Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors - The Best Interest · Jesse Cramer

11 "Bad" Financial Moves (That I'm Totally Fine With)

·41 min·2 clips

March 23, 2020 left six years of investing gains below 1% total.

1. Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors episode 128 is about “11 ‘Bad’ Financial Moves (That I’m Totally Fine With)." 2. Jesse Kramer hosts the show, says he works at a fiduciary wealth management firm, and writes the Best Interest blog and newsletter. 3. The episode asks when a move that is suboptimal on a spreadsheet can still be reasonable in a real financial plan. 4. Jesse starts with a “sandbox investing account” and says he usually draws the line at 5% of investable assets, with maybe 10% at most. 5. He names Berkshire Hathaway, a Bitcoin ETF, and an Ethereum ETF as examples of his own tiny side positions. 6. He says leverage and short positions are the exception because losses can exceed the 5% or 10% set aside. 7. He then defends paying off a low-interest loan, even though a spreadsheet may prefer investing the money instead. 8. Jesse contrasts guaranteed rates like 2.5%, 3.5%, 4.5%, 5%, 6.5%, and 7% with an uncertain stock-market return. 9. He says the key question is how much sleep someone loses over debt, retirement, and possible market drops of 20%. 10. Leasing a car is his next example, and he notes that he leased a car and wrote about it in a blog post. 11. He says leasing usually costs 10% to 20% more in all-in car costs, but it can reduce monthly cash flow from about $800 to about $400 on a $35,000 car. 12. Jesse then turns to holding extra cash and says some retirees may want three, four, five, or even six years of low-volatility assets. 13. He mentions sequence-of-returns risk and says cash or U.S. Treasury bonds can serve as a buffer at the start of retirement. 14. He uses March 23, 2020 and the COVID crash to show how six years of gains could disappear on paper, with the total return below 1%. 15. From that example, he argues that a crash can reveal that an investor’s true risk tolerance is lower than expected. 16. He says it is not wise to make a rash portfolio overhaul in the middle of a crash, but a slow, low-emotion shift can be reasonable. 17. Jesse’s tone is conversational and self-aware, with frequent first-person examples and plain-language comparisons to spreadsheets and market shocks. 18. The format is a solo commentary with short ad breaks, a listener review mention, and repeated detours into practical scenarios. 19. Long-term investors who want practical gray-area finance judgments. 20. People seeking rigid rule-based advice may skip this one.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors - The Best Interest