Category: Personal Finance

I have been hearing a lot lately about Acorns. It’s a savings app which automatically rounds your card purchases up to the nearest dollar and invests that spare change into a diversified set of ETFs. It’s a fun concept and an interesting way to get early-stage investors accustomed to saving for retirement. And it’s nice that it’s a lightweight app so the barrier to entry is very low.

The problem is that Acorns cannot possibly help you save any useful amount. The system of rounding up is totally inadequate for retirement savings. And even more importantly, Acorns is extremely expensive.

I just finished a run in my neighborhood. Took about 70 minutes. To pass the time, I decided to keep track of how many drivers I ran by that were texting and driving. Based on my very professional, scientific results, I have concluded that basically everyone is spending a large portion of their drives texting.

When I am working with a new client for Luther Wealth, the first thing I do is make them count all their money. It sounds silly, but if you’ve had a few jobs, there’s a pretty good chance you have an old 401k laying around somewhere that you haven’t looked at in a while. In fact, in New York State alone, there is over $15.5 billion laying around in unclaimed, forgotten investment accounts. But the first step in creating a retirement plan is to figure out what you’re starting with.

Young investors usually start off investing in stocks through mutual funds, often through retirement vehicles like 401k funds and IRAs. In many cases, single stocks (stock in a single company) don’t enter into an investor’s portfolio until much later. Often, the first time an early-stage investor owns a single stock is when they are granted some stock in their own employer firm as part of an incentive program.

What should this young employee do with their new stock? They believe their company is going places, and they might have heard some office chatter about how much money their coworkers have made by holding stock during a recent period of rapid growth.

I’m going to make an unpopular recommendation. Do not invest in your own company, and if you own shares already, sell them!

My favorite article this week shows how in the past 20 years or so, the age cohort of American CEOs hasn’t changed at all (i.e. baby boomers). Stay tuned next week for an explanation of why you shouldn’t own stock in the firm you work for!

• The nuclear family was a mistake. David Brooks, The Atlantic. Fascinating.
• The Boomer Blockade: How One Generation Reshaped the Workforce and Left Everyone Behind. Think Boundless. Since 2005, the age cohort of American CEOs hasn’t changed. Pretty weird, right? This has lots of implications for younger workers, and the article focuses on the economics of Gen X / Y / Millennials in contrast to the boomer generation. It occurred to me that there also might be some gender effects as well? It’s well-documented that women are extremely under-represented in C-suites. Is it possible that worker age dynamics are exacerbating workplace sexism? HT Tyler Cowen.
• The Folly Of Bernie Sanders’ National Rent Control Proposal. CATO, Ryan Bourne.
• The Modern Mind May Be 100,000 Years Old. Nautilus.
• ‘The intelligence coup of the century’: For decades, the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries. Washington Post. Daaaang.

Most people know that April 15th is the deadline for tax returns. But it’s also an important deadline for your retirement savings. April 15th is also the deadline for contributing to your previous year’s IRA contribution limit. This can have important consequences for your retirement savings.