Diane Cohn

With $10 million in stock to sell during month seven, if the income tax rate was 40%, after paying the federal government, you’d get to keep $6,000,000. Of that $3 million, my personal choice would be to put $2.5 million to work with a talented portfolio manager, someone I know and trust, with an objective of 7% net income per year, or $175,000. In my case, I’d sell the remaining $5 million at the end of my one-year lockup, unless my tax accountant had a better plan. $3.5 million went under professional money management with an income/growth strategy, and $2 million went toward income-producing real estate with the goal of creating a combined $275K annual cash flow.

’s host family in Chimay to the hubby freaking out on the TGV when I couldn’t find the Eurail passes, to the sights, the food, the sunset strolls in Paris, to my daughter blowing up at the hubby for being, well, himself. Then there was that all night party in the apartment next door, the majestic peaks of Switzerland, that quirky Airbnb host, wandering Old Town Nice, Monaco, Lucca, Lucerne, Geneva, that pile of rock art at the Venice Biennial with the billionaire yachts parked out front… Almost losing the kids on that crowded train platform and playing the crazy mom card to get them on board, no thanks to the snooty The magic of Salzburg and having our Sound of Music moment after escaping that crazy hostel with the crappy internet and the Abe Lincoln statue that looked like Dad… Finding that amazing tech museum in Munich with the Pleo from a startup that the hubby had co-founded years ago, not to mention the beer… Travel, however, is chaotic, especially when you’re changing countries every few days, staying in wildly variable Airbnb accommodations, dealing with different languages and going places you’ve never been.

They use trading algorithms, rules-based computer programs much like robo advisors, to play out their strategies in the market and have been doing it for years. Now retail money is getting into the act—machines trading machines. When we start to see cold-hearted, trend-following algorithms determine that the path is down, [that’s] when you’re really going to need human beings. Bad money drives out good, like a bad apple ruins the whole bunch, like too many trolls kill a good forum, like fake news drowns out the real thing, machines trading machines are driving humans out of the market.

Hopefully an $80,000 mechanical engineering degree yields at least a $60,000 annual starting salary, which means, after taxes, we might break even in two years, a similar timeframe for the average new business. So our oldest is learning to pay for what she wants, maintain work-life balance, pitch ideas and succeed in professional positions. Then she and her new friend drove to Idaho to volunteer on Mountain Cloud Farm, where she learned how to grow market and CSA veggies along with harvesting, transplanting, seeding, amending, processing and storing. My oldest confirmed that she is pursuing the best career for herself and learned what will satisfy her most when choosing a full-time job in the near future.