No Such Thing as Enough Money

Jacob Schroeder Oct 27, 2021

How much money is enough?

It’s a philosophical money question that often arises out of discontent. We see someone of substantial means, like a celebrity, live a troubled life. Or, we ourselves experience great fortune yet feel unhappy.

It makes us wonder where the finish line is, the point when you can stop striving for more and settle into a life of satisfaction.

Four Things That Make Money Meaningful
Jacob Schroeder Nov 13, 2020

Behind the long braids of barbed wire and tall machine-gun towers of Dachau came the unmistakable sound of laughter. A transport of prisoners from Auschwitz had just arrived, and they were joyful.

To me, this was the most affecting scene in Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, about his physical and spiritual survival in Nazi death camps. He and his fellow captives became elated upon realizing they had been relocated to a camp without a chimney. As he writes: “We laughed and cracked jokes in spite of, and during, all we had to go through in the next few hours.”

How to Stop Carrying Too Much Financial Anxiety

Jacob Schroeder Mar 16, 2021

Your heart starts racing when a credit card rep calls about a payment you accidently missed, and then you turn on the news to see the stock market plummeting 10%, so you log into your 401(k) account in a panic as you berate yourself for not saving more and then wonder whether to sell your stocks to stop the bleeding, which reminds you of John from accounting who told you weeks ago to buy bitcoin, which is, of course, up 5,000%, and you just know he's going to gleefully boast about it at work tomorrow, and since his son plays with your son on the same soccer team, you suddenly remember that you need to spend another freaking $100 on new cleats, along with league registration fees, but you're tired of buying all this sports equipment because you don't even know where to store it, which is one of the reasons why your partner wants to move into a larger home in that one neighborhood everyone wants to live in, except you worry it's too expensive, but now you realize, after several tense arguments, you may have to surrender, though what you really would rather do is just run away and live in an apartment by yourself curled up under a warm, safe weighted blanket.

5 Friend Types That Can Hurt Your Finances

By Aja McClanahan

Your inner circle of friends can have a direct impact on many areas of your life, including your financial behavior. According to a 2014 study from the Journal of Consumer Research, peers can influence you to make certain decisions.

You can even bond with someone over decisions to abstain or indulge in certain activities. The study found, for instance, that friends bond over small shared indulgences like eating chocolate, but were more inclined to abstain as the stakes were raised.

5 Obstacles You Can Expect on Your Journey to Financial Freedom

By Denise Hill

The road to financial freedom is paved with good intentions — and littered with skid marks from those who started out, but opted for an easier path. It can be a lonely, winding road that has potholes, roadblocks, and detours. The best way to ensure any journey is successful is to properly prepare.

Here are a few pitfalls you can expect to run into on your way to financial freedom, and what you can do to cope.

How Our Perceptions of Time and Money Change as We Age

BY RETIRE BEFORE DAD

Our perceptions of the value of time and money shift as we age. In early adulthood, time is abundant, while money is scarcer. We want more money and are willing to sacrifice our time to get it.

By middle age, a thriving career helps us earn more, but job and family obligations consume our time. Life is expensive, and working middle-aged people never seem to have enough time or money.

Approaching retirement, we’re more willing to spend money to save time. Why mow the lawn when you could be playing golf or Bridge? And what good is all that wealth if we have no time to enjoy it?

Type I and Type II Charlatans

Posted December 27, 2020 by Ben Carlson

Pockets of the market are flirting with silly territory.

SPACs, IPOs, and electric vehicle companies are all sprouting up like weeds.

I’m not intelligent enough to sort through the winners and losers in these areas but the fact that there are currently winners means there will be a flood of losers to follow. That’s how these things work. When speculative investments are in demand, the supply ramps up to meet it.

And many of those losers will be pushed relentlessly by hucksters and charlatans who flock to rising markets like me to a new Tom Cruise movie.

.The Art of Money - Turning Financial Success Into A Creative Pursuit

Jacob Schroeder

What do you consider the act of ‘making money’? Is it an act of accounting and measuring? Or, is it an act of imagining and contemplating? Our finances involve numbers and data, but they’re intractably tied to our personal ideas, experiences, feelings and behaviors – intangible things you can’t formulate in a spreadsheet. Therefore, to manage the human side of money, it’s better to think more like an artist than a scientist. It’s a shame many famous artists had financial troubles.

Johannes Vermeer is said to have left behind 10 young children, a house full of paintings no one wanted and enormous debts, causing his wife to declare bankruptcy.