A short hallelujah to the weather, followed by some choice reading from around the web.
Incredibly, it’s sunny in London. What a difference it makes after all the snow, slush, and arctic blasts of what seemed a six-month winter.
Like health, you can’t really buy the weather. Yes, you can buy an aspirin, and yes you can emigrate to Australia. But you can’t dial up the sun on demand like a Domino’s pizza.
One quick way of re-appreciating your good fortune, weather-wise, is to visit a loved one in hospital. A person who can’t leave, ‘ideally’ (as in ideally for this experiment to work, not for your unfortunate acquaintance).
I’ve noticed long-term hospital residents often stare out of the windows when it’s sunny. Or at other times they turn their back on it, and seem unable to bear what they can’t enjoy. The more fortunate are wheeled to sit in some sunny spot besides the bins and the smokers on crutches, to feel the warmth on their skin. It’s a foreign holiday for them.
The incurable and the dying seem to inhabit windowless, weather-less rooms – I’ve seen this more than once in NHS hospitals. Perhaps there are logistical reasons. Perhaps it’s cruel. Or perhaps it’s some long ago learned wisdom about how best to let go.
This is a blog about money. But the best things in life really are free, if only in the sense that they can’t be bought with money.
From the money and investing blogs
- What are your investments really worth? – Andrew Hallam [1]
- Of Mice and Templeton moments – The Psi-Fi blog [2]
- A brief history of US banking regulations – The Big Picture [3]
- The best place for entrepreneurs to live right now – Untemplater [4]
- Why I won’t pay off my mortgage until I retire – Financial Samurai [5]
- Predictability, growth and price – UK Value Investor [6]
- Work until 70? Dream on… – Simple Living in Suffolk [7]
- On the runway – A Grain of Salt [8]
- The Forbes fictional rich list – Forbes [9]
- True story of not paying a restaurant bill – Len Penzo [10]
- Inequality and economic growth – IMF blog [11]
- Doing good with money: Micro-lending – MoneyNing [12]
- Personal finance and the idea of freedom – The Simple Dollar [13]
Mainstream money media
- A flat £140 a week UK state pension from the UK state – DWP [14]
- 70 or bust: Pension revamp not radical enough – The Economist [15]
- RBS is readying a UK small cap index tracker – The Motley Fool [16]
- Why investors shouldn’t care about the economy – Business Insider [17]
- Twitter predicts the performance of stocks – Venturebeat [18] & BBC [19]
- German judge rules rich lists are in the public interest – WSJ [20]
- I’m turning my back on boring Buffett- Merryn/FT [21]
- The many delusions of risks and returns – FT [22]
- Savers urged to snap up new ISAs – FT [23]
- Hidden stars can shine just as brightly – FT [24]
- Gold reaches an all-time high of $1,457 per ounce – Telegraph [25]
- What’s the cost of beating the NHS waiting list? – Telegraph [26]
- Drop in mortgage lending since last year – Telegraph [27]
- Take years off your mortgage – The Guardian [28]
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