Good reads from around the Web.
You might think that as an inveterate saver and blogger about investing, I find it easy to picture the grumpy old codger I am putting so much of my money aside for.
But in reality, I can’t picture myself as an old man any more than I can really remember being an 8-year old.
Saving for me is an instinct, not a vision. While other cavemen were feasting on wooly mammoths and toasting the gods and their good fortune, my ancestors were quietly hoarding discarded scraps of mammoth fur. (We made a killing in the Great Cold Snap of 12,000 B.C., I don’t mind admitting).
So I enjoyed Be Kind to An Old Person [1] on the Psy-Fi blog this week as much as the hedonist next door would, if only he could shake off his hangover.
Author Timmar writes:
The basic appeal [of saving] is to self-interest – because we’re talking about making a sacrifice for ourselves now in order to be much better off in the future – and this has led a couple of laterally thinking researchers to wonder whether we actually think of our future selves not as ourselves but as another person.
After all, that person I’m going to be in twenty years time is pretty hard to imagine; why the heck am I going to do anything for that stranger?
Besides short changing the stranger we’ll become, we’re also bad at the maths of compound interest [2] that make setting aside money for 2030 that bit easier, too. Our brains add up in linear terms, whereas compound interest works exponentially.
At least another ice age is off the agenda. Better start saving ice cubes to make a bundle in a few decades’ time.
From the money blogs
- Get rich with good old-fashioned honesty – Mr Money Mustache [3]
- 5 rules for building a dividend portfolio – Clear Eyes Investing [4]
- Big brains don’t outsmart the market – Rick Ferri [5]
- They only get one whack each at the cat – Wade Pfau [6]
- Towards a long-term investing strategy – Simple Living in Suffolk [7]
- Do I provide biased information? – Oblivious Investor [8]
- Giving up the gold vice – Investing Caffeine [9]
- I’ve won the lottery – but I get no winnings until 2042 – Objective Wealth [10]
- How to reclaim mis-sold payment protection insurance – Five Pence Piece [11]
- Is pet insurance worth the money? – Totally Money [12]
Book of the week: Sticking with the theme of growing old with enough money to behave disgracefully, a quick plug for The Age of Aging [13]
Mainstream media money
- Fine wine investors lose millions as companies go under – BBC [14]
- Return of the Euro crisis – The Economist [15]
- How should governments tax capital? [Debate] – The Economist [16]
- Scottish independence: It’ll cost you – The Economist [17]
- Get active in your search for a passive fund – FT [18]
- How to use the tax rules to your advantage – FT [19]
- Does Osborne’s stamp duty hit echo Brown’s pension raid? – Telegraph [20]
- Peer-to-peer lending shows some longevity – Independent [21]
- Rip-off Britain: Why is everything so expensive? – The Guardian [22]
- Random acts of corporate kindness – The Guardian [23]
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