Purposeful Spending

I just finished Brian Portnoy’s book, The Geometry of Wealth. In it he describes wealth as funded contentment rather than the constant pursuit of more. This has me thinking about spending habits. Does your spending make you happy? When we achieve financial success, it’s easy to find new things on which to spend our money….

Practice and all is coming

Practice and all is coming… This is a phrase often spoken by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the teacher whose yoga lineage I follow. His rigorous physical practice, called Mysore style ashtanga yoga, became popular in the U.S. in the late 1990s and has grown to a worldwide community of thousands of teachers and students. Guruji,…

Banana Boat

I did something really stupid this summer. I brought a banana on the fishing boat. You’re probably doing one of two things right now; 1. Rolling your eyes at my stupidity or 2. Asking what’s the deal with bananas on the boat? It turns out, bringing a banana on the boat is one of the…

What Do You Do?

Here’s a typical conversation at a cocktail party.   Ben: Hi I’m Ben, what’s your name? Craig: Hi, I’m Craig. Ben, what do you do?   What do you do? This is often the first question we ask someone (in America) when meeting for the first time. We want to know what they do for…

High Cost Education

In my final semester at the University of Georgia I paid $7,000 in tuition as an out-of-state student. Today, UGA tuition is $30,404 per year, an increase of 5.3% annually. The estimated total cost for an out-of-state student to attend the university is $45,762 per year. At this rate, it will cost $110,500 to send…

Sales or Advice?

With the DOL fiduciary rule now defunct and the SEC considering a ‘best interests’ standard for brokers, the blurring of the lines between sales and advice in financial services has worsened. There was a time that investors knew the function of a broker-dealer was solely to facilitate transactions of financial products.  The broker was a…

Fighting over money

In early 2015, Tom Benson, billionaire owner of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans, announced he was removing his granddaughter, Rita LeBlanc, as heir apparent of his NFL team and replacing her with his third wife, Gayle Benson. He fired his relatives from their jobs at his companies and banned them from any further contact…

My Yoga Teacher Decided to Become a Doctor

My yoga teacher recently decided to become a medical doctor. In a lot of ways, this is a natural progression from her long-term dedication to health through yoga, Eastern medicine, and nutrition. For 15 years, Jessica has focused on the health of her students’ body, mind, and spirit as a yoga teacher, Ayurveda practitioner, and…

My Journey So Far …

I didn’t know when I woke up on New Year’s morning 2018, that this would be a year of dramatic change. In hindsight, the move to Ritholtz Wealth Management has been obvious for years. Just check how many of my twitter followers correctly guessed it would be my next move. As my mentor, Michael Goodman,…