“Enough isn’t a number, it’s a feeling. A feeling where you feel comfortable in your financial skin and can focus on those things that really move the needle in your life.”

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In This Edition

›From Paul: A Lazy Letter from Hawaii

›This Week’s Truth Tellers

›New Podcast: Finding an Hourly Advisor from 30,000 Feet

›Testimonials

From Paul

A Lazy Letter from Hawaii

I’m writing this week’s newsletter as Zan and I prepare to head back to Bainbridge Island tomorrow morning. The hot days, warm nights and gentle breezes may have made me a little lazy. I don’t have any life-changing ideas for this letter — but I do have a lot of important articles and podcasts from our Truth Tellers, all from just the last week.

One nice surprise was an email from Feedspot, a huge database of just about every corner of media — podcasts, blogs, influencers and YouTubers. We were pleased to be included in their Top 26 Mutual Funds Podcasts. We came in 3rd, and it was great to see Don and Tom at Talking Real Money sitting right at the top of the list. Tom and Don have been doing this work for more than 25 years, and they were my teachers when the three of us worked on a weekly radio show and, later, the Sound Investing podcast. If you know their work, you can imagine how much fun it was — some of the best days of my life!

I did take time out of our vacation to record a new podcast — the first in a short series on one of the biggest decisions a do-it-yourself investor ever faces: whether, and how, to hire financial help.

So here is my list of Truth Teller articles, blogs, podcasts and YouTube pieces I think you’ll find helpful this week:

This Week’s Truth Tellers

Markets Are Always Different This Time

Ben Carlson

How to Save for Your Children: UTMA vs. the Trump Account

Jim Dahle

How I Think About Investing in Bonds

Ben Carlson

Scammers Are Getting Smarter. Is Your Financial Security Keeping Up?

Mike Piper with Christine Benz · The Long View podcast

Valuation Spreads Continue to Favor Value Stocks

Larry Swedroe

Losing Big & the Hidden Costs of America’s Gambling Boom

Tim Ranzetta with Jonathan Cohen · NGPF

Tech People Don’t Know What’s Going to Happen Either

Ben Carlson

If You’re Dying Rich, You Screwed Up

Doc G with Jim Dahle podcast

New Podcast

Finding an Hourly Advisor from 30,000 Feet

Aloha from Oahu! I recorded this one from our hotel room in Hawaii, where my wife and I came to celebrate our two birthdays — three days apart, if not the same year. I promised Zan I’d only work from four to seven each morning on this trip, and this was the one podcast I wasn’t willing to miss.

It kicks off something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: an honest, practical look at one of the biggest forks in the road a do-it-yourself investor ever faces — whether to manage your money yourself or hire someone to help, and if you hire help, what kind.

This first episode is the view from 30,000 feet. Over the coming weeks and months I’ll dig much deeper, including interviews with organizations like Hello Nectarine, NAPFA and the Garrett Planning Network.

In this episode:

07:29 — Why every investor is really starting a business, and why “hiring” index funds and ETFs is step one
15:29 — Why the future you’re paying an advisor to predict is one they can’t predict any better than you can
27:40 — The difference between commission salespeople, assets-under-management (AUM) advisors, and hourly or flat-fee planners
36:25 — The conflict of interest almost no one talks about, and why it reaches all the way to the day an advisory firm is sold
47:10 — How a $5 million investor paying 0.8% ($40,000 a year) might get the same help from an hourly or flat-fee planner for $8,000–$12,000
54:34 — Whether you’re a few years from retirement, already there, or just want to make this decision with your eyes open, I think you’ll find something useful
54:53 — Why I recently paid $3,400 to test an hourly advisor myself, and why I’m glad I did

This is the first of at least two or three episodes on this topic. I’d love your feedback and your questions for the ones ahead — email me at paul@paulmerriman.com.

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All the best to you and your family,
Paul Merriman

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A Lazy Letter from Hawaii (and a Week of Great Reads)