Happy birthday to Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, who turned 91 last week.  In honor of  the coming Labor Day holiday, we thought of one of our favorite Warren Buffett quotes, “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”  Two main take-aways from this line, first, everyone works too hard not to pay themselves and invest these savings.  By owning great company stocks and bonds, we can benefit from their hard work and success through earnings and dividends virtually while we sleep.  Secondly, Warren is 91, he is working until he dies, but working when you are financially independent is way different than working to pay the bills.  Work on.

Katy Milkman, a behavioral scientist at the Wharton School has written about “the fresh start effect”, or the effect that birthdays, the start of a new season or other landmark dates have on our ability to make changes to our lives.  For example, with back to school and the fall season upon us, we may be more inclined to begin a new healthy and or profitable habit.  So pump the brakes on the pumpkin lager and pumpkin spice drinks and pour your savings into a compounding investment and kick off a new fall beginning.

Thanks to Kevin Caron at www.washingtoncrossingadvisors.com we get to consider this…Back to the old Buttonwood tree in NYC in 1790, when the value of stocks were first calculated, it took over 200 years  for the US stock market to top $16 trillion in value.  Based on today’s current value, we have risen by $16 trillion in market value since the pandemic BEGAN.  A recession and health crisis that produced a $16 trillion gain in value, go figure.  One, it shows the law of large numbers and too, it may be pointing to some inflation momentum in financial assets.  Speaking of inflation, again this past week, Janet Yellen stuck with her premise that we are in a “transitory” period of higher prices, yet today social security payments were adjusted higher by almost 6%.  Social security payments do not go lower so the only thing transitory is the money leaving your pockets.

In the words of the Cuomo boys while lifting weights in their basement today, “what happened in 2021”?   Here we are, the first week of December, where did the year go?  Time may be the single most important contributor to investment success and seems to come and go so fast.  The best time to invest was yesterday and the second best is today.  Set it and forget it and see where you are in December of 2022.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the value of tax-loss harvesting is quite impressive.  Tax loss harvesting is basically managing long and short term gains to the investors advantage.  Using someone in the 25% income tax bracket, their studies show that in a strong market, managing taxable gains and losses can add 1.1 to 1.42% to annual returns.  Even more impressive, during significant downturns when the S&P is negative, this harvesting can add about 3.21% to yearly performance.  So whether the market has been naughty or nice, tax management can be a gift to returns.