Hi!

Remember me? You probably signed up after reading one of my books, or we vaguely know each other, or you know my work at Property Hub.

It's been nearly a year since I last wrote, but recently I've been missing it. So I'm going to get back to this monthly newsletter – loosely about money, work, and what it's all for.

If you're not interested, unsubscribe without fear! I'll never even know.

Coming up this month:

• Obviously I'm too arrogant to just buy an index fund

• Making life decisions I'm absolutely not ready for

• Midlife crisis + AI = this

• Gossip!

📈 Passive / Aggressive

The core message of my book Seven Myths About Money is to take ownership of your financial decisions - not to follow whatever default advice happens to be loudest at the time.

That "default advice" right now is to just buy a global index fund and be done with it. But is it good advice for the near future? I'm not so sure.

So I set about rebuilding my pension using a different approach - while still avoiding the need for active trading and monitoring.

In this blog post I describe what I've done, why, and whether I'm beating the market

🤷🏻‍♂️ Too cool for school?

My son has just started Year 4, which means I can't put off thinking about secondary school for too much longer.

My strong instinct is to opt out of the mainstream and come up with something homeschool-adjacent (just absolutely not with us doing the teaching). He's already decided he's going to be a YouTuber, writer and part-time inventor – so something alt-flavoured would allow him to bosh out the essentials of the curriculum in a few hours and leave the rest of the day free for building relevant skills through projects.

(This is basically what Alpha School in the US does.)

But then... given the messages he gets from us at home, traditional schooling might be a useful hedge: he'll be exposed to a hefty dose of "sit there and learn this so you can go to university then get a good job in future", whereas at the moment I'm not sure he knows that "proper" jobs even exist. If I'm honest I'd probably have to hide my disappointment if he ended up working in compliance at HSBC, but he deserves to know all the options and make his own choice.

I can't pretend this is is a decision of pure pedagogy either. We also selfishly have to think about geography (I love where we live but all the local schools are either quite stabby or quite £50k-per-year-y), and effort (crafting a bespoke educational and social setup is a part-time job in itself).

If you've navigated this with your kids, I'd love to hear how you went about it.

🤘 Riffing with robots

I've been playing around with AI music generation to satisfy my "frustrated musician" side (RIP my hardcore punk band Sniper Wolf, active 2001-2004).

I've been using Suno.com in the style of a Betty Crocker cake mix. That is, doing just enough myself (like adding an egg) to feel the pride of creation, when really the tool has done most of the work.

My mind was blown on my first attempt. I prompted it to write "An 80s radio rock song about the debasement of fiat currency" (Yeah yeah, pretend that wouldn't have been your first thought too.)

The result was Paper Money Heart – which, you've got to admit, is an absolute banger. In one prompt.

But you can go so much further, and use it as a true creative outlet. For example, on another track it came up with something I quite liked, but then I restructured it and added a trumpet solo. Another time, I uploaded an insanely rough version of a piano track and minutes later a radio-ready version emerged.

Left to its own devices, it's never going to be as good as the best human musicians: because it can only base its work on what already exists, it always tends towards the generic.

But if you provide the creative spark yourself, it's an incredible way to get ideas out of your head. Just expect weird looks when someone overhears you whistling your idea for a guitar solo into your laptop's mic.

BTW: If you want to learn to use Suno, this guy's tutorials are the best I've found.

BTW 2: My growing playlist of "songs inspired by the macro economy" is here. I don't expect many clicks on this link.

🙊 The gossip trap

I must admit, I used to look down on people who cared about celebrity gossip. But then I realised: when you get down to it, almost everything is gossip.

Sports is gossip for men (obviously not just men, but let me have my arresting opening line). Think about how much time football fans spend watching football compared to talking about transfer rumours or whether a manager will get fired. That's all gossip.

Macroeconomics is gossip for people who were picked last for PE. At first it seems mechanical, but at heart it all relies on gossip about what central bankers will do, how bond traders will respond, and which "narrative" will determine what happens next.

Politics is gossip for people who enjoy being outraged. How much time do politics junkies spend debating policy implications versus what someone "really meant" by a line in a speech?

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's not surprising: humans were only able to dominate the planet because they could work in large groups, and they could only do that because of gossip. We're hard-wired for it.

But the dark side of gossip is that it gives us the reward of feeling like we're participating in something, without the risk of taking action. For those of us who think we're above mere tittle-tattle, it's probably worth asking if we've just found a more respectable version that's distracting us from...y'know... doing something useful.

👋 Question for you...

What's your favourite movie?

My wife and I have decided to work our way through all those classics we've always been too embarrassed to admit we haven't seen. So far: The Godfather was a hit, Citizen Kane was surprisingly watchable, Dr Strangelove was a fun watch, and The Dark Knight has traumatised my wife for life and confirmed that superhero movies just aren't my jam.

Tell me what we should watch next!

Or reply with anything else – I'd love to hear what you’re building, thinking about, or trying to figure out right now.

Speak soon,

Rob

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