Landon Tan, CFP

There is so much beauty in the work I do. You talk about where you came from and your hopes and dreams. How many versions of you are contained in that lifespan? To accept our eventual deaths and lovingly provide for our elder selves is a way of loving the body unconditionally.... https://www.landontan.com/post/a-budget-is-not-a-body

My partner likes to say that education is a scam. Or perhaps a tool of the state to make children compliant. Katie, as brilliant as she is charming, is a bit of a rebel. I on the other hand am more of a student of orthodoxy, and while I failed out of pre-med, it may have had something to do with how much time it takes to be obsessed with every little detail. Still, I got a lot out of college and if I could go back I would definitely do less dating and more reading. Nietzsche ...and I would be booed up. There is an optimistic anarchism à la David Graeber that says that without structure, true creativity would be unleashed and people would reach their true potential. I’ve been more passionate about learning since I left school and got to read whatever I wanted, but I don’t think I would have gotten as wide an array of knowledge without the system creating structure and accountability. I think there’s a certain level of flakiness or inertia that is more of a human default.... Read more of November's Newsletter on my website, and please sign up to receive it in your email the 1st of every month! https://www.landontan.com/post/katie-thinks-school-s-a-scam

In my October newsletter, I herald the sheer heroism of taking care of your administrative tasks. Check it out! https://www.landontan.com/post/administrative-genius

I just had an interesting conversation with someone at an ESG (environmental, sustainability, and governance) fund about their fixed income offerings. I asked how they manage the implications of US treasuries being investments partially in the military, and therefore in war. Their response was that their fiduciary responsibility made it so that treasuries could not be left out of a bond fund for the interests of the investors, because of the stability provided by government ...bonds. As a Quaker myself, I think back to Quakers who didn't pay war taxes because they were pacifists. Is that kind of activism still possible in a world where everything is so thrown together into one pot? Taxes, like bonds, are funding things like healthcare for the poor and environmental protection--as well as the sources of suffering. The same goes for our participation in stock markets or in the economy. If you're interested, revisit my September newsletter about the quandies of ethical investing. My partner said it was "kind of a downer". What do you think? https://www.landontan.com/post/queer-feelings-about-esg

Interesting article for anyone thinking of buying a new car. Nice to put some data to the nagging doubts about electric. "For electric cars, lower maintenance costs and the lower costs of charging compared with gasoline prices tend to offset the higher upfront price over time. (Battery-electric engines have fewer moving parts that can break compared with gas-powered engines and they don’t require oil changes. Electric vehicles also use regenerative braking, which reduces wea...r and tear.) The cars are greener over time, too, despite the more emissions-intensive battery manufacturing process. Dr. Trancik estimates that an electric vehicle’s production emissions would be offset in anywhere from six to 18 months, depending on how clean the energy grid is where the car is charging." https://www.nytimes.com//15/climate/electric-car-cost.html

Do you need to be worrying about that, or are you just having financial FOMO? Check out my latest newsletter article, archived on my website blog. https://www.landontan.com//go-ahead-and-miss-out-financial

I want to give a little shoutout to my pal Ananda La Vita who helped me polish up my original website design and logo. Ananda and I lived together when I was 17 when they were working doing design for The Stranger and even at home I always noticed how beautiful and tasteful everything they did was. In my 20s they helped design my book of poetry "Pack Light" which, although not widely circulated, thoroughly impressed my love interests. Now they have spent so much time and att...ention to detail making my financial planning website tight, functional, and pleasing to the eye. Thank you Ananda! Everyone please check it out!!!! Also thank you to Austin Hernandez, who helped me to focus in on what I wanted to say and how visuals help to say it. I’m so grateful to have a website that shows my professional side but feels like home to look at. www.landontan.com

Hey shorty! Who thought you’d need to understand short selling to understand today’s memes? Short selling is a highly risky form of investing where an investor borrows a stock, sells it, then buys it at a later time. Say I borrowed your Furby, thinking that these things were going to go out of style, and sold it to Veronica for $10. Next week when they are much less cool, I buy a Furby for $5, and I give it back to you to "close my position". I just made $5. But let’s say in... the interim instead of being less cool, there was a massive campaign to buy Furbies. Now I have to go out and buy a $100 Furby to pay you back 1 Furby. I have lost $95. That’s apart from all of the terms & fees involved in borrowing your Furby. A short is the opposite of a long position, which is what we usually think of when buying stocks. If I bought a Furby for $5, and they suddenly become much more popular, and now are worth $100, then I can make $95 by selling it. It’s still risky, but I can only lose $5 on my long position. Now carry on with your memes and remember that investing always involves risk and that past performance does not indicate future returns!

Thank you to the 100+ of my friends who liked this page! I really appreciate you helping me to get the word out about my business. Every time I work on a new thing for my business, it helps me to understand the process of my clients who own small businesses. That's something I love about this work--that if I'm reading tax code or trying out new budgeting software or thinking up a new hack on my own behaviors, that the benefit doesn't stop with me. I'd love to hear from business owners I haven't connected with yet about what's going on with your strategy, social media or otherwise!

How I look when researching investments

Raise your hand if you prepped your application and then waited on bated breath for your baby's social security card so that you could start saving for their college! Oh, just me? There's something so real/surreal about seeing those numbers printed in that font and his name that we made up and just the magical fact of his existence. That's parenting when you're a financial planner, I guess!