Reading Recommendations

The 2024 edition of the WHR focuses on the happiness of people at different stages of life. In the West, the received wisdom has been that the young are the happiest and that happiness thereafter declines until middle age, followed by a substantial recovery.

Two findings that may be of particular interest:

• There is a lower level of happiness among people born since 1980
• The greatest plague in old age is dementia, and new research demonstrates that higher well-being is a protective factor against future dementia

The WHR also reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

The academic findings, social insights, and policy implications of the report are fascinating and important. But how about the price of happiness?

Fortunately, this is easy to determine.

Happiness costs $50 per hour and relates to a visit to the Golden Dog Farm in Jeffersonville, Vermont. This short video explains. Watching is free. Click on the link or the picture below. Hopefully viewing it will deliver a bit of happiness, or at least a smile!

-RK

For people accustomed to relying on intuition and ‘trusting their gut’, the question How Will You Measure Your Life? might seem strange. Is it possible to measure one’s life? If it is, how would one approach the task? And anyway, is life worth measuring?

On the other hand, for quantitatively oriented individuals, the idea of not measuring everything that can be measured may seem odd. Measuring provides information, information allows for analysis, and analysis enables optimization. Who doesn’t want to lead an optimized life?

Innovation expert Clayton M. Christensen spent his life studying businesses and how people behave in business settings. He was troubled by his observation that people with great potential (his Harvard Business School classmates, for example) often made choices that resulted in disharmony and unhappiness in their personal lives.

In How Will You Measure Your Life?, Christensen refrains from recommending that we measure everything in our lives that can be measured.

Rather, he suggests that we can use theories which have been rigorously examined and used in organizations all over the globe to help us with decisions that we must make as individuals.

The book seeks to answer the question: “How can I find happiness in my career?” But it gets at deeper issues, guiding us to consider what it means to lead a fulfilling life, and offering frameworks for helping the reader find fulfillment.

RK

There are many facets to longevity.

A philosophical (and perhaps scary) part is that it raises issues associated with our own mortality. A promising development is that doctors and scientists are discovering new approaches that increase the likelihood of living longer and healthier lives.

A practical component is that longevity is a key input into the financial planning equation. A longer life implies a greater need for resources to support that life.

I’ve previously recommended Dr Peter Attia’s book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity.

For this month, journalist Wiliam J. Kole provides other viewpoints on longevity, in his book The Big 100: The New World of Super Aging.

Chapters include:

• How Science Lengthens Our Lives
• The Luck of the DNA Draw
• Growing Old in a Youth-Obsessed Society
• Exceptionally Old, With Extreme Influence
• Who Will Care for Us, and Who Will Pay

For those of you who’d like a more in-depth preview, or prefer listening to reading, you can hear Kole discuss his ideas on longevity, and provide some interesting anecdotes, in the October 20 edition of WBUR’s On Point podcast entitled: 100 is the New 65: The New World of Super Aging.

RK

I don’t get out often. But when the opportunity presents itself, I value direct social interaction with the group I’m with. Recently, I visited my son in Chicago. We got together in a hip hotel lobby bar near the University of Chicago to catch up and enjoy one another’s company before dinner.

As I scanned the crowd in the bar, I expected everyone to be similarly engaged. But probably half the patrons were engaging virtually on mobile phones, rather than actually with the people they were standing or sitting near.

This struck me as curious. And was a reminder of how powerful the allure of online platforms can be.

In an effort to better understand the power of the online platform by learning more about the people who’ve been successful in creating compelling content, I’m planning to read Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet.

Author Taylor Lorenz is a Washington Post reporter, prior New York Times reporter, and social media editor, who’s viewed as an authority on internet culture.

I’m always reticent to recommend something I haven’t yet delved into myself. But the subject matter is timely from a personal perspective, and this book will be released during the first week of October.

If you decide to dive in, please let us know what you think.

-RK

The Pulitzer Prize winning author David Halberstam is well known for his work as a New York Times reporter who challenged the upbeat news coming from the United States mission in South Vietnam, and for his book The Best and Brightewherst, which focuses on the consequences of US foreign policy in Vietnam during the Kennedy administration.

In total, Halberstam wrote twenty books before his accidental death in 2007, seven of which covered personalities and events in sport. The last of his sports books, and only one focused on football, was The Education of a Coach, about Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick.

In the introduction to the book, David Maraniss discusses some elements of football that disturbed Halberstam, including “the cultural hyperventilation that transformed the sport from recreation to religion” and “the overwhelming pile of money that made it a business more than a game”.

Despite its detractions, football displays feats of human speed, strength, and athletic skill. Maraniss tells us Halberstam was captivated by this. And through the book, Halberstam attempts to understand Belichick’s traits of excellence and originality which he uses to lead others, build cohesive teams, and affect positive outcomes.

For those of you who enjoy the game, and who count yourselves as Patriots fans, here’s hoping those traits will inspire New England’s team as we enter a new football season.

-RK

I like books and tend to accumulate them. Because of time constraints, though, I spend less time reading them than I’d like to. Which means I must be selective and find engaging material, because typically my reading time begins after 10 PM.

From time to time, a book makes it to the top of my nightstand pile serendipitously. For instance, during a cold stretch in winter, I laced up my Bean boots for a snowy walk to my neighbor’s house.

As I unlaced in his entryway, he dropped L.L. Bean: The Making of An American Icon in my lap. Leon Gorman’s book then became immediate, required reading –

much to my delight.

This past week, I was on a Zoom call with clients who needed to boost their computer monitor to get a better look at some details being shared on screen. They retrieved a copy of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber (anthropologist, deceased) and David Wengrow (archaeologist) to aid in the task.

Holding up the book, they sang praises for the work before slipping it under their monitor.

This book is visually distinctive in two ways: it is a large volume, and its jacket is bright orange with bold red font. I recalled that I had an unread copy sitting on my bookshelf, gifted to me in 2021, which I retrieved and waived in front of my video camera. We both had a laugh.

And I got the message. Graeber’s and Wengrow’s book migrated to the top of my reading list. I dove in that night, delighted once again. Perhaps you’ll join me for this broad-in-scope read that one well-known author has called “an intellectual feast”.

May August bring you serendipity, too, and many joyful turns of the page.

-RK

David McCullough thought expansively about and cared deeply for America. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian passed away last summer in Hingham, MA.

Best known for his biographies presidential (Adams, Truman) and structural (Brooklyn Bridge, Panama Canal), McCullough also lectured and presented extensively on a range of topics for more than a half century and gave addresses in all fifty US states.

In The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For, McCullough presents fifteen speeches he delivered in between 1989 and 2016.

In the introduction, Mccullough says: “Yes, we have much to be seriously concerned about, much that needs to be corrected, improved, or dispensed with…

But the vitality and creative energy, the fundamental decency, the tolerance and insistence on truth, and the good-heartedness of the American people are there still plainly.”

On this Independence Day, may you and your family see and feel good-heartedness and find ways to celebrate the best parts of the American spirit.

-RK

Peter Attia is a physician who focuses on longevity. In his recent book, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, he explains that longevity has two components: how long you live, which is your chronological lifespan, and how well you live (the quality of your years), which is called healthspan.

His goal is to create an operating manual for the practice of longevity. His belief is that, with time and effort, individuals potentially can extend their lifespan by a decade and their healthspan possibly by two decades.

Specifically, Attia’s research focuses on actions that individuals can take to mitigate risk associated with four chronic diseases of ageing: heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Attia was recently profiled in a New York Times Magazine article: Want to Live Longer and Healthier? Peter Attia Has a Plan. He also hosts a podcast entitled The Drive, which addresses personal health and longevity topics.

As a complement to this reading, I recently came across the map below in The Daily Shot, an economics newsletter.

I was surprised to see such a wide dispersion of life expectancies across regions of the US.

In its most recent report on life expectancy in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pegged life expectancy for a newborn at 76 years.

The CDC report, released in August 2022, states that US life expectancy experienced a 2.7-year decline during the 2020 – 2021 period due to the pandemic.

JP Morgan has also published additional longevity-related data that you might find interesting:

• 65-year-old females today have an average life expectancy of 84.5 years
• Non-smoking females in excellent health have a 1-in-3 chance of living to age 95
• 65-year-old males today have an average life expectance of 81.9 years
• Non-smoking males in excellent health have a 1-in-5 chance of living to age 95

Longevity is a key input to the process that we use when we build financial plans for clients, and understanding longevity trends in the US is a good starting point.

In the end, though, individual factors such as family history and lifestyle choices are likely to be more informative when responding the question: “how long do you expect to live?”

If you are interested in extending your lifespan and healthspan, it’s encouraging to know that there are concrete steps, such as the ones Attia suggests, which you can take that are likely to ‘bend the curve’ in your favor and advance the goal of a long, healthy life.

-RK

I am always interested to hear what’s capturing your attention, and what you’ve felt helpful in adding to your knowledge of personal finance. So I am thankful to a client who just this week suggested a book that seems most appropriate for today’s climate.

In The Uncertainty Solution – How to Invest With Confidence in the Face of the Unknown, author John M. Jennings offers his perspective on ways we can navigate our behavioral biases and explains the benefits of focusing on the long term.

These are topics that I address frequently in my letters and are important ingredients for investing success. You might find it helpful to hear a similar message from a different voice.

Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

While not an official holiday, many folks choose to celebrate their respect for the environment by participating in events that increase public awareness of environmental concerns.

One topic that I’ve chosen to learn more about is Environmental Justice.

Michael Regan, who currently heads the US Environmental Protection Agency, has articulated the concept well in saying: “every person has the right to clean air, clean water and a healthier life, no matter how much money they have in their pockets, the color of their skin, or the community they live in.”

In searching on the topic, I came across the book Environmental Justice and Resiliency in an Age of Uncertainty, published in 2022 and edited by Celeste Murphy-Greene, a faculty member at UVA who focuses on Sustainability and Environmental Justice.

Murphy-Greene provides a framework for thinking about environmental issues by approaching them through a social justice lens. Topics of the book include an overview of Environmental Justice, Climate Justice, Health Equity, Smart Cities, Local Clean Energy, and the role that Public Works and Public Procurement can play in promoting Environmental Justice.

Murphy-Greene says her interest in environmental issues began as a college student when she was lifeguarding in Falmouth, Massachusetts and witnessed a large amount of medical waste wash ashore after a New York City-based barge dumped its contents.

On a different pedagogical note, I recently enjoyed watching My Octopus Teacher, an Academy Award winner from 2021 for Best Documentary Feature, which provides a personal account of filmmaker Craig Foster’s interactions with an octopus.

Foster was inspired to found Sea Change Project, which is dedicated to helping people understand human inter-connectedness with the natural world and to raising awareness for the Great African Seaforest.

You can see a trailer for the film and learn more about Foster’s initiatives at Sea Change Project website.

Happy Earth Day!