What caught my eye this week.
I have a soft spot for Baby Boomers who appreciate that the younger generation really does have it much harder than they did, financially speaking.
Boomers like Jim, who writes on his blog SexHealthMoneyDeath that:
…if I was a youth today, I’d be damn angry about it. Especially if I read blogs like mine where Baby Boomers in their fifties ponder early retirement and the most tax efficient ways to drawdown their pensions while wondering if they can be bothered taking two long haul holidays a year?
A Baby Boomer, that is, like me who was given a fantastic free education, who took out a mortgage as soon as he started working (required deposit, fifteen hundred quid and a 95% loan) and sat back to watch property rocket over his working lifetime.
Nice work, if you can get it. Which you no longer can.
But while there’s a little bit more inter-generational understanding these days – at least in terms of words, if not actions – Millennials are still regularly hearing guff like the reason they can’t buy a house is because they eat too much smashed avocado on toast. Seriously.
The LA Times notes that the Australian millionaire who doled out that advice actually started his own business with a $34,000 handout from his grandfather.
Good on him for making a success of it, but equally $34,000 buys a lot of avocado on toast – even at the $19 a pop he seems to find it selling for.
At least the youth have Buzzfeed, which collected a super set of Tweets to cheer them up, such as:
Millennials are so spoilt with their smartphones & tablets. All we had at their age was the ability to buy property in Central London.
— tom jamieson (@jamiesont) October 18, 2015
From Monevator
Vanguard goes direct to UK consumers [Read the comments, too] – Monevator
Out of the archive-ator: Coping with the guilt of losing money – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber.1
Bye Bye buy-to-let? Amount lent to UK landlords falls 80% in a year – ThisIsMoney
Rich US retirees are hoarding cash out of fear – Bloomberg
What the election promises mean for your money [Not a search result, something is going wrong with it] – FT
£1 tops $1.30 for the first time in eight months – Telegraph
One good thing to come from our imminent one-party state: Tories to downgrade triple-lock pension to a double-lock, since their base is hardly going to switch to a ’70s-styled Labour – ThisIsMoney
Cautious fund manager Neil Woodford spends £200m on Lloyds shares – ThisIsMoney
US company profits have moved to a higher plateau, killing mean reversion strategies – Morningstar
Products and services
Kingdom Bank – established to fund church expansion – now offers the top cash ISA rate, paying 1.2%. Yes, it’s covered by the FSCS. The answer to your prayers, etc? – Telegraph
Meanwhile a new one-year ‘bond’ from Charter Savings Bank pays 1.55% a year interest (but that’ll still lag inflation) – ThisIsMoney
Ford has launched a new regular savings account paying 4% (with the usual restrictions and caveats) as well as some new cash ISA options – Telegraph
Lloyds and Metro bank are bringing back safes and safety deposit boxes – ThisIsMoney
Not only will you get £10 off your first Thriva blood test kit with the following link, you can use the code ITSMAY at checkout to get a further 50% deduction – Thriva
Comment and opinion
Swedroe: It’s so hard to tell investing skill from luck, you may as well presume there’s no skill – ETF.com
The Snapchat IPO has been a good lesson for young investors – A Wealth of Common Sense
Try to be a little underemployed, says Morgan Housel – Collaborative Funds
How to plan for a future stock market crash [Search result] – FT
“A study of consultants by a professor at Boston University found that managers could not tell the difference between employees who worked 80 hours a week and those who just pretended to.” – Guardian
Dealing with the ‘unknown unknowns’ of investing – Of Dollars and Data
Doomsters be damned: The US stock market tripled because profits tripled – Investing Caffeine
Profit opportunities exist only until researchers publish inefficiencies – Bloomberg
American Gods: The tech firms the market trusts to trump Trump – Reformed Broker
Michael Mauboussin sits down with Patrick O’Shaughnessy [Podcast] – Investor’s Field Guide
Regulation is turning the sell-side business model into an honesty box – Bloomberg
Why VC-funded start-ups – especially ‘Unicorns’ – are often overvalued [Research] – SSRN
When Norway struck oil in the 1960s, one savvy investor bet different – The Macro Tourist
Off our beat
Today’s big tech companies might be even bigger than you think – The Atlantic
Want higher-quality Internet content? Maybe we should pay for it – Wired
And finally
“Skyrocketing markets that depend purely on psychic support have invariably succumbed the financial law of gravitation. Unsustainable prices may persist for years, but eventually they reverse themselves. Such reversals come with the suddenness of an earthquake; and the bigger the binge, the greater the resulting hangover.”
– Burton Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street
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- Note some articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”.
from Monevator http://monevator.com/weekend-reading-millennials-toasted/
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