On the third floor of a stately hotel, investment conference participants were spilling into a buzzing reception area. Long tables draped in white tablecloths held clusters of gleaming silver coffee urns surrounded by a lavish array of refreshments: tropical fruit salad, pastries, giant chocolate chip cookies, tiny crustless sandwiches, the work…
Whether you’re in retirement, just getting ready to retire, or 5, 10, or 40 years out, this book can help you invest smarter your whole life and yes, plan better for retirement. Harmful mythology abounds about retirement investing. Many retirees or soon-to-be retirees have heard a plethora of advice. Take 100 (or 120) and subtract your age to get your equity allocation, put the rest in bo…
What if a happier life was only a few simple choices away? A successful entrepreneur living in Southern California, Scott Rieckens had built a “dream life”: a happy marriage, a two-year-old daughter, a membership to a boat club, and a BMW in the driveway. But underneath the surface, Scott was creatively stifled, depressed, and overworked trying to help pay for his family’s beach-town l…
What makes this book different from all the other books out there on early retirement? We think it's the amount of personal financial detail we provide. We don’t hold back! You can use this information as a kind of financial yardstick to measure what is possible in your own life. We retired from full-time work at the age of 43. In this book we share with you the roadmap we followed to get …
Finance theory is a phrase that encompasses under its umbrella portofolio theory, the capital asset pricing model, call option pricing, and arbitrage pricing theory; in sum, it includes those models most often associated with financial economics. In the late 1960s and early 1970's, the field was most closely associated with the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), as evidenced by the emergence o…
The Eurozone crisis began in late 2009. It followed in the wake of the globalfinancial crisis and quickly developed into one of the most serious economic andpolitical crises in the history of the European Union (EU). Nonetheless, after adecade of unsuccessful attempts to resolve the fundamental structural and insti-tutional issues that underlie the Eurozone’s problems, a long-term reform that…
Europe’s cities are global leaders. Though they lack the clout that comes with ten million-plus populations or the headquarters of the world’s largest firms, on important international agendas such as cultural production, public health, knowledge and education, and sustainability, the European metropolis leads. Europe’s cities win on many measures of liveability and resilience, and these…
With the signing in 2016 of the Amsterdam Pact1, the EU Member States committed to an Urban Agenda designed to encourage and promote integrated planning and development in pursuit of a more sustainable and equitable settlement pattern. The Urban Agenda acknowledges the significant role that cities have played in Europe’s development following the industrial revolution. It also recognises the …
Finance has gone farming. Since the financial and food price crises of 2007/ 8, the world has seen a stark rise in financial investments in farmland and agri-cultural production by investment banks, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, private equity funds, insurance companies, family offices, endowment funds and high- net-worth individuals (HNWIs). Indeed, finance has been …
Agri-food is more than a strategically important economic sector. It is also crucial for society, because it provides affordable and sustainable nutrition for the population. An increasingly growing part of society, especially the young, are willing to pay more for sustainable food. This is important, as the sector is extremely sensitive to price changes. Crowdfunding can give more financing to…