Wisdom on Wealth

The problem with the conveniences of a short cut are the consequences in the long-term. 

Reese and Kyle were one of the 40% of first time home buyers who hadn’t saved any money (at all!) for a down-payment. What to do?

No problem! Crowd sourcing to the rescue! HomeFundMe showed them how to solicit donations from parents and friends (online, so it was cool) so they wouldn’t actually have to go through the yucky process of saving money. 

Another option they had, according to the Wall Street Journal story about them, was borrowing the down-payment from Loftium. All they had to do was agree to rent out a room in their house on Airbnb and share the income. 

Is it just me, or does anyone else remember what happened ten years ago when we let a lot of people buy houses with no skin in the game? What happens when hard times come and they cannot (or no longer wish) make the mortgage payments? See ya!

“Should I be worried?”

In my world, you get this phone call on a regular basis. I’m actually glad to get it, because it gives me an opportunity to remind folks what we are doing and what we are not doing.

“The market was doing so well last year, now it’s really slowed down. Should I be worried?”

He was right. The stock market did extraordinarily well in 2017, much to the surprise of nearly everyone. Depending on which measuring stick you use, the United States stock market was up anywhere from 21% to 28% in 2017.

Now, things seem to have taken a pause. Is it North Korea? Or corn prices? What about all these new tariffs? The new tax law? The president? The congress? The Illuminati exercising secret mind control over the markets?

She had promised herself she wouldn’t cry in my office.

“What was he thinking?” she asked, taking a deep breath and pausing to hold back the tears.

It wasn’t supposed to end this way. Her husband had started his business from scratch, striking out on his own when he was just 32. They worked as a team to raise a family and start a business. It was so tight in those early years, but all she could remember were the good times.

Within ten years he was hiring more staff and opening a second location to serve the needs to a growing clientele. He was a supplier to a specialty niche in his industry and he became known for his responsiveness and customer service.

For years the business had been successful, as far as she knew. There was always enough money and even though his travel schedule was at times demanding, he seemed to strike a balance between hard work and time with her.

Most important things in life cannot be crammed.

You remember cramming. It was a skill I learned well in high school.

I would ignore learning any relevant material outside of what was required for day to day academic survival, until an appropriate interval prior to a big test. The interval may be 30 minutes to 24 hours prior to a big test, depending on the teacher. Having procrastinated as long as possible, I would read the high points of the material, perhaps including some Cliff Notes if it was a big test. Usually the items I was seeking to cram into my short-term memory were factoids I had identified by that time-honored method of academic inquiry…asking the teacher, “Is this going to be on the test?”

So cramming works…in some situations, most of which are not very important or beneficial over the long-term.

In fact, cramming is usually a short-term solution that simply delays or anesthetizes a long-term problem.

Vladimir smirks at a computer screen, furiously typing as he chain-smokes one cigarette after another.

He is hacking into your bank account.

Green numbers flash across his screen, indicating the systematic draining of your bank account into his off-shore account, all accomplished from his dingy apartment building somewhere in upper Siberia.

From a hot and humid internet cafe in Cameroon, dozens of teen-aged online scammers send out email after email, each pretending to be a long-lost Nigerian prince, heir to a tanker of oil if he can just get a $10,000 bank account open…with your money. And…wonders!...he promises to split the money with you once he sells the oil!

We buried my father-in-law last week.

Ninety-four years is a long time to live.

In so many ways he was an American success story. Born into a family of ten children, he was raised in northern Webster Parish during the depression. Milk and eggs were taken to market weekly on a horse and wagon, and when he got old enough to attend LSU, he had to walk ten miles to Springhill to begin the hitchhiking journey to Baton Rouge.

He earned a forestry degree from LSU, fought his way across Europe with the U.S. Army during World War II, started a family in the 50s, a forestry business in the 60s and all along the way bought as many tracts of land and LSU season tickets as his budget and his bankers would allow.