A Wealth of Common Sense. Investor, author, and host of Animal Spirits podcast, focuses on simplifying finance for everyone; has backed over 200 companies.
I recently wrote a short history of credit cards in America.
Here’s the short summary of consumer spending in the modern era:
Consumer credit took off for the first time in the Roaring 20s as Americans desired all of the new household innovations that came to market.
The Great Depression crushed the stock market, crushed the economy, crushed the consumer and turned a generation of households into penny pinchers who ...
Today’s Talk Your Book is brought to you by Chainlink:
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On today’s show, we discuss:
How the plumbing of the financial system can be improved
The evolution from paper, to databases, to blockchain
Why there is a delay in the ACH system
What are the benefits of tokenized securities?
Chainlink’s role in getting data into blockchains, and acting as the connective...
The problem with most retirement calculators and spending rules is that they assume life is linear and static.
In reality, life and spending tend to be lumpy.
JP Morgan’s Guide to Retirement has a neat breakdown of how spending tends to change for retirees as they age.
These are the average spending levels for retired households with $250k-$750k of investible assets:
These are the average spending levels for retir...
I shared this chart recently about the fundamental breakdown of S&P 500 returns in 2025:
The fact that the dividend yield plus the earnings growth more or less equalled the total return makes for a clean story.
Investors tend to focus on a wide variety of variables — the Fed, geopolitics, interest rates, inflation, economic growth, etc. — but corporate earnings are the biggest driver of stock market retur...
Brian Jacobs from Aptus Capital joined us on the show this week to discuss questions about options-based ETFs, buffer ETFs and more.
Further Reading:
How to be Happier at Work
1These stats are from The Evolution of Retirement by Dora Costa.
The post Should You Stop Working When You Become Financially Independent? appeared first on A Wealth of Common Sense.
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Today’s show is sponsored by ClearBridge Investments. International and emerging market stocks outperformed the U.S. in 2025. At ClearBridge, we believe this momentum can continue...
