“Arghhhh,” I head from the basement as I puttered around my kitchen on Sunday morning.

“What about rising interest rates and the growing deficit?” asked Sue, a retiree, in a panicked tone of voice at a recent investment club meeting. “Isn’t anybody worried about these things?

“Does 1% really make any difference?” John asked. We were discussing John’s cash and emergency savings.

It stands to reason that, people who manage to get to the gym on a regular basis are generally healthier people.

The financial experts know a lot more about the markets and how the markets will perform in the future than the ordinary rest of us.  Right?

“You’re doing what?” inquired Tim incredulously. Tim and I were discussing college savings for his 10^th grade daughter, and he knew that I too was saving for college for my high school daughter and college son. “You heard me right the first time,” I said, “my 25-year-old is funding his siblings’ 529s.”

Unfortunately, Tim doesn’t have the same secret weapon that I have and so can’t take advantage of my strategy.

“I’ll never retire,” Jack said with exasperation.

Imagine a person who always, in every circumstance, makes rational decisions with his money.  He saves when he ought to and spends exactly as he should spend, in order to maximize the “utility” of whatever wealth he happens to possess.  He defers gratification with ease.  When he invests, he has instant and total access to all possible information related to every item in his, including the details of every company’s financials and any impactful world events, even if they haven’t reached the news media yet.  If he found a $100 bill on the sidewalk, he would immediately go out and invest it in a steel mill.

You can be forgiven if you’re skeptical that Congress will be able to completely overhaul our tax system after failing to overhaul our health care system, but professional advisors are studying the newly-released nine-page proposal closely nonetheless.  We only have the bare outlines of what the initial plan might look like before it goes through the Congressional sausage grinder: