NWP Monthly Digest | December 2024
Gratitude is a super food. This time of year, giving thanks for the wonderful lives we lead and the food on our table is generally commonplace, but I’m here to tell you that all of the healthy eating in the world pales in comparison to waking up every morning (and not just on the last Thursday of November) and truthfully feeling gratitude for what you have.
I have no doubt that there are things in your life that are bringing you down. It happens to everyone, myself included. We just went through a grueling election cycle with non-stop, negative political ads designed to make you angry - whether your candidate won or not. It works. People are feeling left behind, in more ways than one, and on both sides of the political spectrum. And yet…
Regardless of what ails you, the sun still comes up, the grind continues, and the blessing of being able to exist hasn’t gone away. We live in a time of extraordinary progress and prosperity, and things will continue to get better. If you don’t believe that, perhaps you need a plain dose of perspective:
In the past 20 years or so, the proportion of people living in poverty has been cut in half.
The share of homes that had electricity in 1870 was exactly zero. Today the proportion of people with electricity is 85%.
More than 37% of deaths in 1900 were caused by infectious diseases. That number dropped to less than 5% by 1955 and just 2% by 2009.
Up until the 1870s, people typically worked 11-12 hour days. By 1900, the typical worker put in 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. It wasn’t until 1940 that it came down to the standard 40-hour, 5-day workweek. Most of these jobs were not particularly safe, either.
The average American now retires at age 62. One hundred years ago, the average American died at age 51.
In 1800, among all babies who were ever born, roughly half died during their childhood. Life expectancy was just 30 years and no country had a life expectancy above 40. Life expectancy at birth was only 45 years in 1870. The average life expectancy around the world today is 72.
NOTE: If you want to read more about progress and optimism, I pulled these stats from Ben Carlson’s piece on 50 Ways the Word is Getting Better.
Perspective and gratitude are an excellent antidote for anger and anxiety. The media does a good job of talking about things being “unprecedented” or that we are living in “the most divisive time in the history of the world”, but the majority of that blather is meant to drive clicks and eyeballs, unfortunately.
Listen, I’m not making light of things that are troubling. If anything, I think that humans need to maintain vigilance and the desire to increase the standard of living for their children. What I am saying is that constant doom and gloom can force you to lose your perspective. Progress and wealth never increase in a straight line, and the dips are a natural part of the ebb and flow of life.
Why is that so important to keep in mind? We spend a lot of time working with clients on defining their goals and helping them know how their money can be useful and make them happier. Retirement planning is fairly passe, because there is a mountain of time that you spend living and making money by comparison. I spend a lot of time with clients having them think about preparing for a lot of possibilities rather than an all-in, life consuming pursuit of someday having enough money to finally enjoy yourself when you retire.
My mother and father had me in 1976. I was what was called a “happy mistake”. My brother was 14 years old and my sister 10 (almost 11) when I was born. My parents, in stories that have been shared with me over the years, were already discussing how they might retire someday when my brother and sister were out of the house…and then along comes another baby.
While my birth surely changed the course of their plans, it wasn’t the only thing that got in the way. My mother was diagnosed with Leukemia in 1997, and she passed away from pneumonia after battling cancer (and ultimately beating cancer) in 2005 at the age of 63.
One of the most difficult paradoxes of life is preparing for the future. It is forever unknowable and also inevitable at the same time.
Watching from a distance as my parents went through this obviously colors the lens that I view financial preparation through. But it doesn’t make it less important.
Defining the Game
So, can you define the game that you’re playing? Truthfully, can you? Is it that you want to put your kids through college without any debt? Do you want to work really hard and retire early, when you’re 50, so you can enjoy life a little? Do you want to travel the world and experience different cultures? Start a business? Do you just want to figure out how to pay the bills next month?
Defining the game is up to each of us. On the Bogleheads Forum (a website where people share expertise on personal finance and investing), you’ll occasionally see the following goals listed as a template:
Mortgage paid off
Money in the bank (cash) to pay your annual property taxes and homeowner’s insurance
25x your living expenses in a moderate investment portfolio (60% stocks and 40% bonds)
The first two are pretty straightforward, and the last one might require a little explanation. 25x of your living expenses is simply the 4% withdrawal rule with the math flipped upside down.
25x of $100,000 per year is $2.5 million.
A 4% withdrawal rate from a $2.5 million portfolio is $100k per year.
Do you want to define the game that way? That is obviously very narrow and speaks only to retirement. I have a few issues with this definition, however. If you have a 3% mortgage rate (or less), I’d have a really hard time telling you to use any of your money to pay it off. You can earn more interest purchasing Treasury Bills than the interest you would save by not having a mortgage.
What if you have kids? There is a famous saying that financial planners have thrown around for years, and it is mostly, at least intellectually honest.
“There are several ways to pay for college, but there is only one way to pay for your retirement.”
My wife and I have two kids in college right now, and another heading there in less than three years. That saying doesn’t help us one bit or make us sleep better at night. I highly recommend you save more money than you think you should to someday help pay for college.
Life and money are always about tradeoffs, and there is no right answer to all of these questions. The good news is that we are allowed to define the game we are playing every day. And we can change that definition whenever we want. Financial preparation for a mosaic of goals is much more practical than simply planning for your “retirement” someday, whatever retirement may be.
Noble Wealth Pro Tip of the Month
The FAFSA opened up this week for 2025-2026 school year. If you have kids in college, you likely have been paying attention to this and getting ready to fill it out again. For those of us who dealt with the crazy changes with everything last year as the Department of Education overhauled the entire system, it might be a pleasant surprise that it’s ready so early.
Remember, as a parent, you will need your own FSA ID, but you will also need an FSA ID for each child that is attending college. Both parent and student need to fill out the FAFSA independently. The earlier, the better.
For parents, you will also need the following:
Marital status
Legal residence
Social Security numbers for you, your spouse, and your child
Gross income from all sources (provided via your 2023 tax return)
Assets (excluding primary residence)
Child support received (if applicable)
Spouse's income and assets (if married)
Here is a quick guide from the U.S. Department of Education on completing the forms from last year. It’s still helpful.
Things We’re Reading and Enjoying
The election results are in: how will that impact your investments? by Jeff Brainard & Grant Glenn - noblewealth.io
In case you missed it, Grant and I wrote a piece on how the investment landscape will be impacted by a Trump presidency and the House and Senate being controlled by the same party.
It’s natural for humans to struggle with uncertainty. Our desire, at the root of our being, is to try and overcome obstacles before they even happen to us. This is something instilled generation after generation and has been deeply ingrained in our psyche for thousands of years.
As of this writing, there is still no credible product on the market that allows us to see the future. After last month’s election and the best post-election day rally in the history of the S&P 500 and the Russell 2000®, numerous questions have come our way from clients trying to understand what a Trump presidency (and, more importantly, a Republican mandate controlling both the Senate and House as well) would look like.
50 Ways the World is Getting Better, by Ben Carlson - A Wealth of Common Sense
Mentioned above, and a piece I refer back to often.
I am a glass-is-half-full kind of person and have been getting a lot of feedback from people of late that the world is only getting worse. Here’s a post from a few years ago that lists the immense progress we’ve seen as a species.
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“I am not an optimist. I am a very serious possibilist.” – Hans Rosling
Can Musk find $2 trillion in spending cuts for Trump? by Jeffrey Frankel, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Business
This is a pragmatic and practical view on what Elon Musk and Vivek Ramasaway’s Department of Government Efficiency are up against as they look to slash government spending. Fascinating and should be required reading for all voters.
Trump on November 12 announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head up a new Department of Government Efficiency, to help cut waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal budget. The President-elect called it a new “Manhattan Project.” When Musk was asked by transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick, “How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?” Musk’s reply was “at least $ 2 trillion.” That’s $ 2 trillion per year. Or 31 % of the $6.5 trillion total of US spending. Or 7 % of GDP [= $ 2 trillion / $28 trillion].
“There is nothing noble about being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self.” - Ernest Hemingway
