Jonathan Clements's Blog, page 136

Anti-Social Behavior

A QUARTER OF ALL reported losses from fraud in 2021 originated on social media, according to the Federal Trade Commission, and those losses cost about $770 million.

Yes, social media is a popular way to keep in touch with family and friends, receive news and get information. According to Pew Research, 73% of people ages 50 to 64 used social media in 2021, as did 45% of those ages 65 and over. But using social media requires vigilance. Many of us share personal details of our lives there, which fraudsters can then take advantage of.

Fraudsters can also use social media to send us spam and malicious software or access our other linked accounts, such as email, to impersonate us in attempts to scam relatives and friends. Want to reduce your chances of getting scammed? Here are 10 ways to fight the fraudsters lurking on social media.

1. Use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication. The first line of defense protecting any account is a strong password. Attackers use clues from your social media posts to guess at your password, so when creating passwords avoid using nicknames, pets’ names or birth dates.

Also avoid using the same password for different accounts. Consider using a password manager to keep from having to remember so many passwords.

Although it can sometimes be inconvenient, multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security to social media and other accounts. Multi-factor authentication means you need something besides your password to access your account. For example, you can set up Facebook to send a login code or confirmation text to your phone when you or someone else tries to access your account from an unrecognized browser or device.

2. Minimize linked accounts. Linking your accounts can be handy, but if attackers break into one account, they can potentially access other accounts linked to it. Consider linking accounts only when the need arises and then deleting the link afterward.

3. Keep personal information to a minimum. Limit the information you store in your profile. If attackers access your account, you don’t want them getting your date of birth, home address, phone number, email address or other personal details from your profile.

4. Choose your privacy settings carefully. Each platform has different policies regarding what information is shared with whom. Most platforms allow you to control who can see your public profile, your posts, your location and when you were last active on the platform. Review each website or app’s privacy policy or search using terms such as “Facebook privacy settings” to find out what you have control over.

When you create a new account, the privacy settings are set to defaults chosen by the firm. You may not want this. Review and fine-tune your settings before making your first post. Otherwise, you may send vacation shots intended only for friends but inadvertently broadcast them to the world. Remember that what you post can be saved and shared by others without your consent.

In 2009, the incoming head of the British intelligence service MI6 had his family’s information exposed by his wife’s Facebook posts. This included where they lived and worked, details about their children, names of their friends and where they went on vacation. She had set virtually no privacy protections, so her posts were visible to 200 million users around the globe who chose to use the site’s open-access London network.

It’s sobering to think that we often have no control over what the platform itself does with our data. In 2015, Facebook shared the private data of up to 87 million users with British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica without users’ knowledge or consent. Facebook parent, Meta, agreed to pay $725 million last December to settle a class action lawsuit for invasion of privacy over the incident, but didn’t admit to any wrongdoing.

5. Don’t click on links from strangers. Phishing—sending misleading messages in the hopes of gaining confidential information or spreading malicious software—is at least as big a threat on social media as it is in email. An attacker can deliver a message with a link to a malicious web page, one that closely resembles a social media platform’s login page, to steal users’ login credentials. Or the attacker can distribute a false but enticing news story that infects the user’s device with malware when a user clicks on it.

Attackers can also create fake profiles that mimic famous brands. The attacker uses these profiles to trick users into entering personal information in exchange for a coupon or prize.

One of the newest phishing attacks is consent phishing, in which the attacker tricks a user into allowing a malicious app to have access to the user’s account. Consent phishing is effective because the app is registered to a familiar provider, such as Microsoft, and the request for access bears the provider’s name and logo. Consent phishing can bypass any multi-factor authentication you may have set up on the account.

6. Watch what you post. Although many people like to post details of their lives on social media, these details can be valuable to criminals and scammers. Photos of our home can show burglars how to get in. Posts about upcoming trips can tip off burglars to our location and when we’ll be away. Information about class reunions and schools attended can enable scammers to impersonate our former classmates or school officials.

7. Don’t send a stranger money. Romance scams are widespread on social media, especially around Valentine’s Day. Scammers create fake profiles to lure people into online relationships, and then ask for money. Many older adults are isolated, lonely and trusting, making them prime targets for romance scams. In one heartbreaking case, a 70-year-old widow in Prescott Valley, Arizona, lost nearly $800,000 and was left destitute by a social media scammer, who was later arrested.

With investment scams, the thief convinces victims to invest in cryptocurrency platforms that the scammer controls. The scammer eventually takes all the money and disappears.

With shopping scams, scammers create fake online stores advertising popular products at bargain prices, and then advertise these stores on social media. When unsuspecting users order products from the stores, their financial information is stolen and the products never arrive. Investment and shopping scams are the social media scams with the most dollars lost and the most reported incidents, respectively.

8. Be careful accepting friend or connection requests. Accepting friend requests from strangers or even fake accounts increase the risk of a scam or data breach. Your new “friend” could try to scam you using information gathered from your profile and posts.

Any security vulnerabilities our social media friends have could also affect us. In the Cambridge Analytica incident mentioned earlier, a university researcher created a Facebook personality quiz that secretly gathered profile information not only from the 270,000 users who took the quiz, but also from all of the quiz-takers’ 87 million Facebook friends.

9. Close accounts you aren’t using. Maybe you created an Instagram account once because your friend or grandchild suggested it, and you never used it. Now it’s been a year or more, and you have no idea what’s been happening with the account.

Instagram and other platforms claim to remove unused accounts after varying intervals of inactivity, but it’s best to delete accounts you don’t need. You can create another account if you need to use the platform again.

10. Beware of scams. Perhaps the best defense is to remember that there are risks to using social media. Social media is about forging connections and forming groups, so it’s natural to be more trusting of people similar to us.

People are more than twice as likely to engage with scammers on social media than by email or phone, and four times more likely to lose money, according to research by the Stanford Center for Longevity. We can protect ourselves by not engaging with strangers on social media and exercising due diligence before clicking or sharing.

Max Chi retired in 2022 after a career as an IT specialist. He also has a background in physical science and digital marketing, and a strong interest in personal finance. Max enjoys traveling, sightseeing and freelancing. He and his wife live in Texas. Max's previous article was Be Careful Out There.

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Poor Man’s Paradise

SUMMERTIME HOLDS great memories for me. I’m reminded of my upbringing in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. We were average folks living in a modest house. But our home was just outside a private gated community called Sea Gate, at the westernmost point of the island. It was formerly called Norton’s Point.

There, you could find mansions from the Gilded Age, some designed by the noted architect Stanford White. It was also home to the famous opera singer Beverly Sills. When I visited a school friend’s home in the community, it was the first time I saw an actual real-life maid in a uniform—and not just the ones I’d seen in movies.

At every opportunity, weather permitting, Mom took me to the beach. I loved people watching and, as a quiet little girl, I was an unnoticed spectator. The ocean was restful, too. Somehow, being near water is sort of magical. It has a calming, peaceful, soothing effect on the senses, and we were mesmerized by the sound of the ocean and by the ebb and flow of the waves, the sea breezes and the smell of salt air.

Some days, Mom’s errands brought us near the boardwalk. The big attraction for me was the B&B Carousell. I always chose the horse who, I imagined, looked like a noble warrior horse—eyes flaring, head held high, the fearless look of a conqueror. I had a far-ranging imagination. Every time the carousel completed a round, Mom was there, waving to me.

We didn’t often go to the amusements area on the other side of the Island. The iconic Parachute Jump ride terrified me. Ditto the famous Cyclone rollercoaster ride. The Wonder Wheel looked a little safer and more my speed, but I never liked heights. I was too young to go on most of the rides. A block from the boardwalk, the carnival barkers bombastically urged passersby to witness amazing, never-before-imagined sights—sword swallowers, tattooed ladies and human oddities, to name a few, all promoted by colorful posters, garish but fascinating.

Sometimes, we would stop at the Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand. When you bit into those hot dogs, there was a satisfying crunch and snap. But to this day, I still think the frozen custard ice cream cone is the best treat ever.

My favorite fun place was Steeplechase Park. A large enclosed amusement park, you could have all-day entertainment by buying a ticket for 70 cents, which entitled you to nine rides. There were also the monkeyshines of the clowns, with a small theater area where you could sit and watch their antics. But best of all was the horse race ride where people rode on a mechanical horse side by side, two by two, pulled by cables along a 1,000-foot track, simulating a horse race.

Later, we moved to a community called Sheepshead Bay, east of Coney Island. It was quieter and more subdued. The neighborhood had the charm of a fishing village—at least back then. There were lots of fishing boats, party boats, sail boats and a unique enclosed bay area with a footbridge that spanned the bay to the opposite side. People would go there to fish, cross to the other side or just idly watch the daily activity. And for $2 you could take a roundtrip boat ride to Breezy Point, a private community in Queens, known as the Irish Riviera, to enjoy the summer sea breezes and beautiful beaches.

The Bay was an idyllic setting. In the summer, it would come alive with vendors and artists who set up around the perimeter. The sun always seemed to be shining in Sheepshead Bay. The shops and subway station were more convenient, and somehow the winters didn’t seem quite as desolate because of the greater population of year-round residents. But I missed the boardwalk and, of course, the carousel.

We moved from Brooklyn in 1963. America’s largest suspension bridge, the Verrazzano-Narrows, was just nearing completion. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the Coney Island area and parks began a great decline. Sheepshead Bay fared a lot better, but most of the modest houses were torn down to make way for McMansions and newer homes. It’s now overcrowded but still considered one of the nicer places to live in New York City.

I’ve never been to Paris or Prague, Timbuktu or Tokyo, but I consider having lived in Brooklyn gave me broad exposure to various cultures, people of diverse backgrounds, and a good understanding of human nature and all of its elements. And I lived there during the best of times.

Marjorie Kondrack loves music, dancing and the arts, and is a former amateur ice dancer accredited by the United States Figure Skating Association. In retirement, she worked for eight years as a tax preparer for the IRS’s VITA and TCE programs. Check out Marjorie's earlier articles.

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No Interest

THE HOUSE I GREW UP in was built in 1950 by my father, with some assistance from his best friend Joe, who was a master homebuilder by profession. After his work day as an accountant for a local hardware and lumber chain, my dad would head over to the job site and labor into the night.

My mom also provided some sweat equity, painting and even swinging a hammer at times. I was born in 1962, so I wasn’t a witness to our home’s construction, but I did reap the benefits of growing up in a well-built house in Moorestown, New Jersey, a comfortable suburban community not far from Philadelphia.

At some point as a young man, I became aware that our house had never been encumbered by a mortgage and, having a naturally strong aversion to debt, I internalized that strategy as something to emulate. Alas, I didn’t inherit or acquire my father’s construction skills, so building a home with my own hands wouldn’t be an option.

After graduating from Virginia Tech, I rented an apartment in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for seven years. As a young, single engineer, I didn’t think too much about buying a house. That changed in 1992, when I married my lovely wife, Lisa. After living in a rented townhome for several months, we got the bug to purchase our own place. I disliked the idea of taking on a mortgage, but we couldn’t afford to pay cash even for the modest starter homes that we were looking at.

Fortunately, my dad was willing to lend us some money. I was able to bypass the banks by putting $66,000 down on a $98,000 split-level house, with my dad lending us the rest at an 8.5% interest rate. Because I hated being in debt even to my father, I ended up paying off the loan in a little over two years.

Our daughter Lauren was born in 1994 and our son Dan in 1997. Our little split-level was starting to get cramped and, by the start of 2000, we began thinking seriously about moving. Eventually, we found a lot in a nearby new development, and signed a contract to build a house.

We kept the cost for the new house at under $200,000. That was roughly the amount of cash we would have after selling our old house. The tricky part was that we were to settle on the new house a week before the sale of our old home was scheduled to close. Still, we had a great realtor, and she worked a deal whereby the builder lent us the necessary funds through a seven-day bridge loan. So, in November 2000, we owned our beautiful new two-story colonial home outright—but with very little cash left on hand, save for a modest emergency fund.

How did this all work out financially? One of the reasons I wanted to avoid a mortgage was that I didn’t like the idea of making interest payments to the bank. With interest rates in the 8% range at the time of our home purchase, the “return on investment” from this avoided expense seemed like a good deal, even after accounting for the mortgage-interest tax deduction.

Eventually, interest rates began a steady decline. Mortgages became increasingly affordable during the first two decades of this century, and many homeowners refinanced—often more than once—to take advantage of the lower rates. Would we have been better off financially if I’d piled money into my 401(k) rather than saving aggressively outside of retirement accounts so we could purchase the house for cash?

Probably. But I’ve never done the analysis, nor do I have much interest in doing so. The psychological benefit of not having a mortgage has been substantial. I made what I thought was the best decision based on conditions in play at the time of our home purchase, and those conditions happened to shift in the years that followed.

This, I believe, is yet another example of why we need to approach our financial lives with humility. Decisions that appear to be no-brainers at the time can seem far less clear-cut when we evaluate them years later.

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.

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Taught by Turmoil

MARK ZUCKERBERG and Elon Musk have been trading barbs in recent months, going as far as discussing a “cage match”—a literal fight.

This has followed a volatile few years for their respective companies. In October of last year, Musk took over Twitter and immediately started making changes. He fired 80% of its staff, causing an uptick in technical issues, and has made other spur-of-the-moment changes to the service. This has scared away advertisers, prompting a 50% drop in revenue. Not helping matters, Musk’s public statements have become increasingly unusual.

Zuckerberg’s company, meanwhile, has suffered its own series of mishaps. Trouble began 18 months ago when The Wall Street Journal ran a series of investigative reports dubbed “The Facebook Files.” Working with a whistleblower, the Journal published a number of damaging accusations.

Around the same time, the company announced a strategic shift, investing in a new concept called the metaverse. Signaling its commitment, Facebook even changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms. The new strategy was poorly communicated, though, and initial metaverse demonstrations were met with mockery. Adding to these troubles, in 2021, Apple made a change to its iOS software that hurt online advertisers, including Meta. In combination, these events caused Meta’s stock to fall 75% from its peak.

What can investors learn from all this? I see six lessons:

1. Public perception. In recent years, Zuckerberg’s reputation has made a significant roundtrip. As recently as 2017, serious news outlets were speculating that he might make a run for the White House. But just a few years later, the tide shifted. Opinion pieces began to refer to Zuckerberg as “public enemy No. 1,” and that perception seemed to extend to his company as well, helping to drag down its stock. More recently, however, much of that negativity seems to have faded. Meta’s ad business has been recovering, as has its stock, and public perception has improved.

Investor and author Howard Marks once wrote that, “In the real world, things generally fluctuate between ‘pretty good’ and ‘not so hot.’ But in the world of investing, perception often swings from ‘flawless’ to ‘hopeless’.” Meta provides a perfect illustration of this.

The lesson for investors: When making decisions, it’s important to maintain an even keel in the face of extreme points of view. This applies not only to individual stocks, but also to opinions on the state of the overall market and of the economy. Those making the most dramatic pronouncements often get the most attention, but it’s usually those offering more moderate commentary who end up being more accurate.

2. Innovator’s dilemma. Size can work to a company’s advantage. But at a certain point, it can become a disadvantage. I’ve discussed before the concept of the innovator's dilemma—how successful companies can become vulnerable to upstart competitors if they focus too inwardly. That’s what caused BlackBerry to fail, for example. But here’s the challenge: It’s difficult to know when or if that phenomenon might occur.

In addition, companies often go through phases. Microsoft, for example, went through a period of malaise between 2000 and 2013. Its stock was essentially flat throughout that period. Many counted it out, seeing its technology as outdated. But since then, under a new CEO, the company has staged a comeback, with its stock up almost 10-fold.

Bottom line: The innovator’s dilemma explains a lot of what happens in business, but it can only explain it in hindsight. It can’t tell investors when or if a company might hit a downtrend or an upswing.

3. Surprises. A few weeks ago, Meta released an app called Threads. It bears a strong resemblance to Twitter and is intended as a direct competitor. This has helped boost Meta’s reputation and its share price. The lesson: In the absence of inside information—which is illegal—it’s impossible to know what a company has up its sleeve.

Right now, in fact, Twitter appears to be in disarray while Meta appears more organized. But just as Meta had Threads up its sleeve, investors don't know what Twitter has in development, and how that might affect its value.

4. Turning points. There’s the expression that it's darkest before dawn, and there’s a lot of truth to that notion. When everything looks bleak and seems to be going wrong all at once, that’s when corporate leaders really roll up their sleeves. That’s when the board tends to step in, when executives are replaced, or when product lines are shut down or sold off. And that helps to pull the company—and its stock price—out of a slump.

But here’s the challenge: Turnaround efforts don’t always work, and that's the hard part for investors. Yes, it’s often darkest before dawn, but that’s another thing that’s only possible to see in hindsight.

5. Turning slowly. In 2009, during the depths of the bear market, longtime investment leader Jeremy Grantham offered a variation on this theme. He noted that “the market does not turn when it sees light at the end of the tunnel.” Instead, it turns when things are still dark, but “just a subtle shade less” dark than the day before.

Meta has demonstrated that phenomenon this year. First Zuckerberg stopped emphasizing the metaverse in public comments. Then he stated that 2023 would be “a year of efficiency”—that the company would be reducing headcount and other costs. Next came improved earnings numbers. And then came the Threads release. The lesson: Because change is often incremental, it's hard as an investor to take advantage of it. In other words, no one makes a formal announcement when a stock is about to begin a monthslong rally.

6. Impossible math. When an investment goes into free fall, some investors justify unloading it, even when it’s down, by pointing to the math. After a 50% drop, for example, a 100% gain is required to get back to even. This implies that it might take an extraordinarily long time for an investment to recover, and that it’s therefore not worth hanging on and waiting.

But as we’ve seen with Meta's stock this year, even triple-digit gains can happen quite quickly. Meta’s share price is still below its prior peak, but it’s made progress more quickly than investors might have guessed. (Full disclosure: I’m a longtime shareholder of the company.)

The bottom line: Stock prices are rarely predictable and rarely move in a straight line. Instead, they’re subject to the phenomena described above, and many more. That’s why I believe it’s a better bet—for most investors most of the time—to stick with index funds.

Adam M. Grossman is the founder of Mayport, a fixed-fee wealth management firm. Sign up for Adam's Daily Ideas email, follow him on Twitter @AdamMGrossman and check out his earlier articles.

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Courage Required

EVEN AFTER BEAR markets in 2020 and 2022, investors’ appetite for stocks remains as robust as ever. But what if stocks had not just a rough year or two, but a dismal stretch that lasted more than a decade? Below is an excerpt from the second edition of my book The Four Pillars of Investing , which was published earlier this month.

In August 1979, BusinessWeek ran a cover story with the headline “The Death of Equities,” and few had trouble believing it. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had toyed with the 1,000 level in January 1973, was now trading at 875 six-and-a-half years later. Worse, inflation was running at almost 9%. A dollar invested in the stock market in 1973 purchased just 71 cents of consumer goods, even allowing for reinvested dividends.

According to the article, “The masses long ago switched from stocks to investments having higher yields and more protection from inflation. Now the pension funds—the market’s last hope—have won permission to quit stocks and bonds for real estate, futures, gold, and even diamonds. The death of equities looks like an almost permanent condition—reversible someday, but not soon.”

Contrast today’s universal acceptance of stock investing with the sentiment described in the BusinessWeek article, when diamonds, gold and real estate were all the rage. The price of the yellow metal had risen from $35 an ounce in 1968 to more than $500 in 1979 and would peak at more than $800 the following year, equal to roughly $3,000 in today’s dollars. Still, there are similarities between the 1970s and today. Now the wise and lucky own houses in cities with desirable real estate. Back then, those who had purchased their houses for a song in the 1950s and 1960s were by 1980 sitting on real capital wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Stocks and bonds? “Paper assets,” sneered the conventional wisdom.

The article continued: “At least 7 million shareholders have defected from the stock market since 1970, leaving equities more than ever the province of giant institutional investors. And now the institutions have been given the go-ahead to shift more of their money from stocks—and bonds—into other investments. If the institutions, who control the bulk of the nation’s wealth, now withdraw billions from both the stock and bond markets, the implications for the U.S. economy could not be worse. Says Robert S. Salomon Jr., a general partner in Salomon Brothers: ‘We are running the risk of immobilizing a substantial portion of the world’s wealth in someone’s stamp collection.’”

In the late 1960s, more than 30% of households owned stock. But by the 1970s and early 1980s, that number was only 15%.

Next, the article attacked the very idea that stocks might themselves be a wise investment: “Further, this ‘death of equity’ can no longer be seen as something a stock market rally—however strong—will check. It has persisted for more than 10 years through market rallies, business cycles, recession, recoveries, and booms. The problem is not merely that there are 7 million fewer shareholders than there were in 1970. Younger investors, in particular, are avoiding stocks. Between 1970 and 1975, the number of investors declined in every age group but one: individuals 65 and older. While the number of investors under 65 dropped by about 25%, the number of investors over 65 jumped by more than 30%. Only the elderly who have not understood the changes in the nation’s financial markets, or who are unable to adjust to them, are sticking with stocks.”

Did the older people stick with stocks in 1979 because they were out of step, inattentive or senile? Hardly—they were the only ones who still remembered how to value stocks by traditional criteria, which told them that stocks were cheap, cheap, cheap. They were the only investors with experience enough to know that severe bear markets are usually followed by powerful bull markets. A few, like my father, even remembered the depths of 1932, when our very capitalist system seemed threatened and some stocks yielded steady 10% dividends.

The BusinessWeek article ended by adding insult to injury: "Today, the old attitude of buying solid stocks as a cornerstone for one’s life savings and retirement has simply disappeared. Says a young U.S. executive: 'Have you been to an American stockholders’ meeting lately? They’re all old fogies. The stock market is just not where the action’s at.'"

The BusinessWeek article shows just how markets can go to extremes—a valuable lesson in and of itself—as well as a demonstration of several more salient points. First, it is human nature to be unduly influenced by the last 10 or even 20 years’ returns. It was just as hard to imagine that U.S. stocks were a good investment in 1979 as it is to imagine that they might not be as good now.

This is doubly true for bonds. Before the bond market carnage of 2022, investors had gotten used to the nearly relentless four-decades-long fall in rates and thought of bond prices as a one-way bet. They forgot that the four decades between 1941 and 1980 saw, in economist John Maynard Keynes’s famous phrase, “the euthanasia of the rentier.” (Rentier is an archaic term for bondholder.)

Second, when recent returns for a given asset class have been very high or very low, put your faith in the longest data series you can find—not just the most recent data. For example, if the BusinessWeek article had explored the historical record, it would have found that between 1900 and 1979, stocks had returned an inflation-adjusted 6%.

In addition, make a habit of estimating expected future returns. At the time that the article was written, stocks were yielding more than 5% and earnings were continuing to grow at an inflation-adjusted rate of 2% per year. Anyone able to add could have calculated a 7% expected real return from these two numbers. Between the article’s publication and the end of 2022, the S&P 500 actually returned 8% after inflation, the additional 1% coming from the increase of valuations typical of recoveries from bear markets.

While it’s easy to imagine buying at the bottom, when the time comes you will be faced with three formidable roadblocks. First, there’s human empathy, which, at least financially, is one expensive emotion, since channeling the fear and greed of others often comes dear. The corollary to human empathy is our evolutionarily derived tendency to imitate those around us, particularly if they all seem to be getting rich with tech stocks and cryptocurrency.

My own unscientific sampling of friends and colleagues suggests that the most empathetic tend to be the worst investors. Empathy is an extraordinarily difficult quality to self-assess, and it might be worthwhile to ask your most intimate and trusted family and friends where you fit on its scale. To use a Yiddish word, the more of a mensch you are, the more likely you are to lose your critical faculties during a bubble and to lose your discipline during a bear market.

Second, there’s the “rat hole problem.” It’s impossible to know where the “bottom” really is until it’s far in the rearview mirror. Let’s say that your bear market strategy is to purchase more stocks every time the S&P 500 falls by 20%. The S&P closed at 1,565 on Oct. 9, 2007, so you would have purchased stocks at 1,253, again at 1,002, and a third time at 802 (1,002 × 0.8).

Would you really have had the moxie to make that last purchase, having suffered severe losses on your first two? The S&P fell even further after that last purchase, finally bottoming on March 9, 2009, at 677.

Performing the same exercise with the Dow Jones Industrial Average from the market peak in September 1929 at 378 yielded no fewer than nine successive purchases, just barely missing a tenth one on the July 9, 1932, low of 42.

In 1931, Benjamin Roth, a small town attorney, recorded in his diary that while it was easy to see that stocks were cheap, “The difficulty is that no one has the cash to buy.” Or as Benjamin Graham said, “Those with the enterprise haven’t the money, and those with the money haven’t the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap.”

Third, stocks don’t get cheap in a vacuum. Alarming narratives always accompany dramatic price declines. In both the 1930s and in 2008–09, the entire economy seized up and appeared to be plunging off a cliff. After Senator Richard Burr was briefed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke about the parlous state of the banking system, he told his wife to withdraw as much cash as possible from their bank.

During the 1970s, Americans saw their savings corroded on almost a daily basis by inflation. The 1979 BusinessWeek article described how only seemingly addled old folks owned stocks, and bonds were widely deemed to be “certificates of confiscation.” In March 2020, it was easy to imagine a world economy devastated by a lethal pandemic for which a vaccine seemed somewhere between distant and impossible.

Do not underestimate the courage it takes to hold stocks during the worst of times, let alone to purchase more. Holding and buying assets that everyone else is running from takes more fortitude than many investors can manage.

It helps to realize that not only are humans the apes that imitate, but we are also the apes that tell stories. Humans understand the world, first and foremost, through narratives, not data and facts. Narratives often evolve into a societal contagion that can prove expensive to the unwary investor.

As the BusinessWeek article and subsequent history demonstrated, cheap stocks excite only the dispassionate, the analytical and the long-lived. If you can manage two of those three, you should be well rewarded. Keep these three points in mind:

The modern capitalist system, which relies on elastic credit from both private and government banks, is fundamentally unstable. Because of this, the typical investor will live through at least a few bubbles and a few panics.
Markets don’t become too expensive or too cheap without good reason. Just as market manias are based on euphoric narratives, pessimistic stories suffuse market bottoms. Ignore both kinds of narratives.
Adhere to the math of investing, and manage your emotions with a goodly pile of safe assets. To make it through the market bottoms—the main hazards on the “highway of riches,” the road that conveys wealth from your present self to your future self—you’ll need patience, cash and courage, and in that order. Safe assets can be thought of as a concentrate of courage. Despite their low yield, in the long run the fortitude they supply make them arguably the highest-returning assets in your portfolio.

Bill Bernstein is a recovering neurologist,  author   and co-founder of Efficient Frontier Advisors. He’s contributed to peer-reviewed finance journals and has written for national publications, including Money magazine and The Wall Street Journal. Bill has produced several finance books and also four volumes of history, the latest of which is  The Delusions of Crowds . The new edition of The Four Pillars of Investing includes a foreword by Jonathan Clements, HumbleDollar’s editor. Bill’s life's goal is to convey a suitcase full of books and a laptop to Provence for six months—and call it “work.” His previous article for HumbleDollar was  When Cash Is King .

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A Pretty Penny?

MY FATHER, WHO DIED in 2007, collected coins in a haphazard fashion through the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. I believe he did this in the hope they’d appreciate significantly in value. In other words, he did it as an investment, not as a coin collector pursuing a hobby.

I’ve now been assigned the family task of “seeing what we can get” for Dad’s coins. As an investor in the stock market, I’m curious: Did my father’s efforts pay off—or would he have been better off putting the money into stocks?

My own bias is to invest in the stock market because it’s liquid and has historically provided handsome growth, while hard assets like coins and other collectibles aren’t as liquid. Because of this belief, I’ve not done any collectible investing. But maybe collectibles do provide decent returns if you hold them for long enough. Now, I had the chance to do a real-world test.

Here's a snapshot of Dad’s collection:

There are 321 coins, mostly U.S. but some foreign.
Dates vary from 2000 to as early as 1843.
The condition of the coins varies greatly. As you’d expect, older coins are typically in worse condition.

My plan was to bring the collection to dealers to get quotes. But first, to be sure I’d get something like fair value, I created a spreadsheet listing all the coins and my estimate of their value. I hoped, of course, to find that rare 1955 doubled die penny worth north of $10,000. But, alas, there was no super coin in the set. My spreadsheet showed the collection was worth about $5,000 at retail. What this means wholesale I’ll find out as I shop the set among dealers.

Some interesting facts about the collection:

The most valuable coin is a 1914 half-dollar.
The six most valuable coins make up almost half the value of the 321 coins.
Two of those six coins are gold Quarter Eagles originally valued at $2.50, but which are now worth much more solely because of their gold content. The coin’s value equals the value of the gold in the coin. The coin itself adds little or no value. Those, unfortunately, are the only two gold coins in the collection.

Did my dad do better than the stock market with these coin purchases? To test this question, I made some assumptions:

Dad spent about $500 to buy the 321 coins. I have some receipts and those give me some idea of what he paid.
I’ll use 1985 as the date he purchased all the coins, a year that falls roughly in the middle of the period when he was acquiring coins.
I’ll use a 7% average annual return for the stock market. At that rate, stocks would double in value every 10 years.
I’ll be generous with the value of the coins today and call it $5,000.

Would $500 invested in the stock market in 1985 be worth more or less today than $5,000? There have been some four decades for the $500 to grow. The result of four decades of stock market growth, with shares doubling each decade, can be found with this calculation: 2 x 2 x 2 x 2. That gives us 16-fold growth. If we multiply $500 by 16, we get $8,000.

Moreover, I’m likely being far too generous in my valuation of the coins. I recently went to two dealers and got quotes of $1,500 and $2,300 for the lot. The dealers said many of the U.S. coins were of the “spend it” variety, meaning they were merely worth their face value.

Bottom line: My dad’s $500 invested in the stock market might have returned $8,000, while his coin investments will yield at most $5,000. This analysis doesn’t mean you can’t do well investing in coins. But I believe you must treat the effort as a business and become knowledgeable about the subject. If you’re a casual investor using a buy-and-hold strategy, the stock market has proven to be a far better place to increase your wealth.

Bruce Roberts recently retired from IBM after a 35-year career as a software engineer. Degrees in math and computer science served him well during his career and when investing. In retirement, Bruce enjoys tennis, playing bridge and tutoring math.

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Missing the Action

INVESTORS ARE OFTEN told that it’s impossible to consistently time the market. To do so successfully requires you to make two correct decisions: when to get out of stocks—and when to get back in.

In 2022, J.P. Morgan published a study showing that a lump sum invested in the S&P 500 over the 20 years through 2020 would have earned an annualized return of 5.2% if you’d missed the 10 best days, versus 9.4% if you’d stayed invested throughout the period. Miss the 30 best days, and your annualized return would have dropped to 0.32%.

Unfortunately, I may have suffered something similar.

I’m very much a buy-and-hold investor. The vast majority of our portfolio is in index funds that we’ve owned for decades. In the past, I’ve written about the few individual stocks that we own. We’ve also held these positions for decades.

I retired two years ago. Earlier this year, I thought that it was finally time that I roll over my 401(k) to my IRA. Some people make this switch because the funds in their employer’s 401(k) charge higher fees than are available in an IRA. Fortunately for me, that was not the case. My previous employer had consistently done a good job of minimizing costs. Instead, I wanted to reduce the number of financial institutions that my wife or other heirs will have to deal with after my demise.

Although I could initiate the rollover electronically, I was surprised that both firms in the transaction wanted to use a paper check. A wire transfer wasn’t an option. On top of that, a check made out to the IRA sponsor would be sent to me, and I was then responsible for forwarding it.

The only reason that I can fathom for doing it this way: Both firms wanted me to look at the check and make sure it was going to the right account. This could prevent any misunderstandings, such as having a traditional 401(k) rolled over into a Roth IRA, thereby triggering a large tax bill.

The upshot: I ended up being out of the market for 21 days, even though I sent the check for next day delivery when it reached me. During those 21 days, my portfolio would have gone up 4.9% had it been fully invested.

I do believe markets are random in the short term. If the investments I sold and then repurchased fell 4.9% during those 21 days, I’d have been singing the Hallelujah chorus. Instead, I feel a bit like Emmett Kelly’s character Weary Willie. Still, there are lessons here for readers:  You can’t time the market—and sometimes you find yourself out of the market even when you don’t want to be.

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No Right Answer

DURING MY 30s, I worked for a defense contractor. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the Soviet Union imploded just over two years later. Many at work believed that the end of the Cold War would lead Congress to reduce defense spending. Sure enough, layoffs at my company commenced soon after.

I was fortunate to avoid being laid off. I do recall, though, overhearing one coworker in his 50s who, after receiving a pink slip, lamented, “At my age, who will hire me?”

I felt sorry for the poor fellow, and decided I had to get serious about investing for my future. I didn’t want my life to fall apart if I received a pink slip in my 50s or 60s. I was saving in the company’s 401(k) plan at the time, but that was about all.

Having no investment knowledge, I thought it prudent to engage the services of a financial advisor. Without any experience, I didn’t know how to evaluate and select one. I made a choice based on an ad. I found the experience underwhelming.

During my initial meeting, I recall the advisor asking me what I thought the inflation rate would be in a few years. I confessed that I had no idea, but pulled a number out of the air nonetheless. Sometime later, it dawned on me that the advisor was probably gathering inputs for a computer program that would spit out a report he could hand me—along with a bill for his services.

I was working fulltime, so I made appointments to see him at 5 p.m. At one such meeting, the advisor cut our visit short because he had to get home to watch the kids, so his wife wouldn’t miss her guitar lesson. That’s when I decided to become a do-it-yourself investor.

To educate myself, I read John Bogle, Burton Malkiel, William Bernstein, Jonathan Clements, Charles Ellis and others. I learned that the first step to building an investment portfolio is to choose an asset allocation—the distribution of your dollars across stocks, bonds, cash and alternative investments.

Throughout my 40s and 50s, I was about 70% in stocks and 30% in bonds. With the benefit of hindsight, I should probably have had more money in the stock market. But with my investment knowledge still limited and not yet confident in my abilities, I opted to be more conservative.

Much of what I read about choosing an asset allocation centered on answering these questions: How much risk was I able to bear? How much was I willing to bear? The answers would govern how much I should allocate to stocks.

The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that my risk tolerance was a moving target. I was risk tolerant during bull markets and risk-averse during bear markets. This uncertainty helped explain my somewhat conservative allocation.

This focus on risk tolerance was meant to prevent me from committing the cardinal sin of investing—getting unnerved and selling at a loss during a bear market. If I could avoid tinkering with my portfolio during downturns, I probably had my asset allocation about right.

Now that I’m retired, and have more investment experience, I’ve demonstrated to myself that I can leave my portfolio untouched during bear markets. My current stock-bond split is about 60-40.

Another important lesson I learned: Always look for opportunities to increase the diversification of my portfolio. It’s the best way to both reduce the probability of a large loss and increase my long-term compound return.

I also learned it’s counterproductive to add an investment with a high correlation with another investment that I already owned. Their prices will tend to move up and down together. I wanted to add uncorrelated assets—those whose prices would tend to zig when my other holdings zag.

I know my allocation today, but is that where I should stay? As a retiree, I’m always wondering if I have too much money in stocks. I could have a significant loss in a bad market. Yet, if I invest too little in stocks, I may lose ground to inflation.

At the same time, I wonder whether I’m overweight in bonds. If I have too much invested in bonds and cash, I’ll lose ground to inflation. Yet if I don’t own enough of these assets, would I have to sell stocks to meet unexpected expenses, such as replacing the roof?

None of these questions has a clear, definitive answer. Any decision involves a tradeoff between risk and return. That brings me to a big risk: future health care costs.

Neither my wife nor I own a long-term-care insurance policy. We're both in our mid-70s. We feel we need the growth typically offered by stocks to self-insure against the risk that one or both of us will eventually need nursing care. That’s why, even at this late stage, I’ve decided to put a bit more money into growth investments.

Even if my current portfolio gives us the growth we need, and it fits within my risk tolerance, still another question arises. Should I leave things alone as economic conditions change? International stocks, for instance, have underperformed the S&P 500 in eight out of the past 10 years. Could international shares be poised to outperform U.S. stocks over the next decade?

If I was still working and saving for retirement, I might increase my international stock exposure by a few percentage points. Is this a prudent move in retirement, however, when I have less time to recover from a setback?

There’s no perfect answer, and yet I need to make a decision, even if the decision is to sit tight. One influence on me is Bill Bernstein’s admonition, “When you’ve won the game, stop playing with the money you really need.”

Have I won the game? With ever-rising health care costs, with the never-ending battle against inflation, and with our dynamic domestic and global economies, I’m not sure I’ve won—or ever will.

Now retired, Philip Stein was a public health microbiologist and later a computer programmer in the aerospace industry. He maintains that he’s worked with bugs, in one form or another, his entire career. Phil and his wife Jeanne live in Las Vegas. His previous articles were Skill or Luck and Saved by Compounding.

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A Father’s Bequest

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU wish for: Your kid may grow up to be too much like you.

Many parents do an exemplary job raising their children. The rest of us bumble along, knowing we aren’t perfect but praying we’ve been good enough. I believe I fall into the “good enough” category. But I also believe I went overboard expressing approval for the ways my son Ryan was becoming like me—or the person I once desired to be.

Ryan, now age 35, emerged from our family cauldron a really good guy. Yet I see how my need for his admiration made me less attuned to his own emerging identity. He strove to win his father’s approval and has become in many ways, laudable and not, much like me.

Children aren’t here to be their parents’ trophies. My parents didn’t realize that—and nor did I. When Ryan struck out with men on base, he saw the disappointment on my face. He heard me confront a high school administrator about the validity of a standardized test on which Ryan’s performance proved to be ordinary. I encouraged Ryan to apply to two schools that had rejected me, a last shot at redemption.

How do I know my need to relive my life through Ryan’s achievements left a wound? That’s easy. Ryan has called my wife Alberta and me on it numerous times. He knew he wasn’t good enough to be a starter on the high school freshman basketball team, yet I questioned the coach. He felt humiliated when we closely edited his college admissions essay.

Always a good public speaker, Ryan was incredulous when we suggested he was probably the best teacher at the Jesuit high school where he worked. “What’s with you guys, you’ve never seen me teach?” A constant feeling that he never quite measured up, which we unwittingly fed, took a toll on our son’s self-esteem. Despite his growing skill as a sports bettor, Ryan routinely underestimates his role in wins and underestimates luck in his losses.

Ryan’s struggle to differentiate his work from my former stock trading is complex and conflictual. I actively traded individual stocks and options as a way to keep engaged and involved with life in the midst of an extended midlife depression. As a child, when Ryan walked into my home office, he saw his father alternately checking his figures and graphs and looking up to catch the breaking news on CNBC.

To Ryan, it looked like I was having a grand old time pursuing my passion. This impression was reinforced by watching me devour Barron’s first thing Saturday morning as if it were a religious ritual. In fact, I was battling a mood disorder and was lucky to turn the page on my trading era without drastically depleting my money-market reserves.

Fortunately, I had made some advantageous purchases of small residential income properties that served as a buffer, but I was no tycoon. Partly to protect me and partly as a way of compensating for her husband’s steep career fall, Alberta idealized my exploits to Ryan and to herself. Unaware of the extent to which the family’s privileged financial situation resulted from inheritance as much as any astuteness on my part, Ryan was intimidated. “Dad, I just don’t get this stock market stuff like you do.”

For a long time, I thought defiance was behind Ryan’s decision to banish investing from his life. But I no longer think that. Through his embrace of sports betting, with its focus on discrepancies and probabilities, Ryan has identified with me in a way that allows him to blaze his own trail, but without having to compete directly with the family mythology about my investing prowess.

This is, not coincidentally, how I separated my identity from that of my own father, a shrewd commercial real estate operative. I chose stocks as my investment vehicle, and only tried residential rental properties after a stroke partially paralyzed my father and he was no longer invincible. But even today, I don’t own any commercial properties.

Three years ago, Ryan left his job as a high school math teacher to experiment with a career as a professional sports bettor. Resisting the disbelief and ridicule of friends, as well as his parents’ apprehensions, Ryan has shown he can prevail against the oddsmakers. He sits engrossed at his desk, eyes on a computer screen rather than a TV, ready to pounce on small but actionable disparities between the market price and his prediction model. What the father did during his stock trading period is remarkably similar to what the son is doing now. Ryan has borrowed from me, all the while becoming his own man.

In several other ways, Ryan’s identification with me has been less easy to watch. As a child, I was excused from most chores and more than a few family obligations, like weddings and bar mitzvahs. That primed me to flout social convention. I even avoided the marriage ceremony of two college friends I had fixed up. But in the end, instead of continuing to flout social convention, I succumbed to my shyness and introversion, and took refuge in a traditional lifestyle.

Wanting Ryan to be the free spirit I had abandoned, I took a page from my parents’ childrearing playbook and promoted a laissez-faire home environment. Not surprisingly, Ryan today is unmoved by invitations and exhortations. Like his father, he must be coaxed out of his standoffishness and withdrawal. Alberta has taught me the value and joy of belonging. Will Ryan meet his own liberator?

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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My Savings Journey

THERE IS NOTHING special about my story—no amazing tales of picking stocks, no glorious path of salary increases. Instead, there was just the challenge of living well below my means and consistently putting my money to work for a better tomorrow.

Growing up, I don’t recall any major family financial issues. Of course, my parents would likely have shielded me from any challenges that they endured. I know that they sacrificed to make college available to all four of their children, ensuring we weren’t encumbered by student loans as we made our way into the real world. Their four children branched out on divergent paths—one in banking, one in health care, one in education and, bringing up the rear, I spent my career in manufacturing as a planner, primarily a production planner.

I had a passbook savings account for my “college” money and, when I started working in high school, that’s where my money would get deposited. My main financial memories come from my mom. She said that I needed to spend less than I earned, so I could save. She had also inherited 645 shares of General Motors stock. That prompted me to start following GM. I looked up the closing stock price each day in the newspaper, graphing it to see if I could predict which direction it would take.

Imagine my horror when one day the stock price suddenly plunged. When I brought this to my mother’s attention, she told me that the stock had split two-for-one. When I confirmed that she now had 1,290 shares, she was amazed that I’d somehow picked up how many shares she owned. I never was able to determine future stock price directions from my graphs so, after many months, I quit charting the price. Still, I continued to follow GM stock until many years later, when the company filed for bankruptcy protection.

As for my father, by the time I was in high school, I knew he bought stock in various companies. Most notably, he purchased Home Depot early on and never sold it. Those shares eventually were divided among his four children. We were all in our 50s at the time of his passing, so although it was a significant inheritance, it wasn’t so large as to be life-changing.

From the time I was age 10, my parents had always had a whole-life insurance policy on me. Before I graduated from college, they scheduled for me to meet with the insurance agent, so he could explain life, health and disability insurance. The meeting would have a profound impact on my financial future.

In addition to explaining various kinds of insurance, he gave me my first introduction to personal finance. The finance and investing classes I’d taken in school covered a lot more ground. Still, perhaps they provided me with the background needed to truly grasp what the agent told me.

He introduced me to the rule of 72 and challenged me to save $30,000 by the time I was age 30, so I’d have money to invest in some kind of appreciating asset. It was a benchmark I failed to achieve. Nonetheless, the insurance agent taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten and which I diligently followed for the rest of my career: It was imperative to save money and live on less than I earned.

My first job was in the textile industry, making carpet with my uncle. We were a two-person company with no thought of a 401(k). Still, my uncle told me about a seminar at a local bank where I could learn about IRAs. I remember picking up a brochure there and thinking that this would be a good start toward my $30,000 challenge.

When the time came to choose a fund, I’d narrowed it down to American Capital Pace or Fidelity Magellan Fund. At that time, it seemed all funds had a sales load, typically 5.75%. I ended up choosing American Capital Pace. The first year, I contributed the $2,000 IRA maximum and resolved to send monthly checks until I reached the next year’s $2,000 limit.

Unfortunately, our company’s principal customer was bought out and the new management chose a different carpet source. My uncle and I both took a 50% pay cut until we had new customers lined up. But at the same time, I started looking for other opportunities.

I was fortunate to find a new company in the area that had nothing to do with carpet. It was a Japanese injection molding company that made plastic cases to house CRT computer monitors and television sets. I was hired to be a production planner and trained by my Japanese advisor, Endo-San. The Japanese employees never claimed the title of manager or supervisor, only advisor. It was the most formative part of my career.

A few years later, when Endo-San was rotated to a plant in Ireland, I wrote him a thank-you note. I mentioned that he was a “stern taskmaster,” which he took as the compliment I’d intended. Endo-San held me to much higher standards than my peers, but that was how he taught me to check all details, reconfirm all details, follow up on all details and never accept less than the highest level of results.

With my new job and better salary, I was again able to scrape up money for my annual IRA investment. The company didn’t offer a 401(k), so I concentrated on contributing the $2,000 a year then allowed for IRAs.

After a few years, I saw that American Capital Pace’s performance was falling behind, so I rolled my IRA over to an index fund at another company. At the same time, I read everything I could find about mutual funds. I was learning more, including how I would be better off in a no-load fund instead of paying a 5.75% sales charge.

During this education, I also learned that Fidelity Magellan was a fantastic fund and that perhaps I’d made the wrong choice. My reading uncovered another Fidelity fund with similar objectives, Fidelity Contrafund. It was a no-load fund. I decided to start putting new IRA money into Contrafund in 1994 and continued this until 1997.

In 1998, Roth IRAs became available, and I bought Contrafund in my new Roth. In the early 2000s, the government started raising the annual IRA limit, and I duly increased my contributions. My savings discipline continued to improve. It was no longer taking me until April 15 to hit the annual limit. I was contributing the maximum earlier and earlier.

Eventually, I had next year’s annual IRA savings ready to go by December of the current year. No matter what the stock market was doing, I mailed the check during the first week of January. I continued this practice for the rest of my career.

Meanwhile, my Japanese employer finally set up a 401(k). We were called into the cafeteria for the monthly all-employee meeting and told about the 401(k), along with all the supporting information and the forms we needed to fill out. After the meeting, the hourly workers returned to the production line, while the salaried workers had lunch since they were already in the cafeteria.

Except for me. I took the forms back to our open-plan office, went through all the information, figured out what needed to be filled out, and then took the forms to the office typewriter and typed them up. At the time, it was common for companies to restrict your deferral rate for the 401(k), and our maximum allowed savings was 15%. I signed up to contribute 15% of each paycheck, with the money going into index funds.

I dropped the completed forms on the human resources desk and headed to the cafeteria for my normal brown bag lunch. After the company controller finished his lunch, he went to his desk to fill out the 401(k) paperwork. As he handed his completed forms to HR, he commented that he was the first to sign up for the 401(k). Nope. When the HR staff had returned from lunch, my completed forms were already waiting on their desk.

From then on, including at subsequent employers, I maxed out my 401(k) based on what my company would allow me to defer. I also kept contributing to my Roth IRA. It wasn’t until 2012—a glorious year—that the company increased the deferral rate so we could save up to 50% of our salary.

From that point until I retired, I was able to hit the maximum annual 401(k) contribution. Once I turned age 50, I added the catch-up amounts to both the 401(k) and my IRA. Doing this never prevented me from living my life, going on trips or doing fun things. I never felt that my frugal lifestyle caused me to miss out on anything.

My greatest blessing is being married to the most wonderful woman. Like me, she also lives below her means. She came from a family that was good at saving money, but not investing. They wanted their money to always be safe, so their only investments were bank certificates of deposit.

Two years after I joined the company’s 401(k), she was comparing her 401(k) balance after five years of investing to my 401(k) after only two years. She was flabbergasted that my account balance was greater than hers. With some gentle guidance, she too was soon increasing her deferral rate and investing in stock index funds.

Although I never got close to a six-figure income, I feel I’ve done all right. I retired at year-end 2021. My wife continues to work, which ensures the family has health insurance. My investments have increased enough that—like many of my older peers—I’m now fretting over taxes, required minimum distributions and Roth conversions.

One new concern: After my wife and I are gone, our son—currently age 14—will be compelled to pull everything out of our retirement accounts within 10 years, and thus will have the opportunity to blow it all.

I’m saving various personal finance articles for our son in the hopes that, if I should cross the river before he begins his money journey, he’ll have something to refer to and perhaps learn from. Along with those articles, I plan to include this essay. Maybe he’ll read some of what I’ve written and take it to heart. I hope he embraces his money journey as fervently as I have mine—and that he enjoys even more success.

E. Smith Smallwood retired in 2021 after spending 26 years as a production planner supplying the automotive and heavy-duty truck industries. Along with his wife and son, he lives near Charleston, South Carolina, where he spends his time volunteering as an assistant scout master for a Boy Scouts troop and as a high school band booster. He also enjoys reading about U.S. history and personal finance.

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