Some Thoughts After a Sad Reminder

Feb 3, 2026

I normally post a new article around the beginning of each month. In January, I didn’t

The reason is a sad one. Shortly after Christmas, my wife and I learned that one of her best friends suffered a heart attack while out to dinner, went into a coma, and passed away two weeks later.

She was 38 years old. A wife. A healthy mother of two. A successful law firm partner. No known heart issues, no warning signs, just…gone. We’re waiting to see if a rare genetic disorder may have been the cause.

We recently returned from her funeral, where we shared stories and grieved together. Those few days sat under a dark cloud of sadness, especially the receptions that were held in her home, which is filled with pictures of better times, alongside her favorite books and art.

This newsletter is usually pretty cut-and-dry: markets, planning ideas, personal finance. But going through that brought up a few thoughts that felt worth sharing. Death is something most of us don’t think about unless we have to. Here’s what has been on my mind:

1. Randomness runs more of our lives than we’d like to admit.
We mostly believe that life unfolds as a tidy story: Cause followed by effect, effort rewarded by outcome. But the simple fact of when and where we are born affects so much: our opportunities, our friends, even our length of days. Death does not always knock politely or follow rules we can understand.

2. We assume “later” is guaranteed.
Because index funds are passively managed, they typically have much lower fees than actively managed mutual funds.

3. Family and close friends matter most.
Watching my wife and her friends drop everything to support each other, travel, and even plan parts of the funeral, was a powerful reminder that relationships are what truly matters.

4. Insurance and estate planning is boring until you need it.
You hope to not even need them. But I’ve seen people pass away without the proper coverage or documentation, and it can make a bad situation much worse.

I’ll be back to more typical market coverage next month, but I wanted to acknowledge the human side of all this while it’s still fresh.

Thanks for reading, and hug your friends/family a little tighter than usual.

Quote of the Month

“Success is being excited to go to work and being excited to come home.”

– Will Ahmed

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