Greeting campers all day in a national park would quickly make me depressed and unhappy, which is the same thing as anxious. That's because I don't like meeting new people and I do like thinking about abstract problems. My current job is clearly stressful to some of my coworkers, but I love it. I be...

"Your Money and Your Brain" by Jason Zweig. It is interesting, funny, and useful.

"The Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver. The whole book is worth reading but Chapter 11 lays out investing. The graph on page 351 of the hard cover edition is especially instructive.

I think D1984 and Sophie make good points. Another to consider is that a tight-money recession is only one of the possible ways this may end. I think of it as the "responsible-adults-in-charge" ending, but there is also the "party-on-Wayne" ending where bond prices remain high fo...

Accumulating in cash is underrated. In the bad old days, I used to try to keep my money "at work" and ran a tight household budget, which generated a lot of anxiety and a certain amount of conflict over Mrs Cowboyhat's little indulgences. An unanticipated bill meant pulling money back out ...

A less technological solution is to just not look at your portfolio except once a year at a predetermined time such as the week between Xmas and New Years. That's a good time because you can make any adjustments related to taxes that seem prudent, and if you don't look pretty soon you'll find that y...

My rule is that it is okay to look anytime, but not to touch. The good thing about that rule is that you get bored of looking and not touching, because what is the point, and then you stop wanting to look.

If you are seriously considering trend following realize that the profits for your time and emotional energy are equal to the difference in return between a passive style and an active style after accounting for taxes and costs. Imagine how much time you will spend fretting over market trends and yo...

I don't have a VP, but one day I will. I'll open it sometime between Christmas and New Years Day during the one week in the year when I allow myself to look at my investments to decide if I should re-balance my PP. What will happen (I'm guessing in 2022, but who knows?) is that I will calculate the ...

No, I don't. It is not obvious from the material he has presented on his blog, but he might have discussed estimates of error in his model in a post I have not read. If you look at the graph "Electoral Vote Distribution" down the right hand side of the page you can see the distribution of ...

Obama and Romney are cheap opportunists, both owned by the banking cartel. For the things that really matter in this world that politics can change it doesn't make a difference which one you vote for, which is strangely good news if you realize the futility of it all and have given up on 2012. Means...

To follow up on HB Reader's advice, my employer's 401k is with Fidelity and the plan allows me to transfer the company matching funds to my IRA without any tax implications. Only the company matching funds are allowed and it must be into a regular IRA. Doesn't have a huge impact, but helps a little ...

I would second craigr's advice for a person in your situation: check out Everbank. You can start with allocated or unallocated gold, or unallocated and then later switch your account to allocated. You can buy small amounts (1 oz increments) and open your account with a small minimum (I think it is 5...

Clive makes a good point. Most of today's PP investors will drop it in the next bull market in stocks. This Permanent Portfolio as The Gold Medal Winner For Investing thread will be painful for anyone self-aware enough to remember it.

It may be the case that there is not one right answer to how much currency risk an investor should build into their portfolio because people have different amounts of currency exposure depending on what is going on outside their portfolio. For example, if you have a gigantic dollar-based mortgage yo...

I think Ad Orientem makes a key point in thinking about your strategy in that student loans are a special kind of debt that can not be discharged by bankruptcy. As I recall the only ways to get get out of them are to do some kind of government service (such as teach in an inner city school) that inc...

Dualstow You should check out Daniel Kahneman's awesome TED lecture on the subject of experience and memory. Be sure to stick around for the question at the end, because it provides an actual dollar figure starting place to think about your paradox. Lecture is 20 minutes long. Completely worth the t...

If this - real rates explanation is accurate, you could probably collect most of the profits in gold speculation from the current bubble and not worry too much about the tedium of following real interest rates by just watching politics and applying a little common sense character judgement. We aren'...

My employer is a gigantic corporation and the stock price generally moves slowly. The way the options work is that they vest in 1/3s over three years. So, for example, if I were awarded 3000 options I would have the right to exercise 1000 after 1 year against the price the day the award was given, 1...

Looking through the archive I couldn't find a discussion on what to do with employee stock options. Did Harry Browne express an opinion on how to fit them into a PP? As an orthodox PP investor I want to invest according to HB's definition, and not speculate. Sticking to HB's definition of investing ...

About a -10% loss for the PP for about 5 months if the past is a guild. Flat PP returns over 12 months. Plus a lot of hysteria on TV. I've been desensitized by all the doomers on the internet and I have no perspective any more on whether something is terrifying or just more noise. Whatever happens, ...

Economists at the SF Federal Reserve think PE ratios are going down over the next ten years as baby boomers try to sell their financial assets to a smaller generation x. They have a nice graph in the paper. http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2011/el2011-26.html If they are right, the...

The article discusses the pocket change issue. In Ecuador local coins were used. In Zimbabwe no one trusts the money made by the government, so local coins are out. South African coins are possible but using them involves figuring out an exchange rate conversion between dollar and rand on top of the...

Harry Browne's first rule is that most of the money you will have in your life comes from your career. Many young people find that their best career opportunities require a move. From that perspective burdening yourself with a difficult to sell and expensive to maintain house may not be the best cho...

I recall at one point Clive suggested a Rate Tart approach to a 5 year ladder. The idea, as I understand it, is to buy the best yield available at 5 years or below. This might improve returns slightly over a fund that holds a rigid 5 year ladder especially in cases where interest rates are changing ...

Momentum investing probably works, but it takes real effort and may make you more anxious about your money than is healthy. It is also a lot more expense than passive investing when you take taxes and trading costs into account. Might be worth trying a small experiment before plunging into something...