There are two types of baseball fans. The real ones who have the “catchers and pitchers report” date on their calendars and happily tune in for all 162 and the fake dilettantes who pace themselves and wait until October to start caring.
My friend Mike is a real one. Has been for decades. I’m a fake dilettante. Our text exchange is prob repeating all over the PNW.
The Seattle Mariner’s are headed to the post season.
AAPL’s stock price is cratering.
UCLA’s football team played some defense.
The seven day forecast is for more summer.
Athletic competition is the key to remaining semi-sane these days.
And right now is peak sports. Let me amend that. Peak niche sports. Your Seattle Mariners with their 14th straight victory. Stellar performances at the World Track Championship meet down Interstate 5 in Eugene, Oregon, also known as TrackTown, USA. The thinning of the Jumbo Visma herd in the Tour de France with the podium still to be determined.
And most memorable, Cameron Smith is the ‘Champion Golfer of the Year’. That’s a title I would love to have some day. Maybe next year.
If the Seattle Mariner magic continues this weekend and they close out the season with a sweep of the “Los Angeles” Angels and make the playoffs, all will be forgiven and forgotten by each and every Specific Northwesterner: Jeff Bezos, the endemic, the unprecedented heat and wild fires, the traffic nightmares, the fractured politics, the Seahawk’s defense, the antiquated airport, the creeping wetness and darkness.
92-70. See it. Believe it.
Postscript: 91-71?
So confusing. Start with the headline, “Seattle Mariners’ Kyle Lewis awarded American League Rookie of the Year in unanimous vote.”
If that’s not disorienting enough, fast forward to this gem:
“The Georgia native is the beginning of what could be a formidable young outfield in Seattle. Jarred Kelenic, who was acquired in a trade with the New York Mets, and Julio Rodriguez are ranked among baseball’s top prospects.”
Have the words “formidable” and “the Seattle Mariners” ever appeared in the same sentence?
I hereby declare these strange times.
1. Mariner fans enjoy the fast start because this does not bode well.
2. My parents were well-to-do. When my dad unexpectedly died, my mom was lost in grief and overwhelmed with many new financial responsibilities. Some widows are providing others with much needed roadmaps.
3. When it comes to financial well-being, it’s sad how poorly elite Kenyan runners do.
5A. My last book. Highly recommended.
5B. Current read. Mind blowing. A mentally ill person creates a religion.
1. Trump flip-flops fly off the shelf. To the creative go the spoils. (thanks DDTM)
2. Best iPhone photos from around the world.
3. Try doing nothing for awhile.
4. The Seattle Mariners lead the league in this every year.
5. I turned 57 a few weeks ago. This reflection on “the spiritual black hole of upper middle age” couldn’t hit much closer to home. (thanks SMW)
6. How to adapt this to upper middle agers?
7. At what level of wealth do you lose your soul?
PressingPausers have proven to have little interest in personal finance. Correction. PressingPausers have proven to have little interest in my thoughts on personal finance. Big dif. So why do I persist? Idk.
Just like getting dressed in the morning while on sabbatical, the fact that NO ONE will read this is liberating. Whatever shorts and t-shirt I left splayed on the floor last night are good, not many peeps are going to see me anyways as I write a blog post NO ONE will read. If a blog post falls in the woods. . .
Classic investing advice is to keep investing expenses to a bare minimum; determine what balance of stock, bonds, and cash will enable you to sleep well at night; and keep trading to a bare minimum.
In the US, investors currently have 56% of their assets invested in stocks or more than 10 percentage points higher than its historical average of 45.3%. At the top of the bull market in 2007, it stood at 56.8%. This has a lot of analysts worried that a correction is coming.
Another investing maxim of increasing popularity is to stop trying to outsmart the market. Instead, as Kendrick Lamar advises, “Be humble!” His next vid will prolly be about investing in passive index funds like this. The chorus. . .”Be passive!”
Another oft-repeated investing maxim is never invest more than 5% of your net worth in any individual stock because they’re far too volatile. A mutual fund or exchange traded fund is a basket of hundreds or thousands of individual stocks that go up and down at different times, thus creating a smoother, steadier, long term increase in value.
But damn is AAPL en fuego. Check this missive from a Vanguard forum of knowledgeable investors I’ve taken to reading recently. Wait a minute. That last sentence presumed you’re reading this, which you’re not, so note to self—revise that. This missive from a Vanguard forum of knowledgeable investors has me thinking about chucking conventional investing wisdom and improvising like #3.
“Hi—
Long time lurker first time poster. Thank you to all who have contributed to my education here, absolutely invaluable.
I’m writing about my mother and father in law’s finances, which I am slowly taking over at their request.
FINANCIAL PICTURE
Savings
$425k in various super low interest checking / savings accounts
Investments at Fidelity (unlikely to change brokerages):
Rollover IRA: $675k of which
* 86.8% AAPL he’s a lifelong Apple fanboy, bought $11,500 worth way back when, which is now $575k.”
Hindsight is 20-20, but if I was my daughters age again, for every $2 dollars of savings I could set aside, I’d put $1 in a super safe certificate of deposit and the other in AAPL. And then rebalance annually and pay 15 or 20% on the capital gains. As the aforementioned anecdote intimates, I would’ve done really, really well adhering to this “barbell” plan.
But this way of thinking suggests I’m suffering from an advanced case of “optimism bias” which causes a person to believe that they are at a lesser risk of experiencing a negative event compared to others. Note to self—AAPL can’t continue its recent run. VTI is a much safer, wiser, long-term instrument for building wealth. VTI is also long overdue for a serious correction, or to use the fancy pants mathematical phrase, a regression towards the mean. It’s as certain as the Mariner’s August playoff fade.
Sometime soon, the half of the barbell holding certificates of deposit earning 3-4% is going to bring great comfort.
1) Have you noticed? Increasingly, bloggers are inserting numbers into post titles to increase readership and improve search engine rankings. “5” has replaced “3” for most popular number. “17” is trendy too. I don’t know why numbers increase readership and improve search engine rankings. I find it disingenuous at best and insulting at worst. As if all anyone can process anymore is a list. My one-time use of it here is sarcasm. I should start a movement. . . force a number into your title and we’ll refuse to read what follows. Who is in?
2) Imagine a world in which everyone reads and discusses books with people different than them. My favorite story from last week.
3) The Seattle Mariners are the best team in baseball when it comes to this.
4) Is this a trend. . . dad’s helping grown daughters who aren’t necessarily interested in their help? I’ve never offered unsolicited advice to my daughters. . . that’s an additional serving of sarcasm. One of my daughters’ friends laughed at her dad for sending her an article on “How to save and invest money”. Another “couldn’t believe” her dad mailed her bicycle to her at college, then assembled it during a visit. The “extremely large” bike box was difficult and embarrassing to pick up at the mail room. The two wheeler was used one or two times during the school year. This isn’t limited to dad’s and daughters. Parents often presume their young adult children want to save money, invest wisely, prepare healthy meals, bicycle, etc., etc. Maybe I should start a movement where parents let their young adult children know they’re interested in sharing different “lessons learned” if and when they’re interested. And then we’ll sit back and wait for our young adult children to ask us for help.
5) I’m filing this under “Sometimes I Amaze Myself”. I’ve done it again, I’ve come up with a brilliant idea. This one will enable me to extend my triathlon career for many more years. Based upon my swimming, cycling, and running training log, I have a very good feel for how fast I can swim 1500 or 1900 meters, how fast I can ride 40k or 56 miles, and how fast I can run 10k or 13.1 miles. That means all I have to do is guess how bad my transitions would likely be, and presto, I can spend a few minutes on-line on Mondays to see what place I would’ve finished had I actually shown up at that weekend’s races. This way I save tons of coin and race every weekend without swimming through seaweed or increasing my exposure to the sun. I “won” my age group at a few recent races.
Pressing Pause 