Living in More Than One World

I’ve been a big sports fan since childhood, and I watched many times on TV during high school and college as John Wooden coached UCLA to college basketball glory. He is one of the most successful coaches in any sport, of all time. And at age 98, he has done quite well writing books, and in public speaking. Michel Hiltzik’s column, John Wooden’s still Coach, even in the investment game, in the Los Angeles Times is a highly interesting interview with Wooden about his investing principles. Hiltzik points out that Wooden coached in an era (the 1940s through the mid-1970s) when coaches weren’t paid particularly well. A big takeaway from this column, besides Wooden’s thoughts on investing, is how he dealt with uncertainty in life after retiring from UCLA at 65. Besides seeking prudent professional advice for getting his finances and estate in order, he transitioned into what became a lucrative career writing and speaking about not only his coaching principles, but more importantly, his principles for leadership and living a successful, meaningful life. In 1975, it was much less prevalent for people to reinvent themselves after retirement. Wooden is still going strong, 34 years later. And he didn’t dwell on how he possibly could have had more money when he retired from coaching (partly because of a decision revealed in the lead of the column). “But if you always think things will be better with more money,” he tells Hiltzik, “your life’s not going to be that good.” Regarding the concept of initiative, one of the 15 building blocks of his “Pyramid of Success,” Wooden gives a great quote that can be applied well beyond the world of investing: “Don’t be afraid to fail. We’re all imperfect. We’re going to fail at times. If you’re worried about temporary reversals, you’ll be afraid to make a decision.”

I’ve been a longtime viewer of the Nightly Business Report on PBS, which went on the air 30 years ago. In 1994, I visited the studio in Miami where it is broadcast, saw a show going out live and met some of the people who produced it. Of course, that was before TV programs had websites, and NBR now has an extensive one; with transcripts, special features, lots of video, statistics, investor education and blogs. Susie Gharib, one of the anchors, has an intriguing post on June 4th, The Recovery Alphabet. It’s an unusual take on the nature of the economic recovery (when it comes); in the shapes of the letters it would look like, based on her talks with economists. The four letters are L, U, V and W. The simplified scenarios: L-Shape of the recovery eventually after a sharp falloff of the economy followed by years of stagnation. Not likely, she says. U-The economy eventually bounces back after a dramatic drop, followed by gradually growing. V- A big gain follows a big drop. “Fat chance that will happen this time,” Gharib writes. W-Down, up, back down, then back up. She says this is the consensus view.  Finally, no matter what letter ends up being the right one, she thinks it will be a couple of years to get back to “normal.” Gharib is half of a longtime anchor partnership with Paul Kangas, who has been rightly called, by the Detroit Free Press, “the Walter Cronkite of business broadcasting.” NBR recently announced that Kangas will leave his anchor position at the end of the year, but will stay active in the financial world. The economy may remain lousy for longer than we would like, but the Nightly Business Report at least helps us make sense of it.

The Boston.com Managing Your Money: Personal finance advice feature has a brief, intriguing May 20 entry by a local accountant, Jamie Downey, The Best Financial Advice I Ever Received. Downey expands on advice he heard from the author/sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer; to invest your time, rather than spend it. Downey examines his own life in a variety of categories, to demonstrate how he invests his time in various activities. His advice and personal example goes beyond finances to give an interesting blueprint for the intelligent, productive use of time. (Most of this time, by the way, is outside of the workplace. It would be interesting to see a similar list for time at work.) He identifies some areas of his life that he tries to use more productively, such as selective television viewing, and using travel and commuting hours productively. He then provides brief examples of  how he invests time in the following areas: reading, exercising, building relationships, time with family and thinking. He says that reading is the activity he increased the most, as the result of Gitomer’s advice. He devotes at least an hour a day to it, usually in the early morning, with coffee. You can probably add other categories to those included here for personal investment of time. But this is thought-provoking and seems reasonable and doable. Just as Gitomer inspired Downey, the latter has now inspired his readers to improve not only their finances, but the quality of each day of life.