What caught my eye this week.
How do you feel today? Happy? Sad? Despairing? Joyous?
Can’t believe there’s still a week to go until Euro 2024 kicks off to relieve the tedium of the same old, same old, soggy British spring?
Or dreading football on the telly 24/7?
Hmm… can I ask how old you are?
Age-appropriate emotions
For as long as I can remember, posts about the happiness ‘smile curve’ have been a staple of personal finance blogs.
Perhaps it was because so many bloggers were in or approaching middle-age.
The smile curve theory, you see, came from research showing a person’s lifetime happiness followed a U-shaped curve.
You were happier when you were young and carefree. And you were happier again when you were old and grateful and didn’t give so many tosses anymore.
But in the middle? Loaded down by mortgage repayments, ungrateful children, and job stress?
Not so much.
No doubt the theory resonated in FIRE circles because it gave an extra reason for – and impetus to exit – the heads-down push through the suck to achieve financial freedom.
But – alas – it seems the smile curve has turned lop-sided.
Like this video about unhappiness
In The Global Loss of the U-Shaped Curve of Happiness, David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson tell us new research has…
…shown something astonishing and of global importance: the general contour of happiness across the age-span has changed around the world.
Young adults are now the least happy people, and this broad multinational change began sometime in the mid-2010s, right as Gen Z was entering this age-group.
I’ve linked to other takes on this trend before. It does seem to be well-established.
Of course this being 2024, every faction has a different theory as to why young people (especially young women) are so much more despairing:
- Progressives blame structural inequalities and a greater awareness of dangerous prejudices such as racism and misogyny.
- Traditionalists see an erosion of family values that’s left young people adrift with nothing to aim for but satisfying their own hedonistic ends.
- Environmentalists point out the climate – and our future – is going to hell in a hand basket. Despair is rational.
- Techno-sceptics warn that smartphones daily pipe a globe’s worth of desire and misery into eyeballs only meant for the surrounding 5km of savannah.
- Older people think identity politics has given everyone a grudge.
- Financially-minded Monevator readers might blame sky-high house prices and rents, or how taxes scythe away young people’s incomes even as more bungs go to pensioners.
There is something in all of it. But I do think smartphones should take most of the blame for the specific curve shift.
Some version of everything else was going on well before 2017, after all.
Thanks to smartphones and social media though, young people do appear to be much more aware of both the wider cruelties and injustices in the world, and also the roadblocks standing in their own way.
But of course they learn about most of it through polarised social media and 30-second videos. There’s little room for nuance.
To generalise: I’d say they’re more aware, but less informed.
Student grant philosophising
When I was in my early 20s, talking to the average person at a party about the sort of issues that everyone now has a gripe about usually earned you funny looks.
I know this because I read very widely for a science student – everything from business profiles to Marx to AdBusters magazine – and I actually was talking to people about the troubles of the world at parties.
And it usually went down about as well as you’d expect.
Obviously I like to think I was bit more intellectually sophisticated than the average 90’s kid pining for The Beach without wondering what it meant for the locals or the ecology.
But I suppose you could just see a posturing Rick from the Young Ones.
The point is though, it took some research to even know about much of the stuff in my all-faction complaint list above. You didn’t get a five-second hit when sitting on the loo.
Most people spent little time thinking about any of it, unless they happened to catch a late night documentary on the BBC.
Whereas today reminders are omnipresent.
And at the clear risk of sounding like a curmudgeonly old man, while I’m heartened young people now appreciate the world is a pretty screwed-up place, I wish they’d try harder to understand why.
Regular debates I’m having with a younger friend about the horror show in the Middle East come to mind. But it’s true of many things.
Younger people genuinely do seem to care more than most of my generation did at that age. And they at least say more of the right things about the world beyond their own desires.
But ask them what should be done about any of the issues and there’s often little substance there.
Walking back to happiness
At least 30 years ago the typical person was unhypocritical in not giving two hoots about, say, the plight of indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin.
There was a pure-hearted obliviousness to it.
Whereas now people see a TikTok video, they’re angry, but they seem to not explore what’s even feasible as a remedy – beyond waving their hands at capitalism, men, or wokery, depending on how they roll.
I suspect this blend of being constantly provoked but at the same time feeling it’s well beyond anyone’s control is even worse than when I was young and engaged myself.
And that this is what has pulled down the lefthand of the smile curve.
At least I got happier with time. I guess they will too. Perhaps you get immune to gloom? Or maybe you just get complacent.
Then again maybe it really is all because young people can’t see how they’ll ever afford a house – and yet they can’t follow the old escape route into sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll either because online dating is awful, they know the drugs don’t work, and today’s music is written by robots.
Gosh I feel old. But at least I’m happier than I was!
Apologies to anyone reading who is under-30. Despite my gripes above, you’re actually my second-favourite generation. (After my own Gen X, of course. Slackers forever.)
Please share your perspective below on the fashion for youthful angst. That way we can all learn together.
Have a great weekend!
From Monevator
FIRE update: third anniversary – Monevator
Buying the Great British boot sale – Monevator [Mogul members]
From the archive-ator: Cash is king, or cash is trash? – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view click through to read the article. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing to sites you visit a lot.
Eurozone cuts interest rate for the first time in five years – BBC
Tribunal cases to rise as UK firms push back on home working – Guardian
Monzo makes first profit even as credit losses soar – Evening Standard
Computer-maker Raspberry Pi gears up for LSE float next week… – CityAM
…with Shein is tipped to file for a £50bn float this month – Sky
LSE pushes for big screen outside HQ to champion success [Search result] – FT
Baillie Gifford cancels all remaining sponsorships of literary festivals – Guardian
London’s Imperial beats Oxbridge to be named second best Uni in world – Yahoo
“Taxes paid in London fund ever more of Britain’s public spending. Twenty five years ago the English Midlands were net contributors to the Treasury. Now they are more dependent on fiscal transfers than Scotland…” – Tom Forth via X
Election section mini-special
Tories promise tax cut for parents to ‘boost families’ financial security’… – Sky News
…but middle-classes face a 70% tax trap under the shake-up – Telegraph via MSN
Labour says it will make permanent Tory’s mortgage guarantee scheme – BBC
Statistics watchdog criticises Tory claim Labour would raise taxes by £2,000 – LBC
Can Labour’s GB Energy plan future-proof UK’s power generation sector? – Guardian
How the Lib Dem plan for free personal care would work – This Is Money
Taxes, NHS waiting lists, and small boats claims fact checked – BBC
Could a future government cap ISA savings at £100k? – This Is Money
Products and services
The DIY diehards who built 36 affordable homes from scratch – Guardian
Revolut seems to have a fraud complaints procedure problem – Which
People were queuing up to get the new King Charles banknotes – Guardian
Open an account with low-cost platform InvestEngine via our link and get up to £50 when you invest at least £100 (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine
The best ways to use Amex Reward points – Be Clever With Your Cash
Bank ‘super-ATMs’ to bring cash machines to stranded communities – Guardian
Sign-up to Trading 212 via our affiliate link to claim free fractional shares. T&Cs apply – Trading 212
Is the new Leon coffee subscription worth it? – Be Clever With Your Cash [bonus: Pret]
Homes for sale with wartime connections, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Don’t be a hero – Humble Dollar
Why we don’t have worry about index tracker dominance just yet – Financial Bodyguard
How high-tax Britain destroyed what it means to be rich – Telegraph via Y.F.
Is maximising credit card rewards worth it? – Of Dollars and Data
Decumulation, deliberations, and dilemmas – Simple Living in Somerset
You will never run out of money, because your rational – Financial Samurai
Savers blast UK government over state pension top-up ‘chaos’ – This Is Money
Dreaming of retiring abroad? It’s more difficult than you think [Search result] – FT
Setting the record straight on stocks for the long run – CFA Institute
Retirement thinking mini-special
The psychology of retirement spending – Morningstar
“Why am I so afraid to accept it’s time to retire?” – Guardian
Rewiring the way we think about retirement [Podcast] – Humans vs Retirement
Naughty corner: Active antics
The hunt for truly alternative investments [Search result] – FT
From ByteDance to SpaceX: valuing Scottish Mortgage’s private investments – Proactive
“Multi-strategy hedge funds are full of kids who know nothing about portfolio management” – eFinancial Careers
On the fence – Humble Dollar
Do mothers-in-law matter? – Klement on Investing
Kindle book bargains
A Man for All Markets by Edward O. Thorpe – £0.99 on Kindle
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth – £0.99 on Kindle
Taxtopia by The Rebel Accountant – £0.99 on Kindle
The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Six things to know about the new ‘anti-greenwashing’ rule – Which
Nature groups launch legal bid over wildlife loss – BBC
Global heat record broken for 12th straight month – Axios
Welsh nursery growing seagrass to save marine habitat – Guardian
Calls for investigation into ‘harmful’ scampi sourcing – BBC
‘An intergenerational crime against humanity’: what will it take for political leaders to start taking climate change seriously? – The Conversation
Robot overlord roundup
Big tech has stopped growing. AI can’t solve that for them – Sherwood
How AI will unlock creativity for everyone – Om Malik
Inside Google DeepMind’s effort to understand its own creations – Semafor
Five ways AI can improve your dating life – The Conversation
How AI could roil the next economic crisis – Axios
Off our beat
Mystery as doctor finds live goldfish in garden – BBC
Russia is already trying to disrupt the 2024 Paris Olympic Games – Microsoft
Lazy work, good work – Morgan Housel
The Internet peaked with ‘the dress’ in 2015, and then it unraveled – Vox
Our nomadic life – Humble Dollar
Why is Hungary so small? – Uncharted Territories
Americans are thinking about immigration all wrong – The Atlantic via MSN
J Lo cancels… – The Leftsetz Letter
Why Lithuania is the best place in the world to be young – Guardian
Here’s what a Nobel Prize-winning scientist wants you to know about the Covid-19 vaccines and the future of RNA – CNN
Melissa Thompson’s recipes for a better barbecue [Search result] – FT
And finally…
“The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.”
– Winston Churchill, Churchill: Walking With Destiny
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I’m not sure blaming phones if particularly useful. Literacy and the printing press started that ball rolling 400 years ago. King Canute stood in front of the tide to demonstrate the limit of his powers, not to demonstrate his hubris.
People need to think about the world differently, break out from the melodramatic trap. Life is better than at any other time in history and getting better all the time.
Factfulness by the Hans Rosling et al would be a good start.
haha you’re getting old 😉 Comes to us all if we’re lucky.
> I’d say they’re more aware, but less informed.
Not just them, I fear. I was taught at school of the reason for the separation between the legislature/executive and the judiciary, something that seems to escape more politicians than it should, since it’s their job to be the legislature! I’d venture all of us are more aware but less informed. I do wonder if the gatekeepers of yore did a service that boosters of disintermediation never acknowledged. Welcome to the dark forest
I thought I’d edited the above, Factfulness is of course by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund
Oh my… your six bullets and your conclusion are right on the money @TI.
For what it’s worth, unplugging from the 24-hr news cycle and the vast majority of social media has made me a LOT happier. Reading the monthly analysis of the news (via The Economist for example) somehow makes it less stressful than the shouty headlines.
Married 53 years ,3 married kids,8 grandchildren-so have a window on the generations
Each generation has its betes -noires
My parents had WW2, I had the 60s where apparently you could do anything you wanted to the background of the best music ever and we did-too easy to screw up, COVID did the current teenagers great damage-unfortunately not the disease itself but the curbs inflicted on them by the grown ups etc etc
Being competent at what you do plus being responsible (duties as well as rights) seems to bring regular bursts of happiness -ie getting that job promotion,passing that music grade exam etc
Aiming for happiness itself in a vacuum is a chimera -it’s very much a result and necessary adjunct to living as wisely as possible
As far as I can tell the current 16 life forms I know most about are reasonably happy -so far!
xxd09
PS my personal gripe-everyone should do history to some depth so hopefully mistakes of previous generations are not repeated
I found Rolf Dobelli’s “Stop Reading The News” (currently 99p on Amazon.uk) an interesting take on the way “news” can take over our lives.
@SteveK #6
Farnam St has a good short on why you should stop reading news along that vein too
I don’t consume the news any more and feel I’m better off without it. The appalling coverage of the pandemic was the final push for me (not that I’m aligning with the nuttier critics of the media, they are generally worse).
Having said that we have always had a media pushing doom and gloom, in my youth we all thought we were going to be burnt to a crisp in a nuclear attack.
I suspect there is more going on and part of it at least is down to comparison. It doesn’t matter what part of your life you are thinking about if you look on social media you will find someone who appears to be doing better than you. If you like cars it won’t take long before you find someone with a garage full of Ferraris on YouTube, like to dress well it will be someone with a wardrobe of designer clothes you can’t afford, into fitness then there are plenty of unattainable bodies to admire.
We used to compare ourselves to our neighbours but now there is a whole world out there that is out of our reach. It takes a strong constitution to ignore all of that. I know I didn’t have that when I was young.
I think I’d like to stop reading, and watching, the news. I’m much more cynical about the media these days. Last night I watched the so called election debate aghast at the viewer manipulation. A left wing audience applauded every left wing opinion while anything even remotely right wing was received with utter silence. Almost every time Farage said something we were treated to a picture of the same bloke in the audience tutting and shaking his head. Oh, but the BBC didn’t select the audience, some third party did it. Okay, what is the political stance and independence of that third party? What was the brief given out by the paying customer? Why choose London as the venue, which everyone outside of London thinks is a leftist hell hole? And why am I sounding like a Brexit-voting gammon? Or, possibly more accurately, why am I turning into one? I blame the media.
“You will never run out of money, because your rational ”
Sorry to be that guy. But ‘you’re’
Maslow’s hierarchy – with a guarantee of welfare that didn’t exist before people aren’t so worried nowadays about food, rent, healthcare, etc since the state will always cover it. Without being worried about survival or war people go on to higher level worries like loneliness, insecurities, how they stack up in career/ other life achievements, etc, leading to worse mental health than when people were happy just to eat
The best cure for taking the News too seriously is to be involved in a story. Watch the pig’s ear the journalists make of it and you will never take them seriously again.
There is a line to be drawn between being healthily distanced and ignorant but it’s not hard to draw.
And here I was thinking it’s me that’s out of sync with the rest of the world. I’ve been avoiding any form of televised news ever since the journalists morphed into illiterate celebrities.
Seems to me the “news” is more about those presenting / reporting it than the actual, real-life world events they purport to be so concerned about.
I agree smartphones shoulder most of the blame. They take away the ability to be present in the moment and enjoy life. Just look at a photo of the young crowd at a Taylor Swift concert and they will view the entire thing through their smartphones, same at any major event/life experience. I loved my uni and young adult years, but I don’t think I would have been anywhere near as happy if I’d had an iPhone.
Growing up in poverty during the era of being half a hour away from nuclear apocalypse and finding we somehow survived (even if there were some near misses) tends to make me more rather than less optimistic about humanity’s future. Progressing from poverty to reaching the point where I’m unlikely to ever struggle to buy a loaf of bread again also helps. I look around, and I think there are problems – but, environmental boundaries aside, things have generally got better. We’re more tolerant, there are fewer wars, most people have enough to eat (possibly too much) etc.
But there are also some difficult transitions to navigate eg climate change (and becoming a lower carbon economy), resource consumption as a whole, AI, ageing global population etc. Suspect the world will look a lot better in 2100, not that will be much comfort for the generations between now and then.
I canned online news a year or so back, TV news several years before then. They are simple misery engines – and there’s something a bit disturbing about treating other people’s sorrows as entertainment. It’s the modern day equivalent of watching an execution. Social media is an accelerator of the same. Listening to the missus browse stuff on her phone, and it’s like hearing 10 second snippets of ad after ad after ad.
Gen Z do have grounds for moaning, and frankly that’s how humans and progress works. We (attempt to) make something better, and then decide the view from the new vantage point doesn’t look quite as good as we hope, we bemoan the efforts of our predecessors and so the cycle repeats. But they also seem to be a great bunch, no better or worse than previous generations. Good luck to them – I daresay, they will do about as well as we did.
I also think smartphones are to blame for falling genY happiness, but not for the reasons most often put forward. I reckon the problem is that social interaction via the internet/apps has displaced face to face interaction and physical presence, which means people aren’t getting the emotional support they really need. There’s an epidemic of loneliness, with smartphone addiction both a cause and an effect of that. We are social primates – we need real interaction, not the second-rate virtual kind.
Love the Dark Forest link @ermine.
Re @TI: “Regular debates I’m having with a younger friend about the horror show in the Middle East come to mind”: the Uncharted Territories (UT) link in the weekend reading – well worth checking out Thomas Pueyo’s nine part UT Substack series (12 Oct – 8 Nov 23) covering the Israel/Palestine issue from the ancient world through to current era. I haven’t yet read anything elsewhere quite as even handed/balanced, as deeply contextualised and as thoughtful and well researched on the issue .
The CFA piece in this weekend’s links is important because Edward McQuarrie’s recent research has created a massive stir on what the true long term equity risk premium might be and how to accurately view the potential return pathways for different equity and bond mixes over typical (30 year) LTBH periods.
On the Financial Bodyguard piece on index tracking dominance; recommend checking out the contrary view from Michael Green in his ‘Yes I give a fig’ Substack post “Be Better” (26 Mar 24); and to also look up the SSRN available research on the Inelastic Markets Hypothesis. I don’t necessarily agree with any of it, but I think it has sufficient credibility to be taken seriously as a possibility.
I can strongly recommend using Dead Ringers / The News Quiz as a primary source of news.
I agree and I was you at those parties too
I have long said (certainly since the very early 2000s when things started ramping insanely) that the policies, particularly around the financialisation of housing to the degree that has happened, would create consequences far, far beyond not being able to ‘afford a house’, in terms of (rightly) disengaged, disenfranchised youth.
Noone listened then, and now they do but they don’t want to do anything about it.
This cassandra-esque feeling has extended to most aspects of my life, and transformed into a sort of pragmatic gamification of how I live.
It has for me at least created a richer, more fulfilling way to live. This is what I tell my (step) kids today. Don’t worry about things you cannot control. Observe them, and keep learning. Be contrarian when your gut tells you it’s the right thing to do. Don’t listen blindly to others, especially the media or the government.
But above all, have broad interests and always be curious. Do things without fear. And have a sort of stoicism about life in general.
Material goods are largely meaningless. You can enjoy them, you can want them, but remember that everything you really need is your health and your skills.
Be ruthless in getting your value – and be loyal when you are given it.
Bit woo woo but there you go!
Didn’t Martin Lewis (BBC)newscaster many years ago make the same observation.which he was ridiculed for back in the 2000
@TI In “News” per yahoo “Imperial beats Oxbridge”.
The methodology used by QS in their annual World University Rankings has been criticised as being flawed by UK universities. On the other hand, the Sunday Times University Rankings are well-respected, and their most recent league table (albeit 2024) is headed by St Andrews, immediately followed by Oxford then Cambridge, then the LSE and only then by Imperial. I doubt very much that Imperial will have gained three places “overnight” when the Sunday Times 2025 table is published in due course.
Great comments and observations all. Disappointed that we haven’t heard from any young people though! Perhaps the Monevator audience really is now relentlessly aging out…
Re: not watching the news, I have mixed feelings. Certainly I recognise the problems with the news media, the desire to opt-out, and the benefits of doing so.
When I was 23/24 I read an interview with Stephen Fry about how he’d stopped reading the news. I actually took it out of the (irony alert) newspaper and taped it to my kitchen wall for six months. And I stopped reading the news.
Given that I didn’t have a TV for most of my 20s either and the Internet was young (1990s) I was pretty disconnected and I can’t say I feel I suffered too much from it. Anything truly important still got to me I feel (I read the Economist and the New Scientist pretty often, joined by Prospect towards the end of that era).
On the other hand it’s hard to berate people for being uninformed without taking some interest yourself.
I guess it’s ‘news news’ that I still don’t pay much attention too, though it’s harder when you’re engaged with lots of sites as the owner of an investing blog that collects links! 😉
When I was on my student newspaper, I explained it this way to a cub reporter: I am not so interested that a car has crashed on the road outside of the university, but if it happens three times that’s a feature and that *is* interesting and meaningful. Not a bad description.
Doesn’t help with some of the causes of unhappiness though — dig in deeper and you’ll get more unhappy — but probably helps with the perspective aspect to take a few steps back and a few deep breaths.
I stopped all news consumption when r4 started getting silly with c19. For a start harvesting and things like that were able to be discussed. After awhile it just became propaganda. I had reason to log back on to x recently after having a family member stuck in dubai and didnt have a clue till someone told me about the storm. Anyway i see previous conspiracy theories are now becoming more mainstream. Lab leak theory and cover up with Fauci coming off particularly bad. Also vaccines having a link to excess deaths seems to be ok to say now?
Jim Mcg, no relation, bang on with comments on the debate. Basically a waste of time to watch. Rayner came off like a uni socialist to me, snp and plaid cymru make me laugh. Anything good their side of the border entirely down to them, anything negative always the fault of Westminster.
Anyway debate and a bit of x scrolling aside im much happier without the news. Only pain is having to switch the wireless (r6) off every half hour for a few minutes.
Booooo! Millennials rule OK!
Seriously though, when will UK Gen Z catch up with their USA brethren, who are wealthier than my fellow millennials were at the same age? Are we starting to see the great wealth divide in Gen X, with some realising they are doomed to working during “retirement”?
@Jim; ah, the wireless… happy days.
Admittedly with all the time in the world as a retiree but interested in current affairs my compromise is to only read headlines on my IPad
I very rarely if ever listen to speech- read only
I look across the spectrum from Breitbart, Guido Fawkes,Fox,Daily Mail Telegraph Times Guardian (completely free to read),Aljazeera Independent Bloomberg
Only news outlet that I subscribe to is the Spectator
R4 is unlistenable R3 going the same way,R4 extra has some good stuff
Taking control of my sensory input by read only as and when I feel like it -probably three quarters of an hour twice a day keeps me informed and yet enables me to remain sane
Bought no newspapers for years
xxd09
Sherwood’s ‘No More World’s Left to Conquer’ Ed Zitron piece in the links: well argued but the qualification about the data not including app traffic is massively important and IMHO invalidates many of the conclusions about cause/effect and existence of declining web traffic. The medium of cyberspace evolves and as it evolves how we interact with and access it changes also.
Re: my earlier Michael Green related comment: for context see #37, 41 and 47 (@David, @Brod and me) on this MV thread:
https://monevator.com/weekend-reading-common-sense-for-crazy-times/comment-page-1/#comment-1797238
[Addendum – And of course @TI #43 on the same thread. Apols for missing that reference].
“The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt is a decent analysis of this issue. I started it as a parent thinking about my young children and future phone use but found it quite thought provoking in a wider sense. It goes deep on the topic but basically blames excessively safety conscious parenting since the 90s and the rise of smartphones/social media post 2010 for acting as “experience blockers” that denied children sufficient real world development opportunities and left many anxious and defensive. It’s arguing a case but puts a lot of research to it. Worth a read if interested in this topic
Definitely something to think about as a parent of a 5 year old about to start school.
The number of youngsters (under 10) I know who have a mobile now is faintly terrifying
I recognise the irony of saying this on a website and as someone who wastes inordinate hours on Instagram and Facebook (albeit mostly fluff entertainment pieces rather than anything newsworthy)
On the news part I don’t think young people actually consume “news” as we oldies think about. Hopefully at a certain age we recognise the value of e.g. the BBC News (actually I largely consume it online) vs other channels like Tik Tok or whatever. Teens I know know about stuff like Donald Trump or Farage but largely because they are consuming memes. Given that they or their parents are rarely actually watching or listening to linear broadcasting I’m not sure it is surprising.
I’m not sure youth consumption of the news has changed that much. As a Gen Xer I probably spent more time watching the TV with my parents and thus being bored by the nightly news but it means I distinctly remember having lived through some things like the Falklands War and the Miners’ Strikes. But it wasn’t until after Uni that I actually bought newspapers, because I decided that to be a credible professional I had to be at least a bit able to reference the outside world.
@Fatbritabroad #30
My answer on youngsters having a mobile phone is, e.g. my elder grandchildren, give them one that is merely a so-called feature phone, i.e. not a smart phone but fine for contact; the Nokia 105 is an example (others available I imagine) and is in fact the everyday phone that I myself use because of its truly commendable portability, since I almost always never wear a jacket (with pockets) nowadays.
@TI et al
Where reading or listening to the news is concerned, I deal with the former by looking at the BBC4 tv text service (no distracting background before the programmes start at 7pm but available 24/7 on all BBC tv channels as far as I’m aware), which is a very succinct but informative top-slicing exercise. For the latter, the occasional very short summaries on Classic FM (my normal all day listening) are always up to date and suffice for me.
Interesting piece. I suspect the malaise is coming from two main sources – vast amounts of news being read but little of it being thought about and a very usual interwar situation where people of their nature want to have a fight about something and pretty much anything will do as the subject.
Appreciate the Financial Bodyguard article – it’s something that I had wondered about with the growth of index funds and platforms for easy/automated investment (with model portfolios etc).
Re the Election chatter section of links is Monevator planning an objective summary of the key tax/saving possibilities which may occur? The tradtional press has a habit of histrionics depending on their driver du jour.
I note today’s FT has the news that Labour are dropping LTA reintroduction from their manifesto which may be relevant to a number of readers (if sustainably true) https://www.ftadviser.com/pensions/2024/06/10/labour-drops-lta-reintroduction-plans/.
If nothing else it might enable commenters to get their punditry on. And help those of us with some optionality with decision making criteria.
Jonathan Haidt’s book on the Anxious Generation is worth a read. Essentially asserts that it’s the social media consumption that is driving driving he uptick teenager anxiety, depression, and self harm.
“But it wasn’t until after Uni that I actually bought newspapers”
Good God, man, that must mean you didn’t have a crossword to do when lecturers became just too boring.
RSAB preference shares jumped about 10% today due the tender offer of 122p per share.
I noticed there is a voting fee available of 2p per share – which is about £1400 – but I’ve no idea how I vote given my shares are in II. Anyone got any ideas – I’d quite like the extra £1400.
B
Ps at lease they are behaving better than Aviva did!!!