Vol 3, Issue 15. Quarter 3 - 2026.  There was a famous episode of the Cosby show where the youngest child, Rudy, asks her father a simple riddle.  “Mr. Smith and his son Arthur were driving a car. The car crashes. Mr. Smith is killed instantly, and his son, Arther is...

Vol 3, Issue 14. Quarter 3 - 2026.  A Professor at Alcorn State University became notable recently due to a bit of pedagogical sleight of hand. He gave his students a question in an electronic document. What he did not tell them was that he had embedded a word in the...

Vol 3, Issue 14. Quarter 3 - 2026. Let’s restate the idea from the title in a different way. If you truly understand something you don’t need complex tools to explain it. The contrapositive of that statement is that if you do need complex tools to explain it, then you...

Vol 3, Issue 13. Quarter 3 - 2026.  Apparently, it is absolutely necessary for me to define one of the simplest ideas that I can even think of – the humble average.  I say this because I so often hear people speak as though they have no idea what an average is. Let’s...

Vol 3, Issue 12. Quarter 2 - 2026.  Consider the human side of the thief. Let’s look at the story of a short guy from Brooklyn. Just for fun let’s call him Ernie. Ernie is a young investment analyst looking to start his own asset management business, handling...

Vol 3, Issue 12. Quarter 2 - 2026.  There is a little fear monster that lives in the back of your skull. I suspect that right about now he is saying something like: “The stock market is at an all-time high and what goes up must come down – so this is a good time to...

Vol 3, Issue 10. Quarter 2 - 2026. Golda Meir was the first female Prime Minister of Israel in the late 1960’s. She is famous for many things including the quote, “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.” This is a common call out when someone is pretending to be...

Vol 3, Issue 9. Quarter 2 - 2026. I was recently reminded about a short lesson for children that I saw on PBS many years ago. As best I can recall, Lavar Burton rode a bicycle with the aid of the wind for 20 miles at a speed of 20 miles per hour. After a short rest,...

In retirement planning we are routinely advised about how to deal with two major sources of uncertainty. How long we will live in retirement, and market returns over that period of time. All manner of simulations, fancy calculus, and varied means of projections are...

Vol 3, Issue 12. Quarter 2 - 2026. Imagine it’s 1950. You’re 65, your back is ruined from thirty years in a coal mine or a textile mill, and your "retirement plan" consists of a small Social Security check and the hope that your children have a spare bedroom. In 1950,...

Vol 3, Issue 11. Quarter 2 - 2026. Turn on the financial media, and every CEO is bragging about their "AI integration" and "agentic workflows," whatever the hell that means. They are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to implement AI-based tools. But here is the...

Vol 3, Issue 8. Quarter 1 - 2026. I recently ran across a bit of the usual alarmist financial “News” that caught my eye. This particular piece was screaming that “the government is going to eliminate 401K accounts.” Aside from the fact that this is political suicide...

Vol 3, Issue 6. Quarter 1 - 2026. According to the National Institute for Retirement Security (NIRS), “The average American worker has less than $1,000 saved for retirement.”  If you want to be more precise, the number they come up with is $955. This is reported in...