The primary answer to all these questions – besides the obvious ego -- is that for whatever reasons, I am getting an increasing volume of questions about all-things-money, from media writers, business acquaintances and often complete strangers. I then find myself responding to numerous emails, often repeating the same thing, many times in reaction to similar questions. Other times I just ignore and delete the email, which (still) leaves a gnawing guilt as well.
The bottom line here is that I think blogging helps clarify my thinking on various matters, will save me time in the long run (and is a great way to pass time on an airplane).
Yes, I do write quite a bit already – and as academics we must publish or we perish – but the traditional methods for reaching my intended audiences have their own shortcomings.
Academic and scholarly research can take years to get published, and only after tortuous concessions have been made, primarily meant to appease anonymous reviewers and journal editors. Much of the results are bland, stale and outdated by the time they hit the proverbial newsstand. Popular columns and ongoing articles in magazines and newspapers must be focused in content, and are often heavily edited themselves. Finally, the numerous reporters I regularly talk to have their own space constraints, pre-set storylines and economic agendas and thus rarely-if-ever reproduce my remarks in their entirety. Hence, I have decided to give blogging a try. (I also relish being able to invent my own rules of grammar and not having to conform to any given presentation format or writing style.)
My plan is to both react to current events and be demand-driven based on questions and comments I receive from readers. I will focus my remarks on all things related to finance and investing, with a particular emphasis on holistic wealth management and retirement income planning, which is the topic of my most recent book: “Are You a Stock or a Bond? Create Your Own Pension Plan for a Secure Financial Future” published by Pearson/FT Press. (Ok, I couldn’t avoid a plug.)
I have been told by my local tech-guru who helped set-up the blog (thank you Brandon) that anyone can post comments to this page, but that we retain the ability to review the material before it gets posted. This sounds like a fair deal to me, if anyone else is interested in contributing.
Welcome to my blog.
