Cheap and Proud
Andrew Forsythe | Nov 16, 2020
ONCE UPON A TIME, I thought it was a little unseemly to pay a lot of attention to costs. My father grew up in a farm family with little money. He was the first to attend college and, indeed, went on to law school from there. He did well in his profession and, when I was growing up, we lived a comfortable—though far from luxurious—life. Maybe because he’d spent his youth worried about money, my father didn’t want to be preoccupied with it after he established himself. One result: Being cost conscious wasn’t instilled in me at an early age. When I finished school and established myself in my own profession, I was pretty oblivious to costs. As a carefree young bachelor, I thought nothing of buying suits costing several hundred dollars—a lot of money in the 1980s. Restaurants and nightclubs were a regular indulgence. But my outlook undertook a dramatic change in 1987 when I met a beautiful young woman, with two equally beautiful young daughters, and ultimately convinced them to marry me. We wasted no time and soon had two more kids. I’d gone from carefree bachelor to father of four in a couple of years. As I began to read up on the projected cost of college for our little tribe, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I needed to change my thinking and fast. I soon became a dedicated cheapskate, studying the long-term effects of saving vs. spending and starting us on a path—I hoped—to getting four kids through college. The guy who would pay hundreds for a Hickey Freeman suit started clipping grocery store coupons. More important than these new frugal habits was the underlying change in my mindset. Perhaps still nagged by the feeling that there was something a little vulgar…
Read more » Grocery Shopping for the Mildly Obsessed
Andrew Forsythe | Jan 5, 2026
And now, as Monty Python might say, “For something completely different….” Given the recent discussion as to which topics are, and are not, appropriate for HD’s realm of finance and retirement, let me first give my defense of an article on the mundane topic of grocery shopping. It’s really pretty simple: For us at least, our weekly expenditures at our friendly local HEB are one of our most substantial fixed costs, probably around $8000 - $10,000 every year. Now with that out of the way….. I’ve shared before the story of how I went from carefree bachelor to husband and father of four in very short order. In the early days of that new status, and with 2 of our 4 kids in the baby/toddler stage, the home front was a place of constant chores, including the dreaded diaper changes. So when an opportunity arose to get out of the house and go grocery shopping, I quickly volunteered. That was 38 years ago, and I still perform the role. The list of things I’m not good at would fill a large book, but one thing I can do, practically in my sleep, is organize. In addition, on realizing that I now had four college educations to fund, my spendthrift bachelor habits turned on a dime and I became an instant tightwad (or “value investor” as I like to think of it). So the job of grocery shopping actually was a natural for me. The first order of business was to create a standardized grocery list which could be used each week and was easily modified. Importantly, it also needed to follow the geography of the store. So I put together a Word document containing all the items we routinely buy, organized in columns in the order in which they’re located in…
Read more » Following Through
Andrew Forsythe | Mar 27, 2022
THERE ARE MANY virtues, but one of the rarest is persistence in following through. In our complicated world, often you can’t get something done on the first go. Instead, you have to revisit the task, sometimes more than once. This is true not just of financial decisions but also many other aspects of our lives. In fact, if you’re trying to get folks to do something, often their first defense is to stall—because they know that, after a while, most people will simply give up. I’ve given up on tasks because I became convinced it couldn’t be done, or the costs outweighed the benefits, or I had a change in my thinking. But I try to make it a rare case to abandon something because I’m not willing to put in the effort needed to follow through. For me, one key to this is a calendar and to-do lists. I’m a bit of a fanatic about both. There’s been a calendar on my desk for the past half-century—and, to my wife’s great amusement, I still have them all. What about to-do lists? I have multiple versions on my desk at any given time: long term, medium term, this week and so on. If a task is on the calendar or on a list, it has to be addressed. Before it’s crossed off, I’ve got to get it done, or made a conscious decision not to do it, or have it relisted for a future date on the calendar or on a new to-do list. No task ever simply disappears. There are certain rewards for this obsessive behavior. For one, you get a lot of things done. Second, if you have repeated dealings with the same folks, they learn that you won’t give up, so maybe it’s easier to just resolve…
Read more » What is the risk level of sitting on the sidelines when it comes to bonds?
Andrew Forsythe | Apr 10, 2025
I posted this as a follow-up question in another thread, but it more appropriately should be a separate thread, so here goes: One reason often cited for not trying to time the market when it comes to stocks is that a large chunk of their gains comes during a small number of days. So if you’re on the sidelines then, you really miss out. Is there a similar phenomenon with bond ETFs and funds? That is, do they tend to have big gains on just a few days? My guess is that their situation is different from stocks in this respect, but that’s just a guess. Does anyone happen to know what history tells us?
Read more » Going to the Top
Andrew Forsythe | Apr 29, 2021
WE INCREASINGLY DO business with gigantic impersonal companies: banks, insurers, credit card issuers, cable and phone companies, utilities, and huge retailers like Amazon, Home Depot and Walmart. Often, we deal with them at a distance—by phone, mail, and especially online or via email. When disputes or problems arise, we’re typically forced to contact their so-called customer service departments, which are often sorely lacking in service. Even before getting to a human, we have to run the gauntlet of an annoying robot, and once we have a human on the phone, the canned response tends to be, “Sorry, but our policy is….” I’m not interested in what the usual policy is. What I want is to speak to somebody who has the power to ignore it. And what I’ve learned from many experiences over many years is the benefit of going to the top. My eyes were first opened in the prehistoric early days of cellphones. I’d been convinced by my wife and teenage daughters that the latter each needed a cellphone “for emergencies.” This was way before “unlimited” plans. You were billed—and a goodly amount—per minute. It was hard enough dealing with all the “emergencies” that our dear girls racked up, but I also got hit with some big charges that I truly thought were a mistake. After the usual frustrations trying to straighten things out with Verizon, I decided on a Hail Mary pass and made my first serious attempt to go to the top. I managed to find an email address for Verizon’s chief executive and sent a long, detailed (and courteous) message to him explaining the problem. To my surprise, shortly thereafter, I received a telephone call from an extremely nice man in the “executive escalations” department. Not only did he fix my problem, but also he…
Read more » Home, Auto & Umbrella Insurance—“Longevity Benefit”?
Andrew Forsythe | Jan 23, 2025
Recently, and spurred by the horrific fires in L.A., there's been a lot of attention on home insurance, including skyrocketing premiums. Like many people, we have our home, auto, and umbrella policies with the same company, and have seen our premiums increase dramatically in the last few years. I've occasionally heard mention, without much in the way of specifics, of a "longevity benefit" in staying with the same insurance company rather than constantly shopping around and switching. I'm hoping someone with a background in insurance can shed some light on this. First off, is there any truth to it? If so, is the benefit in the form of smaller premium increases for long term policyholders, or a smaller chance of being dropped, or...? Thanks for any insights.
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