Always play the game as hard as you can, your teammates are counting on you. This came from my father when I was in elementary school. I played basketball and wanted to go to a birthday party but my father taught me about what it means to be part of a team. This is of course about more than just sports, it applies to other situations where people depend on you. I didn't really understand the extent to which is was about more than sports until I was an adult. I picked up a few things from my dad but I think this one is relatively important.
The fire chief of the Walker Fire Protection Association from when I first joined in 2003 has had a big impact on my life. I would try to articulate it by saying that I learned the importance of living a life of service to others. I view maintaining the blog as part of this idea but my FD involvement predates the blog. His leadership was such that he understood that loyalty and respect are earneed they are not bestowed. We would have walked through a brick wall for him. He still helps a lot with the department (he ran the water tender at the mid-October structure fire and conducts several trainings a year) and I try to follow his examples on how to run the department (I have been chief for a little over a year).
Avoid buying stocks that people want to sell you. This came from my older brother who used to work in the business. The context started when I worked at Lehman Brothers in the late 1980s/early 1990s although he started there before me. We had the "opportunity" to buy stock out of inventory below the market and sell it to clients at the market and pocket the difference (subject to our respective payout ratios). The inventory came from institutional clients wanting to sell and often they were selling for a very good reason. I never participated in these deals and actually lost a friend (the office sales manager) because of it. Aside from the ethics of it I did not have the book needed to "take stock down." The sentiment behind this advice has become relevant to other aspects of investing that maybe didn't exist 23 years ago or maybe aspects I didn't know about abck then. Here is an example from this past week about people who bought fixed income products linked Apple's stock price.
My wife and I have taught each other some things as you might imagine and a big one that she brought to me is the role that dogs play in our lives. We had a dog when I was very young but that was it. We got our first dog together about a month and half after we moved in together. She of course volunteers full time in animal rescue and I could not imagine not having dogs (if you have dogs then you probably understand what I mean).
The last person to mention today is my neighbor with the backhoe whom you can read more about here. I learned several things from him and also the manner in which he has lived his life thus far has validated a few other things that were more my own ideas. If you read the linked profile from when he turned 80 you'll see that he has been a great role model for living below your means, not shying away from manual labor, not doing things half-assed and staying physically and mentally engaged among others.
There are quite a few others but I'm not necessarily sure I can't attribute them to specific people so much as being things I came to naturally or heard from many different people and they were just very logical and obvious like not using credit cards such that you have to pay interest. This was a fun post and hopefully offers some things to think about and maybe you would be inclined to share some of your own here.
The picture is Stimpy who was dog number one. We got her as a puppy in 1992 and had her with us until 2005.
4 comments:
"Avoid buying stocks that people want to sell you. ... The context started when I worked at Lehman Brothers ... We had the "opportunity" to buy stock out of inventory below the market and sell it to clients at the market and pocket the difference (subject to our respective payout ratios). The inventory came from institutional clients wanting to sell and often they were selling for a very good reason."
Wow! Congratulations on not engaging in that incredibly unethical behavior. Is it even legal (in my opinion, it should not be)? Do brokers still do it? Thanks for the insight.
I am too far removed to know if this still goes one. There are still CEFs, preferred stocks and other products that IPO with selling concessions embedded in them. There are also structured products like the one I linked to that is tied to AAPL that usually have large selling concessions too.
"avoid buying stocks that people want to sell you"
Gold comes to mind as in "give me your worthless money in exchange for my priceless gold" which seems to be the message of the gold hucksters these days.
Nice post: As social beasties we probably learn from each other at least as much as from our own experience (and likely more than that). Learning is not merely facts but a gift that recalls a giver. Or the Elder Edda phrased it (far more elegantly):
Young was I once, and wandered alone,
And nought of the road I knew;
Rich did I feel when a comrade I found,
For mankind is mankind’s delight.
And speaking of learning (a topic that pops up from time to time): Spending rates during retirement; some good analysis in this article.
Testing Dynamic Spending Rules, Part 1 at http://tinyurl.com/b3tsvne (ht Abnormal Returns)
"For a 65-year-old with a 60/40 portfolio, the 4% rule yields 70.4 expected lifetime spending with a 2% lifetime shortfall probability.
By comparison, a 0.5 spending factor, which starts at about 3% spending, yields expected spending of 91.2 with a 9.7% probability of a 25% drop from the initial spend amount, and a worst case drop of 37% (for 1973 retirees – they eventually recovered)."
Post a Comment