As Hill Investment Group’s newest team member, I was honored when Matt Hall asked me to represent us in a holiday post about gratitude.

One of the reasons I knew I’d found a special place when I joined HIG earlier this year was how integral gratitude is to our culture. It’s not just a word to haul out once a year. We live it here every day.

For example, when a newbie comes on board, along with a bounty of educational materials, we’re provided a little book called The Five Minute Journal. It’s a handsome journal that poses 5 daily questions to help zoom in on gratitude. Each of us has a copy to keep current and we think it helps maintain a positive focus.

I’m grateful for so many things, a page a day can hardly contain them. Toward the top of the list, I’m grateful to have the daily opportunity to help our clients and their families enrich their own lives through our work.

On behalf of all of us here at HIG, I’d like to thank each of our clients for giving me plenty to write about in my Five Minute Journal, every single day.

While I just turned 76 last week, my 80th birthday doesn’t feel that far off. I couldn’t have asked for a better role model on how to prepare for that milestone than Chris Crowley, octogenarian and best-selling author of the Younger Next Year book series.*

Earlier this month, we were delighted to host a special evening with Crowley (84) and a gathering of friends and family at St. Louis’ PALM Integrated Health venue. In his featured book at the event, Crowley shared seven tips on how to “Live Strong, Fit and Sexy — Until You’re 80 and Beyond.” He and his co-author Dr. Henry Lodge suggest this is “all” you have to do:

1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.
2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.
3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.
4. Spend less than you make.
5. Quit eating crap!
6. Care.
7. Connect and commit.

Okay, I’m on it!

*To our clients – Shoot us an email if you’d like your own copy of Younger Next Year.

We’re not the only ones encouraging investors around the globe to Take the Long View® with their investment strategy. AQR Capital Management’s like-minded perspective is one of the reasons we’ve been known to turn to some of their fund solutions, when appropriate for a client’s goals.

We also appreciate how their podcast series, hosted by Gabe Feghali and Dan Villalon, takes otherwise complex academic insights and translates them into what you need to know to build those insights into your own investing.

We’re particularly fond of their September podcast, “Taking Stock of Stock Myths.”

In this podcast, AQR’s team takes on three types of equity risks – home bias, market-timing and inflation – and busts some of the stock market myths that cause investors to succumb to them.

First, what is “risk” to begin with? We like their working definition, which describes risk as “how likely it is that you end up with a bad outcome over whatever investment horizon you care about.”

See what I mean about keeping it simple but substantive? Here are links to listen to the rest:

• “Taking Stock of Stock Myths” (web browser)
• “Taking Stock of Stock Myths” (iTunes)