Happy New Year! It’s time again to do the final accounting for 2021 investment gains, and this is traditionally the one-time a year I look at our family’s net worth.
Why only once a year? Looking at net worth is a lot like taking the temperature. It’s changing constantly (like the weather), and almost certainly “wrong” only moments later…
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At times, it can seem impossible to get ahead in the world. Last week, the latest U.S CPI came out, announcing a 6.8% increase in consumer prices — the highest level of inflation the U.S. has seen in decades. The last time we saw inflation at these levels or higher was 1982! It’s been 39 years…
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Has it been a month since I last posted already? As you can tell dear readers, I’ve been posting a lot less frequently here at MrTakoEscapes. The truth is, I just haven’t been feeling the blogging ‘groove’ lately…
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Have you heard the story about the frog dropped into a boiling pot of water? As the story goes, if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out of the boiling water, and survive. This same story tells us that if you put a frog into a lukewarm pot of water, and then slowly raise the temperature…
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Don’t look now, but September is already done! Where does the time go? September was a very exceptional month on many fronts — both financial and on my daily schedule.
The most important change was that the kids started school again! In person school! Woohoo!
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The stock market is booming this year, and at the time of writing the S&P 500 is up a healthy 16% YTD. Along with it, most portfolio balances are reaching new highs. This has put a lot of otherwise smart investors in a very good mood.
Euphoric might be a good word for it…
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Summer always speeds by faster than I’d like. It’s a “blink and you’ll miss it” kind of moment here in the Pacific Northwest. Owing largely to our very short summers…
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Compounding. In a word, it’s the “secret sauce” that makes wonderful things like retirement possible. If you want to have enough money to retire someday, you really WANT to compound your money. And there’s no better investment to compound money than common stocks.
Sure, you could stash your savings in a bank account, but at today’s interest rates you won’t be compounding more than a few pennies per month…
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There are few things in this life that give more more personal satisfaction than admitting I was wrong. On one hand, being able to admit I was wrong implies my brain still has a certain amount of mental flexibility and open-mindedness. Frankly, that’s pretty darn rare these days.
How often do you hear people doing a complete about-face when it comes to strongly held personal beliefs?
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