Welcome to this week's Upwarding newsletter. My blog, with more in-depth content, can be found here.

Picture

This was in my garden yesterday.  And I almost walked by while looking at my cellphone.  It makes me think of this quote:

Mindfulness/Spirituality/Chill

"Stay close to anything that makes you glad you're alive." - Hafiz

Health/Wellness

In my 40's, I'm noticing a gradual decrease in mobility/flexibility.  The CDC actually publishes guidelines showing how especially "hip extension" diminishes as we age. Here's a great stretch you can do to keep your hips young.

If you want additional moves, check out this 4-minute hip mobility routine.

Investing/Money

Great back and forth with a reader this week on stock allocations.  He proposed as you get wealthier relative to your retirement needs, you should invest MORE in stocks.  I didn't agree.

For example, let's take three people each with $100K income need in retirement that starts in seven years.

Person A likely needs to invest MORE in stocks than would usually be suggested, because the greatest risk of not meeting their investing goals is if they don't have enough GROWTH.  Whereas standard advice might indicate 52% in stocks (110 - their age), they might need to go as high as 70% or more.

Person B might decide their retirement is enough (they can easily draw 4% from this amount), and they don't want to worry about it anymore.  In this case, they could move now to a more conservative stance and sleep well at night.  They could even go to the "Ultimate Liquidity Portfolio", which is only 12% stocks.

Person C might decide to invest the first $2.5M in the Ultimate Liquidity Portfolio, and then be much more risky with the next $2.5M.  William Sharpe (Nobel Prize Winner), has gone so far as to argue that much of the additional $2.5M can be put in the triple levered stock funds, in what is known as "ratchet" strategy. So this person would again have very high stock exposure, say 70%. A = 70%, B = 12%, C = 70%.

In short, I do not think that the rule "more wealth = more stocks" hold for retirement accounts.

Random Thoughts

I loved this story and its message:

"I heard my mother asking our neighbor for some salt.  I asked her why she was asking them as we have salt at home.  She replied, "It's because they are always asking us for things; they are poor.  So I thought I'd ask something small from them but at the same time make them feel as if we need them too.  That way it will be easier for them to ask us for anything they need from us."" – Sh. Ali al-Afifi

Reflection/Quote

“Motivation comes from working on things we care about" – Sheryl Sandberg.

Remember to forward this to a friend who will enjoy it.

Stay well,
Chris