Jacob Schroeder

Are We Suffering from TMS (Too Much Storytelling)?

This is the part where I’m supposed to regale you with an enlightening, insightful or thought-provoking tale about an ancient Stoic philosopher, or some little known World War II general, or an apocryphal business anecdote featuring Steve Jobs, or my own personal reflection of what I learned running my first marathon. In other words, thisContinue reading “Are We Suffering from TMS (Too Much Storytelling)?”

Writing Costs What It Costs

The fashion of creativity is sentimentally visualized as berets and professorial attire against the backdrop of a bar. For those creating, it is every earned bit of hard hats and stained overalls and calloused hands carrying the fragments of ideas. Writing is an act of endurance. No wonder why so many people quit — orContinue reading “Writing Costs What It Costs”

Financial Writing Rules: What Not to Do

Writing for the most part is a liberating exercise (editing is a whole different animal). Lessons come from making mistakes rather than obeying any set of rules. You learn rules to know when or when not to break them. But here are some financial writing blunders that I see often and suggest avoiding: 1. OverwritingContinue reading “Financial Writing Rules: What Not to Do”

Transcendence in Money

Financial writing at its best helps you find or notice transcendent experiences, to do more than just make or save a dollar for the sake of money. And for me, the transcendent experience, in a nutshell, is feeling that you are connected to something larger than yourself, that there’s some order in the universe. ALANContinue reading “Transcendence in Money”

Is a Writing Course Worth Your Time and Money?

No. There is a price of admission to writing, but it is never tendered to anyone other than yourself. He didn’t like the thought of them knowing he’d been scared. Didn’t like the thought of them knowing what a fool he’d been. Oh, to hell with that! Tell everyone! He’d done it! He’d been drivenContinue reading “Is a Writing Course Worth Your Time and Money?”

Values in Writing

Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny. GANDHI My Story I was a terrible baseball card collector as a kid. It wasn’t that I didn’t know which players were good or howContinue reading “Values in Writing”

Friday Five: Be Kind

Five pieces of (mostly) financial writing and one reason why I recommend reading them. A personal finance pocket book Artistic skill along with writing skill is a powerful combination. Safal Niveshak has got it. Changing one’s mind on FIRE A maxim of effective narrative is the human element. Changing one’s mind is part of theContinue reading “Friday Five: Be Kind”

First Principles Writing

It’s late at night. The words on the screen swirl before your heavy eyes. With each pass, what you wrote sounds worse and worse. A clumsy passage or sentence takes on the appearance of a Gordian Knot. What should be simple and clear is a tangled mess. It doesn’t convey your meaning at all. Suddenly,Continue reading “First Principles Writing”

Friday Five: What Are You Worth?

Five pieces of (mostly) financial writing and one reason why I recommend reading them. How to truly evaluate your wealth As I wrote in my previous blog, creation, whether it is a work of art or a scientific study, is a form of adding to the conversation. Nick Muggiuli’s blog this week is great exampleContinue reading “Friday Five: What Are You Worth?”

Everything’s Been Done

The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. MARK TWAIN Can anything ever be original? Read enough finance articles and you start to have a Groundhog Day experience, as the fundamental principles — spend less thanContinue reading “Everything’s Been Done”