Month: January 2024

I get approached occasionally by financial advisors who are fishing for new clients. I am always polite and I’ll do lunch or have a coffee with them, but I always tell them up front that I’m not a good prospect. I have my investments managed by big national discount advisory services who use modern portfolio theory strategies and am happy with their performance and their low fees. I know I could avoid fees altogether if I managed them myself, but I prefer to outsource it. The latest encounter was with a genuinely nice young man who made a pass at my accounts a year ago and then suggested I virtually attend an event being held by the CEO and founder of his employer. Since I’m interested in continuing education in a lot of areas, finances being one, I agreed. Partly because of my own nest egg but also because the foundation I chair has a large endowment that I help manage.

The weather was inclement and my wife was up at the cabin with one of her college roommates and I really didn’t have anything else to do, so I agreed to devote two full days to being enlightened with the theory and practice of what the CEO referred to as “Academic Investing principles”. So, what did I learn?

I’m tempted to say I learned zero, nada, zilch. But that’s not really true. I did not learn much of anything about investing strategies that I already did not know, but I did get to observe hard sell and emotional manipulation on a grand scale. I’m not going to identify the particular company, nor its founder. He has achieved a good deal of success building his assets under management from nothing to nearly ten billion dollars and his investment philosophy is pretty much standard Markowitz modern portfolio theory, eschewing market timing, the buying of individual stocks and concentration risk. I agree with all of that, however he skimmed over that part of the presentation and concentrated on what felt a lot like televangelism at its worst.

There was a big emphasis on patriotism and a fair amount on faith and family. I’m all for all three of those but I had a major disconnect on how that related to investing. The real nuts and bolts of investing did not make up more than about one of the sixteen hours of content. The other fifteen hours were mostly about all the mistakes “we” were surely making without his guidance. If the presentation had only occupied one hour of my time it would have been reasonable. But as it was, I had the other fifteen hours of listening to ponder what the presenter was trying to do to me and the other 900 people attending the virtual seminar. And this is what I decided was going on.

First, he was trying to establish a cult of personality by appealing to our love of family and country with a heavy dose of guilting. He presentation was full of endearing personal family stories. He spoke like a reformed addict who had been there and found the light. He knew that all of us must have made many bad investing decisions just as he had. But hope was here, he was going to save us from our own bad choices if we would just change the way we saw the world. All of us were slaves to our lizard brains and incapable of making wise long term decisions because we were programmed to run from saber-toothed tigers and not to buy and hold index funds. But he could fix us, if we just had faith.

I found the concept more than a little off-putting because I’ve been investing using the same Nobel prize winning strategies he uses, for many years. Its not anything new. Its exactly the same strategy that Wealthfront, Betterment and Vanguard use in their managed accounts. In fact its what almost every robo advisor in the business uses. Its become common knowledge that active investing fairs poorly compared to passive investing and that day trading or even buy and hold stock picking is a losing proposition.

The statistics and studies back that up, its why Vanguard has over eight trillion in assets under management. Its also why traditional money managers and storefront brokerages are struggling. They have higher fees and lower returns, which makes them a bad deal. If you don’t believe it then just Google who the top performing mutual funds were ten years ago and then check out how they are doing now. If even one of them is in today’s current top ten I’d be shocked. That part of the CEO’s message was fine and accurate. But its hardly earthshaking, life changing news. Anyone who is investing their own money already knows that.

I know why the CEO has resorted to his emotional hard sell tactics. Its because he doesn’t have anything special to offer to justify his high fees. He can’t offer better performance than an inexpensive robo advisor, so all he has to justify his fees is himself. He is selling confidence and faith in a person. And that’s appealing to a lot of people. If it wasn’t cults would not exist. Multilevel marketing schemes wouldn’t happen and ponzi schemes could not be pulled off. Now in this case he has a solid product and sound theory. He is just overpriced. So he is doing the only thing he can to differentiate himself from lower cost providers. He is selling himself.

That’s kind of a profound concept, its not so different from the way charismatic politicians woo us. And perhaps spending sixteen hours observing that in action had a prophylactic effect, an inoculation of sorts against the next huckster I run into. That’s a little harsh I suppose, because this guy isn’t selling snake oil, he’s selling a good product that’s just overpriced. As for the young man who talked me into the two day commitment, he’s a nice person who has drank the Kool-aid his company is serving. I run into earnest young men and women selling whole life insurance, over priced annuities and, of course, multilevel marketing schemes who are all sincere and who have all been mislead by their employers. And there are people who need an authority figure to give them the resolve they lack. I am just not one of them. So I’ll nicely explain to my friend that I’m happy with my current providers and to keep in touch.

How about you? Have you sat through a lengthy sales pitch that left you unimpressed?

Am I wrong about investing, is a personal advisor valuable to you even if they come at a higher price or are you a DIY or robo fan?

How long has it been since you’ve been totally alone for a day. How about for a week? For me it has been a very long time. I’ve been married for decades and we are generally together much of every day. Plus there is my tennis buddy and our pickleball crew that I see several times a week. My church friends, my hospital board friends, my foundation friends and my friends and fellow trustees at the college I see at least weekly. The engineering students I mentor and the widow former neighbor I provide tech service calls for are in my life regularly. My four mile walking buddies I spend an hour with three days a week feel like family. We also keep in touch with our three grown kids though they are scattered far from us. My life is full of social contact with people I genuinely enjoy. But not this last week. For the last nine days I’ve been totally isolated from the physical presence of every one of the people I care about. I can thank, or blame, an unusually harsh winter storm for that.

Arkansas gets a little snow, very little in the southern part we live in. But last weekend the entire state got hammered, by ice in the south and snow in the north. We have recently gotten our cabin finished, or nearly so, in north Arkansas near the Buffalo National River. The forecast was for 6 to 9 inches of snow and subzero temperatures in that area. We were understandably concerned for both of our homes so we decided to split up. I’d carry a large generator up to the cabin and she’d be prepared to run the one at our house and we’d both be able to leave trickles of water flowing to keep the pipes from freezing. Neither of us realized that the cold would hang around as long as it has and that there would still be snow and ice present nine days later.

So much time to myself. I have done some solo hiking, even tried to catch a fish but its been too cold to get too far from the cabin and the roads have not been in good condition. I have all the comforts of home here, high speed internet, central heat, a fireplace with lots of wood, all the appliances of any modern house, plenty of food and have not had to run the generator because the power stayed on. And for the most part I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time alone. I’ve cooked some good meals and keeping the small cabin clean is a snap because of its size. I’d hike more but the trails are still treacherous with icy patches and the terrain here is extreme. Solo hiking is pretty sketchy even in good conditions but it would be all to easy to break a leg in the middle of nowhere. With no cell signal to call for help and no satellite beacon that’s potentially life threatening.

Today I’ll have a good bit to do getting ready to drive back home tomorrow. I do have to admit I’m a little bored with too much Netflix streaming and audiobook listening. And I miss my wife, today is her birthday. We’ve been best friends for 47 years, married for 45. And while we do travel separately at times, her on gal trips and me on guy trips, I’ve never been this isolated when she was traveling. If this experience has taught me anything it has reinforced the fact that loneliness is not healthy in large doses. Knowing this is temporary makes it very tolerable, even enjoyable. But if I didn’t know I’d see my wife soon and my friends, then I think life would feel bleak and perhaps hopeless. I feel just a twinge of that, and it isn’t a pleasant feeling.

It occurs to me that many people are lonely and isolated. They have outlived their friends and family, or are estranged from them. And they can’t look forward to a warm hug and a kiss from their spouse tomorrow like I do. They don’t have enjoyable hobbies and friends to share them with. They don’t have purposeful tasks and roles to fill helping others. They may well be hard people to love. And if I get nothing else from this week of solitude, I hope I get the motivation to make a difference in a lonely person’s life.

What about you. Do you ever struggle with loneliness or isolation?

Is there someone you know whose life you could improve just by being their friend?

I haven’t posted anything on this site in quite awhile. My volunteer work consumed a lot of my free time last year and I think that’s why I was not motivated to write.
But it really was a monumental year for me and my family in a lot of ways. Lots of big projects. We built a new house! You might remember that my wife and I have ever only lived in the one house we still occupy. We’ve been in it for over 40 years. However we decided to buy or build a cabin in the Arkansas wilderness near the Buffalo National River. We spent months looking at available land and cabins and finally found a 25 acre tract that was perfect. Completely isolated and out of sight of any other dwellings but with water and electricity easily available and only ten minutes away from groceries and restaurants. It was a tremendously enjoyable project designing the house, watching it grow from a foundation to a finished, private retreat. Its perfect and we’ve already spent quite a bit of time up there. It was our first pass at building a house and we learned a lot.

On the volunteer side, I bought a hospital. That’s definitely a first for me! In truth I wasn’t the only person involved in the purchase and I didn’t spend my own money to buy it. Rather the foundation that I’m board chair of partnered with three other entities to form a nonprofit corporation to purchase and operate the hospital. Much of the money came from our foundation’s endowment. I’m now chairing the hospital board as well as the foundation and its been quite an experience for an engineer to absorb everything I need to know about health care. There have been countless meetings and decisions to make during 2023, at times it has felt like a full time job. Just without the pay. 2024 will be just as busy with much hospital related work to do.

I also am involved in our local college as the chair of its board of trustees. Our beloved college president chose to move to another college in our state for very sound family reasons. That was great for him, but not for me. I’m beginning my fourth presidential search in the 20 years I’ve been a trustee. It is a tedious but important task, which like the hospital work, will consume a lot of time in 2024.

My mentoring of chemical engineering students continued for the third year. I worked with some great mentors and the students were outstanding. It’s a fun way to give back to the university that gave me the tools to have a wonderful career. I also continue to work with the engineering department as an Academy member, donor and advisory board member.

Our son finished residency and became a full fledged credentialed attending physician in 2023 and we watched one of our daughters graduate with her PhD last month. We are very proud of all of our grown kids. Now if they’d just figure out how to produce a grandkid. With all that education surely they can figure out how that works?

We took our second adventure tour with Backroads. They have dozens of locations and activities all over the world and if you like to be physically active they know how to work that into a vacation tour. In our case we are avid hikers and we met our son in Patagonia to do a week long hiking tour. We saw massive glaciers, did some pretty intense hiking and had some great food.

We’ve always travelled economy or economy plus when we flew, but this one time I convinced my wife that we should go first class, now called business class. We had the full deal, with individual pods that felt like tiny hotel rooms with seats that converted into beds. Constant attention and unlimited wining and dining included. It was fun even if the two tickets cost as much as a pretty nice used car.

We did several multi-thousand mile road trips including out west to the Tetons and Great Basin National Park in Nevada and up north to the UP in Michigan. We did a cycling vacation in Virginia which included my favorite bike trail in the world. The Virginia Creeper, which goes downhill for the entire seventeen mile trail. That’s seventeen miles that you can coast without pedaling at all! It was luxurious cycling for sure.

2023 was a great year health wise. I had surgeries in each of the previous three years, not fun. Nothing where I had dire odds of survival, but still significant events that interrupted my tennis and hiking for weeks. But in 2023 I stayed away from the scalpel and was extremely active. Everything that was previously fixed has stayed fixed and that’s awesome because I’m not a happy camper when I can’t play my sports or go fishing.

It wasn’t all good. I lost two dear friends, a fishing buddy and athlete who dropped dead from a heart attack at 53 and a lady I had mentored for decades. I had encouraged and cheered her on as she rose from being an administrative assistant to getting a college degree and later becoming a corporate director of a multinational corporation. And she was a spouse approved platonic pal. I was so proud of her, and then cancer took her life just as she had achieved her career dreams. Both were quality friends that I’ll miss for the rest of my life.

My wife and I celebrated our 45 wedding anniversary in 2023. She might could have made a better pick of mates but I could not have. She’s been a great wife for all these years and any success I’ve had has come because I had a full and equal partner standing with me, no matter what the situation was. And her incredible child raising skills gave our kids a huge head start in life.

Life is good, and the only thing lacking is the knowledge that at 68, most of my time has already been spent. However, I’m a live in the moment guy and hope to stay that way until my very last moment. So far so good. I hope 2023 was a mostly good year for you too and offer you my best wishes for 2024.

How about you? Was 2023 a great, good or not so good year?

What do you think 2024 will bring into your life?

If you can’t find the comment box, click on the title of the post.