Our favorite WSJ Columnist, Jason Zweig, recently told a story, warning of trying to get rich quickly. We had to share our favorite quote from the piece:

Read the full piece here.

Dimensional Founder and Executive Chairman, David Booth, sat down with Money magazine to give his take on the trending Wall Street topics. It will come as no surprise to our followers that his answers point toward taking the long view.

Should investors give up on value stocks for good? Is the stock market about to burst? Is the crypto frenzy dangerous? Here’s Booth on all that and more.

Read the piece here.

This month, our team read the new Morgan Housel book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness.  It is THE best personal finance book we have read in a long time. Why? It is filled with real stories that show, instead of just tell, the real impact investing behavior has on people’s financial lives. Matt Hall recently interviewed Morgan Housel on his podcast, and Housel shared some of these astounding stories and more. Listen here!

Our favorite takeaways:

Rich vs. Wealthy

Rich is out in the open like a flashy sports car, while wealth is the money that you don’t see but has the capacity to change lives – yours or others. “Rich” is empty. Wealth is rock-solid. How do we get wealthy? Save a bit more than you spend over a long period of time, and try not to interrupt the compounding. Sound familiar?

The importance of time, and the magic of compounding 

Compounding is so hard to imagine because it is by definition not intuitive. Warren Buffet is 90 years old, and he’s worth roughly $90 billion. That’s a huge number. It gets even crazier when you realize 99% of his net worth came after his 50th birthday, and 97% came after his 65th birthday. That’s worth repeating – 99% of his net worth came after 50. The lesson: once wealth starts compounding over time, the numbers get bigger faster than you can imagine. Also, it’s really never too late; however, starting today (or yesterday) is the best. That’s the long view in neon lights! 

How to feel “better off”

If the more you make the more you spend, it will always feel like the goal line is moving. To feel better off, growing the gap between what you earn and what you spend is key. One exercise that has helped our clients is understanding what “enough” means for them. From a place of enough, any additional dollar earned contributes to growing wealth. 

So how do you define “enough”? In our experience, a simple dinner conversation with family is a great place to start. If you want help facilitating that family conversation, let us know – family meetings are one of our favorite services to provide. 

Do you eat your own cooking?

At HIG, we “eat our own cooking.” Translation: we invest our personal investments the same way we invest our client’s. While that sounds like an obvious statement, it is not the norm in the financial advice world. Sadly, not even close. Morgan talks about how important it is to ask experts how they apply their expertise to themselves or their family. For example, ask your doctor what kind of care they would want if they were in your shoes. You might be surprised by the answer.  Curious to learn more? Give us a call.