sincere student will experience closure at the conclusion of this real system.”

Apparently, grades for the class weren’t determined on the basis of tests, but on some nebulous project requirement. At the end of the hour, the professor mentioned something about many students being “weirded out” of his classes. That was me. I immediately dropped his class and signed up for economics.

While I never regretted ditching that second psychology class, the professor’s statement about “closure” stuck with me. What was he talking about? It seems closure is a fairly complex concept in psychology. Don’t ask me to explain the intricacies—remember, I dropped the course.

The best working definition I’ve found: “Closure is the sense of resolution or completion of a life event, problem, or situation.” There are several important areas of my life where I’ve desired and, to some degree, achieved closure.

I was a driven student in high school. Good grades and college board test scores were a major part of my adolescent self-image. I achieved my academic goals, finishing high school with a perfect transcript, Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores that exceeded my wildest fantasies, and a hefty college scholarship. I felt closure at graduation, but it was an uncomfortable emotion. For some reason, on that day, the academic achievements for which I’d worked so hard seemed meaningless.

My father died in 2001 and my mother in 2013. I had a good relationship with both of them. Although I grieved their passing, I didn’t feel I had unresolved issues with either. I was able to spend significant time with my father in the months leading up to his death. I asked a lot of questions and wrote down his answers. This process was a blessing that eventually helped me to feel closure in our relationship.

My mother, unfortunately, had dementia for years before she died at age 91. Still, when she died, I did experience closure. I had been grieving the gradual loss of my mom for years, and this was just the final stage.

Another area of my life where closure was important to me was ending my 38-year career with my first employer. For years, I imagined how I might feel on my retirement day. Would it be bittersweet, recalling the emotions I felt at my high school graduation? Would I regret retiring? I almost retired after year 36 to work for another company. The decision, however, didn’t feel right, and I ended up declining the job offer.

When I finally did retire two years later, I was satisfied the time was right. To help further my sense of closure, I wrote a piece looking back on my career and posted it on LinkedIn, later adapting it for a HumbleDollar article. My coworkers also helped me by holding a farewell luncheon.

In addition, they gave me a picture of the nuclear power plant where I’d worked, which they all signed, along with their congratulations and best wishes. Strangely, my last day in the office didn’t generate much emotion. I quietly turned in my computer and drove the familiar route home that I’d traveled almost 10,000 times before.

Psychologist Gene Cohen identified a phase of aging he calls the “summing-up phase.” This phase has been described as “a time of review and resolution and heralds a desire to give back. The review is of one’s life with recognition of its meaning. It is a time of putting photos in albums, of writing memoirs.”

I may be a little young for this phase, which according to Cohen typically occurs between the late 60s and the 80s. Still, I find myself periodically drawn to reflect on the big picture of my life story, which is closer to its end than its beginning. I suspect many of my fellow HumbleDollar writers and readers can relate.

Ken Cutler lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has worked as an electrical engineer in the nuclear power industry for more than 38 years. There, he has become an informal financial advisor for many of his coworkers. Ken is involved in his church, enjoys traveling and hiking with his wife Lisa, is a shortwave radio hobbyist, and has a soft spot for cats and dogs. Check out Ken's earlier articles.

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Comparison Culture

WHEN I VISITED INDIA after working in the U.S. for a decade, it struck me that people seemed happy, despite harsh living conditions.

How could that be? “People compare themselves with others,” my brother said to me. “That’s human nature. If they’re better off than their immediate community, they’re happy. It doesn’t matter how bad their situation may be compared to more prosperous countries.”

That made sense. I was making the mistake of applying U.S. yardsticks of prosperity to their lives, and wondering how they could be so happy with so little.

From childhood on, there’s constant pressure to compare ourselves to others and to aspire to the things that seem to make them happy. No wonder corporate advertisers always show happy, smiling customers enjoying their company’s products. The inference is that buying these products will make the rest of us happy, too. Social media makes matters worse.

In an interview, legendary investor Warren Buffett talked about the home he bought in Omaha in 1958 and why he still loves it. “I’m happy there,” Buffett said. “I’d move if I thought I’d be happier someplace else. I’m warm in the winter, I’m cool in the summer, it’s convenient for me. I couldn’t imagine having a better house.”

Obviously, Buffett isn’t comparing himself to other billionaires, who often have more homes than they can count on one hand. Buffett knows who he is, what makes him happy and isn’t influenced by what others do. But many of us aren’t nearly so level-headed. It’s hard not to compare ourselves to others.

Comparison culture is also pervasive among investors. When the “magnificent seven” stocks outperform the broad market, investors often struggle to feel happy with their portfolio—unless, of course, they’re heavily invested in these highflying stocks.

Still, comparison doesn’t have to work to our detriment. When I compare myself to others, there are always some folks who are better off than me, no matter what metric I use—money, looks, abilities, you name it. If I compare myself to them, I’m not going to be happy.

But if I can learn from their success and find ways to improve myself, comparison starts to work to my advantage. Similarly, there are many who are worse off than me. When I compare myself to them, I feel blessed—and it inspires me to find ways to help others.

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Investing Softly

HEY GUYS, DO YOU carry a rifle like Clint Eastwood when you invest—or are you a vulnerable romantic like Hugh Grant? My contention: Most of us lean toward a traditionally masculine or feminine orientation when building our portfolio, similar to how we handle many other life choices, from career to sports preferences.

This gender orientation is, I believe, a pervasive bias when buying and selling mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), not unlike the behavioral-finance you’ve likely read about, such as recency bias and hindsight bias. But gender-influenced investing tends to be more nuanced—it’s personal and specific to you and me.

What follows is how I developed into a sensitive, neurotic investor, reflecting my inner Dustin Hoffman. Perhaps my story will help you identify your own value inclinations when evaluating an investment’s merits—and perhaps allow you to correct the resulting distortions in your portfolio.

My first encounter with my family’s sex-role dynamics came when I was a crafty three-year-old. For the first time, my mother didn’t hang out with me as I fell asleep. Mortified and outraged, I let out a wail, demanding this indignity be rectified. But I had underestimated my father’s determination to shout down my attempt to cling to my guardian. “Fay, don’t go back upstairs to his room. I want Stevie to be a man, not a wimp.”

The messages here were undeniable. Danger lurked everywhere and could pounce at any time. Women more than men would be my ally. I was destined for a scaredy-cat existence.

My experience learning how to ride a two-wheel bike only reinforced these impressions. After promising to steady my start-off by holding on to the back of the seat, my father quickly withdrew his support. I fell hard on the concrete sidewalk and scraped my knee. My mother, watching intently from the front door, screamed at my father and soon put a band-aid across the wound.

Hey, I’m no dummy. As I navigated a threatening world, the feminine stereotype would be my ally. At age five, I was well on my way to becoming a timid and risk-averse investor.

How does my unheroic streak translate into my fund transactions? Take defense stocks. What do Boeing’s planes do? They crash and prolong wars. No surprise, I’ve never sought out defense stocks.

Another twist: As a nice Jewish boy, I’ve never handled a gun and never even seen one up close. All I remember is the Lone Ranger ponying up with his Indian sidekick Tonto, his revolver safely tucked into his holster. Give me one of those socially responsible funds, not because I have good intentions, but because their goals are less terrifying.

Another flashback: My father started out as a TV repairman. He could reach back behind a boxy RCA set, replace the bad tubes and, voila, the picture would turn from snowy to clear. To an impressionable kid, this was the unattainable height of masculine power—and this, too, influenced my investing.

As I’ve mentioned before on HumbleDollar, technology stocks have been my nemesis. I’ve been chronically underinvested in the sector, even skimping on tech-heavy broad market index funds, including the current S&P 500 with its 30% tech weighting. Despite my interest and self-declared expertise in the shenanigans of the stock market, I’ve only partly participated in the technology revolution of the past 50 years.

That brings me to a telling investment adventure. When I discovered no-load mutual funds in the 1960s, I predictably gravitated toward those that hedged relatively volatile common stocks by also including an allocation to bonds. This strategy protected my downside but limited my upside. Then, during a bull run, I noticed the ascent of 44 Wall Street Fund. In my Daily Graphs glossy, the fund showed an eye-popping rise from the chart’s lower left-hand corner to the upper right-hand corner. Misconstruing a bull run with market savvy, I couldn’t resist taking the plunge.

I tracked 44 Wall Street’s performance in The Wall Street Journal almost daily. One morning, maybe a few months after my purchase, I let out a shriek. The fund had lost 12%, even though the market was flat on the day. I was drenched in emotional sweat. The world was indeed treacherous, and I needed to take refuge in a balanced fund.

Chapter 11 sounds like a verse from the Bible. But for my father, filing for bankruptcy, no matter how strategic, was the purgatory for fallen investors. “Stevie, Stevie, never go that route. It would be a shanda on us.” I was, it seemed, destined to be the family shanda—its source of shame.

A few days later, I received the best letter I’d opened since I was notified that I’d passed my driver’s test. It was a transaction statement from 44 Wall Street. It showed a reinvestment of a 12% capital gains distribution, whose proceeds were used to buy additional shares. Minus the unavoidable taxes, the whole fiasco was a wash.

Where do investors like me tend to hide? You’ll find us in the maternal domains of the fund universe. The satellite sector funds adorning my broad market foundations are often health care-related, like Vanguard Health Care ETF (symbol: VHT), and home products-related, like Vanguard Consumer Staples ETF (VDC). As you may have guessed, I’m a genius in bear markets and an oaf when the bulls run.

You might want to explore the family origins of your own personal investment values—which might be political rather than sex-role related—with an eye toward correcting any unintentional portfolio tilts. Liberal investors, for example, may shun oil stocks, possibly unaware they’re compromising their portfolio’s diversification.

Steve Abramowitz is a psychologist in Sacramento, California. Earlier in his career, Steve was a university professor, including serving as research director for the psychiatry department at the University of California, Davis. He also ran his own investment advisory firm. Check out Steve's earlier articles.

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When It’s Worth It

REGULARLY CHANGING the oil is the most important step you can take to extend your car’s engine life. Oil is the engine’s life blood and changing it is one of the least costly maintenance steps. It’s also one of the dirtiest, crummiest, least pleasant jobs you can do.

Before I got married, I lived in a six-story apartment building in Brooklyn, with a parking garage in the basement. A friend of mine lived in the same building. One day, he was complaining about the cost of keeping his car running, especially the amount he was spending on auto mechanics. I offered to help him change his oil. He thought that would be wonderful.

We bought the oil and oil filter at a local auto parts store. I brought down a lifting jack and support to the garage, so we could lift the car up to gain access to the drain plug. But I didn’t crawl under the car to get to the drain plug. I let my friend do that, along with everything else, but with my supervision.

After we’d drained the oil, replaced the oil filter and filled up the engine with fresh oil, my friend looked at me and said, “What a dirty job that turned out to be.”

“Now you know why you pay a mechanic to change your oil,” I replied.

“It doesn’t seem like such an expensive job, after all,” he concurred.

I look carefully at what items cost, what someone is charging me to perform a service and how much I’m tipping a waitress. I’m cheap. There, I said it. I hate spending money.

But the cost is always relative to the alternative. That alternative could include cuts and scrapes on your hands from doing the job yourself. Buying a cheaper item can result in it quickly wearing out or breaking, requiring you to buy another one. Waiting at a fast-food counter, instead of sitting in a quiet white-tablecloth restaurant and enjoying a nice meal, also has its costs.

Everything has a cost and a reward. The reward should exceed the cost. Otherwise, it isn’t a good purchase. The cost is usually known. The reward is subjective, based on the purchaser’s needs and wants.

The reward for doing a job yourself is the satisfaction of knowing you can do it on your own, along with the cost savings from not paying others. But if the quality of the work is inferior to what a professional could do, the reward is diminished. On the other hand, if you’ve been ripped off by professionals in the past, the quality may not be as important as the satisfaction of knowing that, this time around, no one took advantage of you.

Hiring a financial advisor may be a good use of your money if you panic every time the stock market nosedives, or if you can’t seem to put away enough money to afford the finer things in life. But there’s also the cost, including the risk of being sold something you don’t need.

As with most things in my life, I take the DIY—do it yourself—approach to managing money. I feel better finding out I made a mistake with my money, rather than learning someone else made a mistake for me. So, I go it alone. That’s required me to spend a great deal of time and money studying investing and deciding what’s a good approach to managing my wealth. To me, it’s worth it.

I might have had a larger pot of gold if I’d used a financial advisor. But I’m happy following the immortal words of Frank Sinatra, when he sang, “I did it my way.”

David Gartland was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and has lived in central New Jersey since 1987. He earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the State University of New York at Cortland and holds various professional insurance designations. Dave’s property and casualty insurance career with different companies lasted 42 years. He’s been married 36 years, and has a son with special needs. Dave has identified three areas of interest that he focuses on to enjoy retirement: exploring, learning and accomplishing. Pursuing any one of these leads to contentment. Check out Dave's earlier articles.

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He Sold Staples

IN SPRING 1984, WHEN I was age 32, we purchased a little ranch house in need of tender loving care. That’s why I found myself in a musty crawlspace, removing clutter and installing vapor barriers.

I heard a booming voice from above. It wasn’t God telling me I should run for president. Instead, it was my new neighbor Ken. I came to the surface, dusted myself off and went inside the house.

Standing there was a 47-year-old, six-foot two-inch bald guy with a jet-black beard, holding a whiskey and coke in each hand, one for him and one for his new neighbor. I’m sure it was five o’clock somewhere. To say that Ken was gregarious would be an understatement.

We covered all the normal topics that new neighbors would. Ken was excited to learn I sold his favorite brand of beer. Initially, I wasn’t terribly impressed by Ken’s line of work. He sold staples. Still, we became fast friends.

Ken’s life story turned out to be one of rags to riches, and then back to rags. In the end, he was still able to find happiness. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

You can imagine that, with his outgoing personality, Ken was a good sales rep, and his territory expanded exponentially. But then the staples manufacturer carved up his route, which cut into Ken’s commission and prompted him to quit.

That was when Ken and his friend Bob, who’d been his auto mechanic, opened up a business together—selling staples. Understand that these were industrial staples, along with staple guns, air compressors, nails, nail guns and other industrial supplies. Ken did the selling and Bob ran the shop. They survived a lawsuit from Ken’s former employer, and each enjoyed a comfortable six-figure income.

Ken initially reminded me of a Millionaire Next Door. His house was of a modest size and his car was a small hunk of Detroit steel. But I think success eventually went to his head.

Ken built an addition that doubled the size of his house, which had previously been no bigger than mine. The huge master bedroom had a hot tub in the middle of the room. The new family room opened onto a large deck and a custom designed pool. We had some insanely fun parties around that pool. Neighbors were always welcome.

Ken’s compact station wagon was traded for a beautiful full-size van that had undergone a custom conversion, while his wife’s daily drive was a Corvette. Ken was generous. Lending money to friends and family in need was pretty common, and not much was ever repaid. Ken’s wife had been previously married, and he spent thousands trying to help his wife’s daughter from her first marriage.

In 1994, at age 57, Ken sold his share of the business, and moved to his favorite city and frequent vacation spot, Las Vegas. I took time off work and drove their big moving truck to the new city. Ken and his spouse had a home built with a great view of the strip. They had the house professionally decorated, and installed a swimming pool that looked like it was right out of the pages of Better Homes & Gardens. They paid cash.

I needn’t tell HumbleDollar readers that retiring at age 57 often isn’t a good idea. Ken had invested the remaining business-sale proceeds in just one fund, Fidelity Magellan. This was a case of not knowing what you don’t know. Not only was his nest egg not diversified, but also Magellan’s glory days were coming to an end. Ken had also inherited a good chunk of a biotech company’s stock from his father.

Things were beginning to unravel. Ken’s attempt at starting a new business never struck lightning, like the staple business had. He also made some bad decisions, such as investing in speculative movie productions. He turned over the biotech stock to a stock broker, who then used it for some investment scheme that didn’t pan out. Ken and his wife decided their house wasn’t big enough, so they sold it at a loss and built a much larger home. Next came marital problems, and divorce took half of what was left. The second house was sold, again at a loss.

Ken liked younger women. His ex-wife was 17 years his junior, and the new women now entering his life were even younger. For a guy Ken’s age, these young ladies were an expensive habit. Soon, Ken was out of money, living solely on Social Security.

I often visited Ken and became concerned about his state of mind. Then something good finally happened. Ken had a wife before the one he’d just divorced. Ruthann was his high school sweetheart, and they’d married right after graduation. Ken’s little brother Guy had kept in contact with Ruthann, and put her and Ken in contact with one another.

Ruthann lived in Florida. She owned a mobile home and the lot it sat on. They visited each other a few times and things went well. Ken had given up drinking, along with younger women, and was truly a different man.

Ken soon packed up and moved to Florida. I first met Ruthann on the phone, when I called Ken on his birthday. I instantly realized that Ruthann had the same dynamic personality as Ken, but without any of Ken’s past vices. I would speak with Ken often and visit them every few years, and I’ve never seen a happier couple. Sadly, Ruthann died suddenly in 2018. Ken would tell everyone that the 10 years they spent reunited were the best of his life.

Ken died from prostate cancer last month at age 86. His wish was to be cremated, without any sort of memorial service. I traveled down to Florida with his brother Guy, who’s also a good friend of mine. Ken’s ex-wife Cathy and son Derek flew in from Las Vegas. The four of us, and a handful of Ken’s friends from the trailer park, met up a few times at the local coffee shop where Ken used to go every day. We shared stories about Ken, including my first ever encounter with the man.

Ken’s mobile home was overstuffed with things he or Ruthann had collected over the years, mostly things of little value. We managed to find family scrapbooks, and even his and Guy’s mother’s Bible, as well as photos of friends, including many of me and my first wife. Guy, Cathy, Derek and I each came away with some mementoes.

Ken didn’t even want an obituary published. Still, it just occurred to me that this is as close to one as it gets: Ken S. left this life on Dec. 4, 2023. Ken loved family, friends and life itself. Ken sold staples—lots of staples.

For 30 years, Dan Smith was a driver-salesman and local union representative, before building a successful income-tax practice in Toledo, Ohio. He retired in 2022. Dan has two beautiful daughters, two loving sons-in-law and seven grandchildren. He and Chris, the love of his life, have been together for two great decades and counting. Dan's previous articles were Taxing Our Brains and Beer to Taxes.

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Back to the Future

I WRAPPED UP MY first HumbleDollar article by declaring that I’m no investment expert. I still stand by that statement.

But I also maintain that this insight is a strength, not a weakness. Recognizing my limitations allows me to settle on an investment strategy that gives me a better shot of arriving at my retirement goal, with less likelihood of a detour along the way.

My wife Sharon and I hold most of our retirement savings at Vanguard Group. The bulk of our money is in traditional and Roth IRAs, along with a much smaller taxable account. We also have a growing stash of retirement money in our current employer’s 403(b) plan. Our approach to investing is fairly simple, but was once even simpler—and eventually will be again.

Past. Sharon and I started saving for retirement a little later than many folks. To make up for lost time, we’ve each steadily devoted a sizable chunk of our earnings to our employer-sponsored retirement plans, as well as to Roth IRAs. We began with no true investment plan. Instead, we chose funds haphazardly after a cursory glance at the offerings. We also bought some real estate, and I had an eye on buying more, to add some rental income to our plan. Eventually, though, we learned that indexing was the true route to wealth for us, and sharpened our focus in that direction.

Accordingly, we took action to reshape our hodgepodge portfolio by moving money from actively managed Roth IRAs to index funds at Vanguard. There, we invested in a simple three-fund mix consisting of total U.S. and total international stock market index funds, plus a bond index fund. Meanwhile, our employer’s 401(k) didn’t include a total market fund, but we achieved a reasonable level of diversification with the Fidelity Investments index funds on offer.

Shortly afterward, we learned about factor investing, which led us to flesh out our bare-bones portfolio with a tilt toward value and small-company stocks. We also added a real estate investment trust fund.

A few years later, our former employer was bought out by our present employer. Our jobs stayed the same, but a new signature appeared on our paychecks. Along with that new name came a new retirement plan, a 403(b), with new investment offerings. Most were low-cost Vanguard index funds, but the two international choices were both active funds with distastefully higher fees.

The plan, however, recognized the value of Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund (symbol: VTWAX), serving it up soon after the fund’s launch. We moved most of our 403(b) money into that fund, but still kept a couple of fingers in value and small stocks. We chose to contribute to the Roth version of the 403(b) soon after it became available.

Sharon and I intended to build a diversified mix of index funds, covering a number of different asset classes and trying to capture a little extra performance with judicious rebalancing. Our interest in investing was high, and we had plenty of energy to follow through on our investment plan.

Present. As often happens, life smiled at our naiveté, shaking up our settled plans. Sharon and I gradually acquired responsibility for the financial affairs of several family members, as well as a small nonprofit organization.

Our money management duties grew from tending to our own investments to overseeing more than 50 financial accounts for individuals, family trusts and the nonprofit, including handling banking and tax returns. Though none was individually complex, in aggregate the load was a lot to bear, and we needed some relief.

In summer 2020, we took a step toward simplifying our financial life by rolling our traditional 401(k)s at Fidelity, along with our Roth IRAs, to IRAs at Vanguard. These joined our Roth IRAs already at Vanguard. We shrank the number of logins required to track our accounts, though we didn’t make the investment management much easier.

Future. The real problem, however, isn’t overseeing our relatively simple investment plan. Rather, it’s the time and neurons required to handle our expanded list of chores, financial and otherwise.

We’re thinking about how to unwind this web of entanglements, which may eventually be too complex for our aging minds. Some tasks, such as caring for older relatives, are out of our control, but the normal course of life will eventually bring them to an end. Others, like work and church responsibilities, require a little planning for a painless extraction.

By contrast, our own expanded list of funds seems like an easy target. A return to a simpler fund allocation is just a few computer keystrokes away. But I’m turtle-slow to change course, and was stymied about how to begin. HumbleDollar’s editor supplied the obvious answer a few weeks ago, a suggestion consistent with other good advice for making any big money move. A five-year plan to shift back to a skinny mix of two or three funds seems like a good path to head down.

Where does that path lead? Back to where I started. I’ll once again remind myself that I’m a half-expert on a couple of topics, like physical therapy and gardening, but investing doesn't make the list. I’ll also once again embrace the attribute that attracted me to indexing in the first place—the ability to buy a piece of virtually every company worth owning, even though they're packaged with many that aren’t. But since I don’t know how to pick this year’s best deals, I purchase the whole store. This humble simplicity will, I suspect, serve us well.

Ed Marsh is a physical therapist who lives and works in a small community near Atlanta. He likes to spend time with his church, with his family and in his garden thinking about retirement. His favorite question to ask a young person is, "Are you saving for retirement?" Check out Ed's earlier articles.

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Stay Positive

WE ALL HAVE BAD DAYS. But for some folks, it seems every day is a bad one. No matter how good things seem to be, they’ll focus on the one bad thing. Think about the negative thoughts that you have:

Are they helpful?
Are they true?
Does the bad in your life outweigh the good?
Has negative thinking become a habit?
Do others really need to know about all the bad things in your life?
Why do others see the situation more positively and what enables them to think that way?
What could you do to think more positively?

These thoughts were prompted by the recent death of Charlie Munger. He and Warren Buffett were friends and partners for decades. The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig wrote that Munger “possessed what philosophers call epistemic humility: a profound sense of how little anyone can know and how important it is to open and change your mind.”

In a 2019 interview with CNBCs Becky Quick, when asked about the secret to a long and happy life, Munger answered: “It’s so simple…. You don’t have a lot of envy. You don’t have a lot of resentment. You don’t overspend your income. You stay cheerful in spite of your troubles. You deal with reliable people and you do what you’re supposed to do. And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better.”

In the interview, he advocated “staying cheerful… because it’s a wise thing to do. Is that so hard? And can you be cheerful when you’re absolutely mired in deep hatred and resentment? Of course, you can’t. So why would you take it on?”

Nevertheless, many folks do take on hatred and resentment. Nothing pleases them more than bringing others down to their level. Misery, it seems, loves company.

Negative people are known for their lack of humor and morose mentality. Their mantra is that nothing is so bad that it can’t get worse. Cheerfulness is not in their mindset. At the extreme, they have an unrivaled capacity to extract unhappiness from any situation, even a cheerful one.

I’ll grant you that it’s difficult to remain cheerful in light of sickness and ongoing serious health problems. I’m no stranger to these, so all naysayers take note. Only a fool is happy all the time. That doesn’t mean we should inflict our problems and negativity on others.

We’ve all had terrible things happen to us. Is it necessary to reveal the grim details of our bad experiences to the world? Are we making a point or are we just trying to garner sympathy?

As Munger noted in his CNBC interview, people “come into this world… pre-made.” Unfortunately, you’ll seldom—and perhaps never—encounter a negative person who you can convert from bitter and mean-spirited to benevolent and generous. The upshot: We would all do well to avoid negative people.

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Our Estate Plan B

WHEN WE UPDATED our wills last year, my wife and I attempted to cover every imaginable scenario, including the future state of our children’s marriages, grandchildren, step-grandchildren and the like. Still, we and our lawyer missed one outlier scenario: What if our whole family was wiped out simultaneously? Think airplane or car crash.

This risk crossed my mind when our small family took a flight together for a recent vacation. Our core family is just six people: us and our two children, plus one child’s spouse and the other’s significant other. Because our tight-knit family spends plenty of time together, a catastrophic event could impact all of us.    

Since we’d all be gone, you might ask, “Why even worry about your estate?” One concern is our multitude of distant relatives who could potentially raise a fuss. We’re not close to our cousins and feel no obligation to leave them a windfall. With no heirs, our estate would become “intestate,” with state law deciding its distribution—which is what happens with the two-thirds of the population who don’t have a will.

We’d prefer that our estate help people of our choosing, rather than going to our cousins’ or the state’s coffers. But who? This provides the same vexing philanthropic challenge as many billionaires have, but on a far smaller scale.

Our charitable giving has primarily been to local community organizations which may not be equipped to make good use of a large donation in one tranche. National charities can handle any size bequest, but some large charities seem burdened by administrative bloat. The everything-must-go scenario demanded further research.

Ultimately, we chose four charities: a trusted community organization from our previous Maryland residence that we’ve supported for decades, a new-to-us community foundation here in New Hampshire, a national forest foundation aligned with our hiking interests, and our college alma mater.

This diversification ensures we’d have a positive impact across multiple causes. Limiting to four charities also helps the third-party executor keep the time involved—and hence the cost—in check. At least we now have a plan, even if we feel a bit of remorse about all the worthy charities we passed over.

Both the New Hampshire foundation and our college make it easy to establish endowed funds. These endowed funds then enable grants in perpetuity, and we directed these grants toward regions, community needs and scholarship areas of personal interest. Likewise, we targeted the forestry bequest toward conservation and environmental support for any of our Virginia to New Hampshire favorites. That said, we were careful not to over-prescribe, because we know our causes’ needs may change.

Our law firm quickly updated our wills by adding these charities as contingent beneficiaries, should we no longer have any heirs. Our lawyer indicated most wills don’t include this extra contingency coverage, but that multi-layered contingencies are more common with trusts. Still, such contingencies might be a good idea for readers with a small circle of beneficiaries, as well as shorter lists of possible executors or trustees. Adding the contingency clause would have been cost-free if we’d requested it when we drew up our wills, rather than adding the wording later.

In all this, choosing the charities was the tough part. Still, there was a silver lining: We’ve identified a new community charity for future giving, including for qualified charitable distributions and charitable gift annuity purchases once we’re in our 70s.

John Yeigh is an author, coach and youth sports advocate. His book “Win the Youth Sports Game” was published in 2021. John retired in 2017 from the oil industry, where he negotiated financial details for multi-billion-dollar international projects. Check out his earlier articles.

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Seeking Answers

I LEARNED OF MY brother’s death by Googling his name. I always wondered whether his family would let me know if he was ill or had died. After Google led me to his obituary, I had my answer.

My brother and I were co-executors and co-beneficiaries of my mother’s estate. From the start, we couldn’t agree on how to settle her affairs. I wanted to sell everything and divide by two, but he wanted to hold off selling my mother’s house.

Why? My mother passed away in 2007, when home prices were down sharply, and my brother thought we should wait for the real estate market to recover. But there was another reason my brother didn’t want to sell: He, his wife and one of his adult sons were living in the place.

Thus began a difficult estate settlement. In 2021, the house was finally sold and the proceeds divided, but we still hadn’t finished settling the estate when my brother died the following year.

The disagreement over the estate caused a rift between my brother and me. In the years before his death, the only information I received came from his lawyer and the mortgage company. Not being notified of my brother’s deteriorating health or his death didn’t surprise me, but it did bother me.

I believe in divine intervention. I’ve recently felt spurred to seek out information about how my brother died. My parents both had heart conditions. I assumed my brother and I would suffer the same fate, but I wanted to know for sure.

I guessed the location where my brother likely died, and requested a death certificate from two local townships. I lucked out, and one of the towns sent along his death certificate. It didn’t show a heart condition as my brother’s cause of death. Still, I wanted to know more.

My brother had two sons, my nephews. One carried a gun. The other carried a Bible. I decided to try and find the one who carried a Bible. I Googled my Bible-carrying nephew and figured I’d show up at his door. My wife, who has a ton more social etiquette than I do, suggested I write to him and wait for a reply. I rejected that approach because, if I never got a reply, I wouldn’t know any more than I already did.

I identified a possible address using Google, and then used MapQuest to get directions. I printed out the directions, since I don’t have a GPS in my car, and began the two-plus hour drive to where my nephew might be.

I found the place. My nephew’s neighbor stopped me and asked what I wanted. I told him who I was looking for, and he pointed me to my nephew’s house. I knocked on the door, not knowing what to expect. I heard a dog barking but no one answered the door. I didn’t want to give up easily, so I tried two more times.

Finally, from the other side of the door, I heard, “Oh my God, Uncle Dave.” My nephew opened the door, gave me a big hug and invited me in.

My 56-year-old nephew might be best described as a hippy. His super-straight ponytail reaches his belt. He has a wife, three children and three grandkids. He’s been working for the same company for 20 years, laying down flooring, so he’s doing well considering he dropped out of high school. Drugs and a negative attitude contributed to his decision to quit school.  After high school, he married, accepted Jesus into his life and completed his GED.

Over lunch, he described his problem with attention deficit disorder, which made school difficult for him. We discussed cars, science and religion. He demonstrated a vast knowledge of different subjects, but nothing of great depth.

When I was growing up, my parents emphasized the value of education. But while I earned a college degree, my parents never did, and nor did my brother. Would a college education have benefited my nephew? I doubt it. Further education wouldn’t have helped him with his job of laying down floors, but it likely would have left him with debt.

We can all use our learning time and our dollars to understand all kinds of subjects. That’s fine once we’re retired. But if we still need to earn a living, focusing our learning in a way that’ll benefit us financially will lead to a more comfortable lifestyle.

My brother and his son both chose non-traditional paths to acquiring knowledge. Unfortunately, that path didn’t lead them to a wealthy life. Yes, it could result in great cocktail party conversations. But such conversations don’t pay the bills.

David Gartland was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and has lived in central New Jersey since 1987. He earned a bachelor’s degree in math from the State University of New York at Cortland and holds various professional insurance designations. Dave’s property and casualty insurance career with different companies lasted 42 years. He’s been married 36 years, and has a son with special needs. Dave has identified three areas of interest that he focuses on to enjoy retirement: exploring, learning and accomplishing. Pursuing any one of these leads to contentment. Check out Dave's earlier articles.

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