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When I was 57 I had surgery to compensate for a torn tendon in my right ankle and caused it to deteriorate over 30 years, giving me plantar fasciitis and pronating enough to make it impossible to run any more. When I was 58 I had my left hip replaced, probably because it wore heavily due to the asymmetry caused by that missing tendon. When I was 59 I was 40 lbs over weight because of a decade of poor diet, combined with increasing sedentary lifestyle from work, divorce, and that bad ankle. I sometimes found myself wheezing when I walked, which was incredibly scary during COVID, and unfathomable to me given I was a college athlete (practice dummy) on a national championship wrestling team, rode as much as a hundred miles a day in the off season, and after college ran 40 miles a month, half marathons, etc until my late 40s. Today I'm 60 and have to take THC edibles to sleep through the night because of the pain of a (presumably) torn rotator cuff in my shoulder. But I've lost 33 lbs doing hot yoga almost every day for the last 15 months, along with some improvements to my diet. And I got on a weight lifting program this year (along with TRT) which has increased my muscle mass noticeably, even though every morning I wake up with an aching shoulder, and I have to skip some exercises (haven't bench pressed in months) because of the pain. I have an MRI next week, hoping there is an easy arthroscopic fix because shoulder replacement is way harder and rehab takes far longer than hip replacement. The lesson I wished I had learned before this is that I can't get back all those days I woke up healthy and skipped my run or workout, and ate whatever I wanted. Instead I was forced to put myself through incredibly hard workouts and food choices for over a year just to get back close (but not there) to where my health should have been naturally. Maintenance is so much easier than undoing a decade of bad choices. So my advice to others is, don't take health for granted. Every day I'm grateful that I'm still healthy enough and the pain is not so great that I can still push through it enough to slowly improve my fitness, even if its nowhere near as easy or fast as it was when I was younger. One of my yoga buddies and me talked about the need to stay ahead of the curve, and how Charlie Munger proactively moved to walkers/wheelchairs to avoid the falls that commonly rapidly accelerate our declines in our last years of life. I am witnessing what can happen in stark terms today. Our best dog ever who would turn 12 this summer and was so active and energetic that people thought she was half her age. Three weeks ago she yelped from pain jumping out of the car and it started a downward spiral to where now her back legs are so weak she needs my help to stand, and all she can do is rest all day. I'm in $2,500 into tests and x-rays without a clear diagnoses or treatment plan for recovery, and on the cusp of the decision whether to put her down or not today. So my advice to everyone is, stay active even if you don't feel like it. Find something you like, or can tolerate, enough to do regularly. If you can't/won't run, then swim or bike or go to fitness classes, or take up weight lifting. Or just go for long walks or take up hiking. Podcasts can make long workouts more tolerable, but they are also useful times to meditate on your day and your life and think more deeply and clearly. Find and create your own healthy habits that can last you a lifetime so when the inevitable setbacks occur, your body is stronger and more ready to help you recover from them. Because it's the setback we can't recover from that is often the cause of our end.

2 years later after start of thread and bonds have underperformed t-bills by 4%/yr and SPY by 8%/yr as the index's yield has increased from 3.5% to 5.25% (actually yields more since that's YTW and MBS will yield more than their YTW) I'm continuing to plow the entirety of my 401k into bonds and have recently started to buy long term tsy's on margin in my taxable (having sold most of my IG corporates after the late 2023 rally). credit risk free MBS >6%, LT tsy's approaching 5%. good stuff. I'm a buyer. no corporates. IG spreads way too low in my opinion. not for everyone but if you buy say 30% in LT tsy's at 4.8% on margin at interactive brokers, at top federal tax rate, you're making 3% after tax yield, fund w/ 6.2% margin and you have negative carry of 3% on 30% of your portfolio. At constant yields you lose 90 bps/yr on the portfolio. But in a recession where rates drop just 1%, you get 30% of your portfolio going up 20%, 2% =42% for 600 - 1200 bps of PnL when you want it most from liquid monetizable instrument. if rates go up another % you lose 15% on your 30% / -450 bps. almost no mgn requirement. JPow is making bonds great again.

Trying to be "conservative" is a mistake. You should try to be accurate. How many great and very reasonably priced companies have value investors missed because they were too "conservative". I agree with Gregmal, you should be looking out at least 3-5 years. Trailing earnings are already priced into the stock. Forward earnings are usually too (though Meta is an example of "conservative" investors missing forward earnings by a mile). If you look at only forward earnings, every great company will look expensive. If you use trailing earnings, every value trap will look cheap. Nvidia is a great cautionary tale. In January 2022, TTM (2022) was $4.44. actual fwd (2023) was $3.34. You could have been conservative and estimated 2024 earnings at $3 or $4 or $5. But actual 2024 earnings were $12.96. Sure, you might have missed the drawdown from $300 to $100. But you would also miss the run from $100 to $900. Conservatism comes at a price. --- This also depends on your strategy. If you are buying a cyclical, you should be looking at the past 10-20 years. And then maybe overlay some thoughts on forward earnings. For a real growth stock, you should be looking out 5-10 years.

I'll chime in on the "best investment" topic, for fun. The boring but correct answer, in risk-adjusted terms, has to be Berkshire over the years. A more fun answer would be the Tech Data (TECD) merger arb trades I made at the beginning of COVID. I rarely see this company discussed so figured it'd be fun to share here. Tech Data is a decades-old distributor of IT components. It's a durable business that shares many of the qualities that make other distributors great (e.g. Fastenal and Sysco). A money manager in my orbit started buying it in the mid 2000s for clients so I've followed and owned it for a while. In 2019, Apollo offered to take the company private for $130/share. To my delight, after BofA contacted Todd Combs, Buffett outbid Apollo and offered $140/share. After Apollo countered with $145/share, Buffett dropped out of the running. By late 2019, TECD was set to go private at $145/share and by January 2020 the stock was trading around $143/share. Then, COVID hit. Forced selling and deal collapses abounded. Though the merger agreement remained intact, TECD traded as low as $97/share on speculation of deal collapse. I figured, hey, this is a business I've tracked for years, it's dominant in its industry, I'd be happy to own it at this price assuming COVID tracks the trajectory of the 1918 flu, it has the Buffett stamp of approval at $140/share pre-COVID, management has expressed a desire to sell (so if this deal falls through another will pop up in time)... So, I bit at ~$102/share in late March, 2020, with about 10% of my investable capital. By June 30th, the deal closed as planned at $145/share, with my blocks returning 38-44% in a little over three months. Pretty fun one!