When was the last time you taught someone you love how to do something hard? This question came up during a recent conversation I (Tom) had with Leslie Kahlenberg, one of our PPA team members. Leslie and her husband live in the Los Angeles area with their two teenaged sons. Their younger son, recently turned 15, is driving now. And Leslie …

If you were making a mixtape or playlist of your favorite songs about money, what would make the cut? Visiting with a few of our clients this week offered a nice opportunity to turn on the radio. And with the radio on, we could revisit that ongoing question. On one of our recent Park Piedmont weekly team Zooms, we spent …

To help relieve chronic hip pain, I had an epidural yesterday. If you aren’t familiar, an epidural is an injection of medication – often and in my case, a steroid – into the area around your spinal nerves to relieve pain in some part of your body. I’d had one before – it wasn’t a life highlight. I recalled some pain …

We are excited and gratified to share the launch of our first Park Piedmont Advisors book. It’s called Thinking About Investing: Two Decades of Reflective Commentary on Markets and Money, and we would be delighted to send you a copy (or copies), either electronically or in hard copy. Our treat. Just let us know what you prefer. • • • When we first started …

One recent, unseasonably mild late afternoon, I hopped on my bicycle toward my regular mid-week basketball game. A main nearby boulevard has a bike lane, and heading out, I felt great. A comfortable breeze. A nice, easy pace. As I pedaled, I could feel, over my left shoulder, an approaching presence. I turned to look, and what I saw was, candidly, …

A few days before Thanksgiving, motivated by above-freezing weather and a late-afternoon urge for outdoor time, I bundled up and biked a couple miles to a favorite woodsy hiking trail. Often when I walk this trail it is empty of other people, and so as I pedaled, I presumed the same would be true. But as I turned into the postage …

In the everyday reporting about the ups and downs of markets, there is a frequent ambiguity that’s highly important, though easy to overlook. Take this lead story from the front page of this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal. “U.S. stocks slid Friday after a relatively strong jobs report, capping a roller-coaster week in which investors built up hopes for easier …

When you think of your most valuable assets, how much thought goes into your time? For many of us – myself included – there is an automatic quality to time, an assumption that the rhythms of our life will, going forward, look and feel much the way they have. September contributes to this. We live close to a college campus, and while …

Buried near the end of the August 29 Bloomberg Businessweek story, “Hope You Enjoyed the Summer Rally,” was a remarkable piece of data. “The American Association of Individual Investors’ latest survey showed that bears [PPA note: those pessimistic about market prospects] went from outnumbering bulls [those optimistic about market prospects] by 41 percentage points in June to less than 4 percentage …

Twenty-five hundred years ago, a middle-aged man – a husband and father – walks miles across the Indian countryside to pay a visit to a teacher with an extraordinary reputation for insight. Then as now, the Indian landscape was dotted with gurus and spiritual teachers. But there’s something special about this teacher – his humility, his wisdom – that makes …