Roundup: The Best of 2024
My favourite Substack Articles
I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!
To help fill the blissful void between Christmas and New Year, I’ve collated some of my favourite articles from 2024.
Some are from me and some are from other writers on Substack.
So, grab yourself a hot cuppa joe and enjoy!
From Me
A lot of you have arrived over the course of my last five articles; so, I’d like to share some of my ‘deep cuts’ from 2024 - I was particularly pleased with all of them.
It Depends
“Acting on generic, surface level advice is risky business. There may be a ‘correct’ answer to your question, but it may not be your answer.
Yes, it probably is a good idea for you to invest, but how you go about it requires intimate knowledge of your circumstances, your wants and, most importantly, your needs.
A random journalist, Reddit contributor, or teenager on Tik-Tok knows nothing about you.
Any ‘advice’ they give is likely a reflection of their life experiences, not yours”.
The Divine Dividend
“Assets generate income > Income buys assets > More assets generate more income > More income buys more assets > More assets generate more income”.
Single Points of Failure (SPOF)
“A financial SPOF is any aspect of your personal finances that, if removed, brings down your entire lifestyle.
For most households of working age, their earned income is a SPOF.
During our working lives, our lifestyle is (typically) solely dependent upon our ability to continue earning income.
Our ability to earn is known as our ‘human capital’ and it’s a working person’s greatest financial asset”.
Don’t Be Careful, Be Competent
“Being careful with your finances is risky business.
Why?
Because inflation doesn’t care about you or your innate desire for safety.
Inflation isn’t cautious.
It’s aggressive.
It’s a merciless destroyer of financial futures…
It only cares about one thing.
Power.
Purchasing power”.
Lest We Forget
“My grandfather, Derek Wayman, and my great uncle, Frank Wayman, both took part in D-Day.
Like their father before them, Rol Wayman (who survived being gassed in the trenches of WWI), they left behind their peaceful village life, took up arms, crossed the channel and went to war on the continent…
10 months after D-Day, Grandad took part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (where Anne Frank had died two/three months prior to the British liberation). If you’ve seen pictures from the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, or any other death camp, then you’ll know that my grandfather, shortly after turning 21, entered a living hell”.
From Others
The below articles are split broadly between two topics:
Finance
Philosophy
The Money Den
“All the kerfuffle about the Budget has got me thinking this week about what actually matters. Try as we all might to be as clever and tax efficient as we can, as an investor you only have one job really.
And that is to keep your shit together at the exact moment when everyone else is losing theirs… The time to make sure your roof is ship shape is when the sun is shining, not when it’s raining. And at the moment - it’s beaming.
But good times, just like bad times, pass. It is only a matter of time before “the next thing” arrives, and the time to prepare is now”.
Hat Tip Nick
Unlike Looe [Cornwall], few things have remained unchanged over the last century. This includes—seamless segue alert—the world of investing. Since 1924, it has been completely transformed, and all the credit goes to a man few have heard of.
In March 1924, Looe denizens were going about their business, trying not to think about the horrors of “The War to End All Wars”, which had ended just five and a bit years earlier, taking with it the lives of 36 of the village’s young men. Simultaneously, over the pond, one of our cousins created something so remarkable and transformative that today, 100 years on, we take it for granted.
His name? Edward Leffler”.
What then?
“Nature once dictated our lives with a ‘must’. Traditionalist cultures once guided us with an ‘ought’. I believe that a core feature of our affluent culture, however, is that we are given neither a ‘must’ nor an ‘ought’, and in this void many are left with a ‘why’:
Why do we live?
Why were we put here?
But when the answer is unclear or unsatisfying, the question gets worse: What is the point?
This is when life is no longer an adventure to be lived but a cross to be carried. This is a cancer of meaninglessness.
War is a modern remnant of natures ‘must’ and I believe this makes it a window into our soul”.
Socratic State of Mind
“Chattel slavery has mostly vanished from the developed world, but the 21st century has brought more metaphorical slavery than ever. Watch the people who can’t look away from glowing screens, even when socialising around dinner tables. Study the lives squandered in pursuit of shiny things. Count the neglected relationships and unswerving allegiance to tribal affiliations. These people have been conquered and dominated, though no army deployed against them.
If we want to free ourselves we need to identify our enslavements. If you’re like me, you’ll find them lurking in unexpected places”.
Postcards From The Abyss
“Most negative events in our life are not final, even the negatives. They are survivable. Much of what makes them feel catastrophic happens inside our heads not the objective world.
This is an old observation, a stoic argument. The event is less important than our reaction to it, how we choose to interpret it.
Events come and go, they are always happening. It is their effects that linger in our minds”.
Honourable Mentions
Recommendations
If you have any reading recommendations that you think I’d enjoy, please do share them (they don’t have to be on Substack):
See you in 2025!
Thanks for reading,
Tom Redmayne
Chartered Financial Planner
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Thank you!
This is not personal advice based on your circumstances.
All views are my own.
Cheers Tom - you’ve put some great stuff together this year, I’ve really enjoyed reading it.