Advanced Wellbeing offers financial therapy insights each week to inform more details about financial therapy.
Over my years as a financial advisor, I have helped many clients work through the financial and emotional aspects of major life transitions. Now, in welcoming two new partners to the firm I started as a sole owner 40-plus years ago, I am working hard to take my own advice.
I have spent years preparing for this; I still was not ready for the emotional intensity.
On January 21, 1980, in what I thought was a brilliant financial move, I bought gold at what was then an all-time high of $873 an ounce. It was one of my worst investing decisions. Now, 45 years later, gold is priced just over $3,000 an ounce. What’s driving this gold rally? The same thing that drove it in 1980—fear.
On a recent trip to the Middle East, my wife and I had the unique privilege of dining in the home of a local family. Both the food and the conversation were memorable.
As a financial planner, I couldn’t resist asking our host how inheritance works in Jordan. His answer was straightforward and, to him, unremarkable: under Islamic inheritance law, a wife typically receives one-eighth of her husband’s estate. The remaining seven-eighths goes to the children, with sons receiving twice as much as daughters.
If we all acted purely on logic, coffee shops would be out of business. Is that likely to happen any time soon? Don’t bet your latte on it.
Here’s why, using the numbers for my own favorite brew. A cappuccino with oat milk, it costs around $5.50 at a coffee shop. Multiplied by seven, that’s $38.50 a week. Since no one goes to a coffee shop every day of the year, let’s round that down to 44 weeks or 308 days. That’s still $1,694 a year spent on coffee.
When a cancelled flight sank our 30th wedding anniversary expedition cruise to the Arctic, I learned something new about travel insurance. It was an expensive lesson.
As always, I had purchased travel insurance. As always, I assumed cancellation coverage was for any cancellation of a common carrier resulting in you losing non-refundable deposits. I also assumed that purchasing “travel interruption for any reason” coverage meant just that, for any reason. Unfortunately, I had not read the 48 pages of fine print that would have revealed my assumptions were wrong.
Four years ago I confessed in a column that I was guilty of day trading. Except that, as a political junkie, I trade in election outcomes, not stocks. I have no interest in betting on anything else. Now, it seems my fun might be coming to an end.
This month marks a rite of passage for me. I am officially a senior citizen. I don’t feel the way I thought 65 would feel when I was 25, even though I see a 65-year-old in my mirror.
The good news is that I now qualify for every senior citizen discount there is. The bad news is that with the pandemic, I’m not eating out, attending performances, or visiting attractions, so for now I can’t enjoy my discounts.
Many South Dakotans observe an annual holiday that isn’t on the calendar in most other states: the mid-October opening weekend of pheasant hunting season. Opening day of deer season is an important event in the state as well.
The effect of hunting on our state’s economy is significant.
The ending of a long-time business relationship is often a time of difficult emotions. This has been true for me this month after learning that the local newspaper will no longer run my weekly columns.
I do want to thank the Journal for giving me a platform to express my passion around personal finance. I know personally that the column made a difference in the lives of scores of people.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of writing this column for the Rapid City Journal. I have seen a lot of editors and reporters come and go since my first column in April 1991. In fact, everyone who was in the newsroom at that time is gone, which must make me either an elder statesman or a dinosaur.
