Mrs. Goofy and I had dinner with friends last night and we got to talking about investments and such. I mentioned that we have a bunch of Berkshire, and a slug of Exxon and he chided me that it was probably a poor investment, since batteries….
Then he confided that he had bought some crypto just before the crash, and “it wasn’t doing too well” but he hadn’t checked lately, and anyway in the long run it was bound to be fine.
So my questions to you is: should I ever have dinner with this person again, and if yes, do you have a list of subjects we can talk about where I won’t instantly think “What a fool!”
Go out with someone who is actually a friend of yours. Sounds like your wife makes the friends. You just tag along. Think “what a fool” of a friend makes him not a friend.
Of course if you have never made a mistake then by all means you have a right to shove your friends along with others under the bus on the internut.
He has bad timing…so dancing is not a topic you want to discuss with him. I am quite sure any financial advisor he ever met said, “don’t time the market”. Nice how they want to churn your account in the meanwhile.
Talk about your other friends. The ones who love criticisms.
Goofy, given your proclivities, I suggest you avoid discussing religion, politics and investing. You might want to discuss neutral topics like home remodeling which you have done quite a bit of. Travel? Cars? (Avoid the ICE vs. EV controversy.) Non-team sports like golf you may have in common (but not sports teams – some people get very worked up about that).
Wendy
Let’s get real. There is no way you will ever see these folks without instantly thinking “What a fool!”
So skip the dinners, stick to waving a “Hi” across the parking lot as you quickly get into your car, and move on with life. Having experienced all of life and a decent chunk of after life, I can say with some degree of experience that life is too short to waste time on fools.
Group situations. I know a number of people I’m happy to spend a few minutes catching up with – my former neighbor R comes to mind, nice guy – but after a few minutes listening to him across a dinner table I would begin dreaming of less horrid ways of spending my time, such as shoving splinters under my fingernails.
But five minutes doing the catching up on wife/kids/careers, then wandering off? I can do that, still be pleasant, and might even enjoy myself.
For awhile, and as long as I don’t have to do it too often.
–sutton
who has an otherwise brilliant friend who has said to me more than ten times, “but Buffett…isn’t he getting old?” since (wait for it) 1999
