The Piggy Bank Chronicles

E104 - I’d love to get to know me better Can one simple question help us cut through the noise and bring mental clarity to our financial planning? How our financial plans go, or even if we have one, is directly tied to how we feel about money. It’s fair to say that we all have very different views about money. That doesn’t make anyone's view wrong, it just makes them different. When it comes t...

E103 - The tyranny of stuff Too much stuff in your life is not good for your mental health. It won't help you live your best life. J.J. talks about his own challenges with stuff and encourages you with his usual poorly thought out humor to purge the things from your home and your life that don't support the things you love to do. As usual, what could possibly go wrong?

E102 - Is golf like investing? In golf, you have a club for every situation. In investing, you have an investment for every job in your portfolio. But what if you could only have 1 golf club? Which one would you choose? I decided to try the same thing with investing. If I could have only 1 ETF, which one would I choose? Not that I think this is a good idea. I have a golf bag full of clubs and a po...

E101 - Let the blind squirrel drive It’s hard to drive without a speedometer. It’s hard to get rich without an expense tracker. We don’t drive cars without dashboard displays. We would speed and run out of gas all the time. We don’t fly planes without dashboard displays. We would crash far too often to be good for our health. Why is it we think we can manage our personal affairs without an expense...

E100 - Milestones The Piggy Bank Chronicles reaches a major milestone with 100 episodes! J.J. sits down for an interview with his AI assistant to discuss the past, present, and future of the podcast. This episode is a love letter to all those who have listened these past 4 years. It is offered with sincere thanks.

E99 - Indexing, again Has your humble host lost faith in index investing? JJ spends way too much time thinking about the strategy of indexing and what kinds of events would lead to under performance compared to other approaches.  In yet another rambling chat he discusses his foray into direct indexing (on paper), what smarter people than him think about indexing as a strategy, and how he manages t...

Episode 98 - Consequences If I do this, what happens next? So many people are really bad at thinking about consequences. Are you one of those people? We can be taught to be critical thinkers. We can also teach ourselves. Sometimes we can get there through a good boss or mentor. Other times it’s up to us. In this episode JJ explores why this matters and some tools to help you get better at being a...

Episode 97 - I can see for miles If you have been around for a minute, you are familiar with the VISION acronym that JJ uses to make sure you chart a solid course for life. But is it any good? In this episode JJ digs through the Vision acronym to see what it covers, but more importantly what it might be missing. Key investing takeaways include: Insurance is for risk mitigation, investment is for w...

Episode 96 - Concentration Investors in the S&P 500 are experiencing the highest levels of concentration in the top 10 stock holdings of the index in this century and beyond. What does this mean for the health and diversification of our portfolios? In this episode JJ shares his thoughts on why we are seeing these levels of concentration in the US market index and what if any actions you might...

E95 - Don't call it a dividend ETFs are just wrappers. It's what's inside of them that counts for investors. Do you know what's inside of your ETFs? JJ, if you haven't picked up on it yet, is a natural born worrier. Lately he's been worrying about what people are saying regarding ETFs, but he has struggled to give voice to what was bothering him. That is until one perfectly...

Episode 94 - Indexing for life Indexing is a great way to be the market rather than beat the market. It is also a great why to beat ourselves as stock pickers. In this episode JJ waxes nostalgic over stock hits and misses of the past to confirm why he's a die hard index investor and to support the notion that a small amount of direct stock picking, as long as you keep it in check, is a good wa...

Episode 93 - Be direct with me We live in an era of bad, predatory, and just down right dangerous financial products! Given that back drop, it seems like Direct Indexing may be a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. Let me share with you why I think that, what’s good, bad, and just plain interesting about direct indexing, and why you might want to pay attention.

Episode 92 - Social media is not research Do you follow financial content on social media? If you do then you need to remember that social media is not research. At best, it’s idea generation. You should never invest based on what some random person says on social media. What you should do is learn some key concepts about investing to make you a better investor and to help you filter the noise you...

Episode 91 - Our favorite restaurants Once again my family joins me on our holiday special to count down our five favorite things. This year it's our five favorite restaurants. Thank you all for a great year. I look forward to sharing more crazy saving, investing, and life nonsense in season 4 next year. Until then, from me an all the gang around the chronicles, may you and yours have a very M...

Episode 90 - What’s in the box? Have you been asked which stock is a better investment? Have you been asked if the cheaper ETF is better than the expensive one? Well I sure have! In this episode we try to untangle that time honored question every investor eventually gets asked. Is investment A or B the better choice? Investments discussed Include: VOO - Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF VTI - Vanguar...

Episode 89 - Your not so silent partner If you have an IRA or 401k or 403b, you have a silent partner in uncle Sam. That’s because of taxes on qualified withdrawals. The Roth IRA is the cure for partnership blues. Once you get your money in a Roth IRA uncle Sam has to go hunting elsewhere for his revenue. In this episode JJ provides another ill conceived and poorly acted skit to get his point acro...

Episode 88 - Is Utopia a 4 letter word? Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Hybrid? We have all kinds of economic systems in the world today. What would a post scarcity world order look like? We have talked on this pod before about knowing the game you are playing. Would you know how to play the game of life in a post scarcity world? In this episode we consider what a post scarcity world is, what it...

Episode 87 - Alignment What is the impact of Agentic AI? What is the impact of General AI? In this episode we present a fictional news show inspired by the research paper AI 2027. Are any of us really ready for the future where AI becomes unaligned and where society struggles to adapt to capitalism without the value of human capital.

Episode 86 - Paris is lovely this time of year Diversification is a great way to protect our portfolios from unexpected risk. One simple way to broaden exposure and therefore reduce risk from the stock portion of our portfolio is to buy stocks from different countries. Indexed international stock funds offer a low cost way to do this. In this episode we will compare the performance of US vs non-US...

Episode 85 - Chief Executive Me Have you ever criticized your company’s CEO? Have you ever complained about the owner at your small company? Have you ever grumbled about your direct supervisor and swore you could do better? If so, then this episode is for you. If any of those characterizations are true then prepare to get your toes stepped on. In this episode we break down the key role of a CEO /...

Episode 84 - Small is the new big Small Cap stocks have underperformed their larger cousins for some time now. Should we expect that to continue? In this episode we explore: How have Small Cap stocks done recently relative to others? Why have they performed this way? Do we expect this to continue or is there improvement ahead? How and why does your humble host include them in his own portfolio? In...

Episode 83 - Super heroes wear a CAPE Have you ever heard of the Cyclically-Adjusted Price Earnings (CAPE) Ratio? Have you ever heard of the Shiller PE ratio? If you haven’t then you are not alone. If you are an investor, knowing this ratio and its current value could at least add a data point to your understanding of the US Equity market. If you are a retiree or soon to be retired, then knowing t...

Episode 82 - Catch me if you can Do you work with a full service broker? Are you buying individual stocks and bonds on your own? Are you loading up on your cousin Ralph’s favorite stock of the week? If you are, do you know if it’s working? In this episode JJ challenges you to compare results with his modified version of the Bogglehead 3 fund portfolio. In one easy step you will learn why tracking...

Episode 81 - Help, it’s an emergency! Do you have an emergency fund? If not, you should! In this episode, with the help of AI JJ delves into emergency funds to discover: Why do you need an emergency fund? How big should your emergency fund be? Where should you keep your emergency fund? How should you fill your emergency fund? When should you use your emergency fund? What should you do after you us...

Episode 80 - Charting a course Do you have an Investment Policy Statement? If not, maybe you should. In this episode JJ revisits the tenets of the VISION model last mentioned in Episode 50 and then dives into the Investment Policy Statement to talk about what it is, why you need one, and what you might want to put in yours. Then we close out the Episode by reviewing JJ’s own Investment Policy Stat...