If not, then please allow me to take you back to yesteryear, and to little-you sitting in your little chair in arithmetic class, so that I can re-introduce you to your dear old friends, the less-than and the greater-than operators — to < and to >. Put those two together, wide-part to wide-part, and technically what you get is “less than / greater than” which, when you think about it means, “not equal to” or, more simply, does not equal.

In my internal dialogue, then, when I’m in Excel-rustling and logic-lassoing mode, trying to come up with a beautiful onion of nested parentheticals within an elegant squirt of Excel-ese that I can infinitely copy throughout the .xls without ever having to worry about it generating an invalid answer, I often find myself saying to myself, and if this cell here does not equal that cell there, then . . . — all the while as my fingers type <‘s and >’s and the like.

* * *

So here’s the point I’m driving at:

Financial Planning <> Investing

So why should we care about a bald assertion that financial planning does not equal investing?

Hmmm . . . .

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Tufte, the Distribution of Wealth, and Long-Run Systems

Monday, March 4, 2013 at 12pm
By John Friedman

When it comes to conveying information in excellent ways, the big-cheese is Edward Tufte. Most of us have never read (or viewed) his work because Tufte’s skill at presenting information has not, perhaps, carried over into his business acumen in the Internet age, as, from a quick look today, it seems that most of his work remains hidden behind massive and unwieldy paywalls. From such walls do legends arise. So I speak somewhat second-handedly here.

It’s likely that most of us have benefited from Mr. Tufte’s work via an overall improvement in how people put information together for our consumption, because, partially as a result of Tufte’s work, many of us are better at inserting information into the part of someone else’s brain in a way that helps them quickly comprehend the information and also allows them to take a deeper dive into the information if they wish.

Happily, Tufte is also on record as a critic of how most people use PowerPoint, apparently finding, oh so accurately if you ask me, that PowerPoint is usually used more to prop up the presenter than it is to help the presenter impart information to the presentee (personally, I think all you need to say is, PowerPoint splices into your television-brain, and leave it at that, ’nuff said).

* * *

This week I saw a graphic presentation that knocked me out and hit me over the head — first, it knocked me out and hit me over the head with what I take to be its Tufte-aesthetic, and, second, it knocked me out and hit me over the head with how straight to the heart of the matter it doth go. Interestingly enough, most of the media I read on Monday said the video had just gone viral that day (officially viral, I guess) even though it was posted to YouTube in mid-November.

Here it is:

So, in terms of Tufte, do you see how this video makes a fairly complex grouping of information pretty dern simple and easily glommed and groked? I especially like how the video quickly resolved every sub-thought of curiosity that it piqued (as if it were reading my mind . . . oo wee oo . . . ), with the pique having nicely served to get the information inserted further up in ye old comprehension channel. So kudos to you, visual designer, and then some.

And in terms of going straight to the heart of the matter, do you see how pretty much every debate we, as a society, have today about how we, as a society, ought to be organized, is tied in with wealth distribution?

Aye . . . wealth distribution . . . now there’s a topic fraught with peril . . .

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Financial Writing Does Not Have to Be Boring

Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 12pm
By John Friedman

A young person the other day mentioned to me in passing, as she almost-imperceptibly stuck a needle deep into the middle of my vein and began pulling a few vials of blood out of moi, all while simultaneously seeing a book peeping out from my brief case, that she liked to read Tom Robbins.

Jitterbug Perfume is my favorite, young-blood-puller says.

I’m reading Frog Pajamas, old-dude-moi responds, partially because it was in the free bin one day when I was walking by the Phoenix bookstore, but also because it’s perfect for reading a few pages while I’m on MUNI. And ya know something? It sure has reminded me all over again of how some writers can just be fun fun fun all the live-long day.

And then I walked out and had myself a fine and pretty fun day, notwithstanding my having started the day by interfacing with one of the most horrible parts of our American way of life (not to worry: the blood panels were for an annual physical!), but yeswithstanding having had it sprinkled with a nice conversation and a reminder that some of the things we loved when we were young are still being loved by some others when they’re young.

* * *

So do you know the work of Tom Robbins? Another Roadside Attraction was a great big book for him way back when, some 40-plus years ago. So, too, was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (although it made for a very much derided — deservedly so, I’d say — movie).

Among certain crowds Tom Robbins has been talked about often enough and long enough that his name has become one of those two-down-to-one sorts of names, with most folks saying his first name and his last name hurriedly and together, almost as if they were one, with an emphasis on the second of the three syllables, as in TomROBbins, and as in, Oh, you read TomROBbins too?

TomROBbins is also very much an upper Puget Sound, Pacific Northwest kind’a guy, so you might hear tell of him ’round those parts. That makes him an excellent writer of rain; no one writes rain better (I reckon that the damn-you-Hank-Stamper–Ken-Kesey, may he rest in blissful peace, is right up there, too).

If you’ve never read any Tom Robbins and (a) you enjoy reading fiction, and (b) you like to laugh out loud while you read, and (c) you enjoy authors who make each sentence, or paragraph or page perhaps, a shining little gem unto itself, each with some kind of clever twist or entendre or something-or-other (distinguishing it from, say, a straightforward, short and to-the-point squirt of Hemingway), then you really ought to.

Rather than quoting something from Tomrobbins here, though, I invite you to pick up one of his books and, monkey-like, throw a dart at a sentence — any sentence — and see if it makes you smile or even out-loud-laugh, or at least makes you admire its beauty and adroitness. Dollars to donuts it will.

A less great way to hear his voice is to go to the online quote sites. There are lots of ’em, but the quality of the quotes, taken out of context as they necessarily are on a quote site, is 100% hit or miss. So old-dino-moi thinks you’re best off instead leafing through some of TR’s pages and seeing what sorts of word-mischief and language-joy one or more of your blind finger-pokes might chance to land upon.

* * *

Almost all financial writing is so very not Tomrobbins’y. It is so very dry. It is so very boring. It is so very never-even-tries-to-make-you-laugh. It is so very never-even-attempts-to-include-sentences-that-make-you-stop-for-a-moment-and-think-“Wow-that-was-a-really-wonderful-sentence.”

To this all I can say is:

Well, why not? Why must the writing be so boring?

As it happens, I’ve given this some thought.

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Couples and Financial Planning: Of Communication Flows and Gender-Neutrality

Monday, February 25, 2013 at 7pm
By John Friedman

Seth MacFarlane made a lot of jokes last night during the Oscars that had a lot of people talking. The consensus emerging among the talkers not pleased with Mr. MacFarlane’s banter was that, yes, he was juvenile but, above all, very sexist, in that the world in which his jokes live and breathe is a world in which females are treated differently — and far less well — than males.

And then today I read an article about how financial advisors should work with their married clients in ways that tend to increase the likelihood that the wife will not fire the financial advisor when the husband dies. The article brooked no Pat nor Randy nor Les nor Terry nor any other gender-neutral name. Rather, it went there, and was all he-this and she-that, and all husband-this and wife-that — all very gender-specific.

For instance, in the article the author, after noting that 70% of financial advisors, “Fail to develop a trusting relationship with the wife during her husband’s lifetime,” continues by suggesting that, to avoid losing the client when the husband dies, the advisor should:

Invite the wife to all the financial meetings and let her know she is an important part of her family’s financial team. While you may find it easier to meet with just the husband, this strategy can be costly as it leaves many women feeling neglected and overlooked.

After reading that line I have to say that I found myself dumbstruck, with my Left-Coast freak-flag flying and my jaw all a’slack, because that sort of thinking and this sort of language is just fall-off-the-end-of-the-earth foreign to me and to the people with whom I work; it’s also, no doubt, indicative of the way many financial advisors and many of their clients think.

Keeping with the topic du jour of the last 24 hours, it occurs to me that some of the more hotly-debated Seth McFarlane jokes would be right at home with this author’s recommendation, which I would summarize as:

Gents, do think about inviting the client’s little lady to your meetings, because that way she won’t feel neglected, and that will increase the odds that she will not decrease your assets-under-management number (and therefore your ongoing AUM fees), after her hubby — the guy you actually like to work with — dies.

We all write for a specific audience, yes? The audience for which this author writes is different from the audience for which I write.

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Top 10 Things that Suck Cash

Friday, February 22, 2013 at 11am
By John Friedman

My first boss (from back in my lawyering days) early on told me that growth sucks cash, by which he meant, if a client decides to grow a company, you had better tell the client that s/he client had better be prepared to spend some serious money. My boss’s phrase is a bit more pithy than my translation here, don’t’ch’ya think? So his phrase stuck with me, mantra-like: growth sucks cash.

Over the years I’ve come to view the growth sucks cash mantra as being meaningful to all financial existences, whether it be the financial existence of a business, the financial existence of a family, or the financial existence of an individual.

I work with all three kinds of clients (all three can just about always use some help improving their overall financial health, yes?). When it comes to my work with most business clients, usually quite early on I find it necessary to look the client straight in the eye and say, You know, don’t you, that growth sucks cash? Yes, you say? Good. So let’s figure out what that looks like. With individuals and families it’s not as predictable, but nonetheless I just about always find that, somewhere along the way, we’re having a conversation and the absolutely right thing for them to hear is: growth sucks cash.

So in my first boss’s honor, and to take that phrase around the iteration race track a few times, here’s today’s Top 10:

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