Herman Ye

The words "always" and "never" are so popular in daily conversation, despite few situations being truly deserving of the adverbs.  When getting passed over for a promotion:  "My work is always overlooked" When arguing with your spouse:  "You never do the dishes" Always means at all times . Never means at no time ever . Even if rare, I'm sure there was a time you got a pat on the back and your spouse cleaned up after eating.  We exaggerate to emphasize. To drive home a point. We don't mean to be dishonest, but to exaggerate is to say something false. A poor foundation for communication.  If a co-worker's late for a meeting, it's unproductive to accuse them of " never being on time ", even if tardiness is common. This breeds defensiveness. It's untrue and they can ( rightfully ) accuse you of lying.  Exaggerated accusations breeds exaggerated responses.  "You're always complaining about me" they'll f...

A floppy disc to save your drafts. A shelf to access your ebooks. A recycling bin to store your deleted files. These are examples of skeuomorphic design - digital interfaces that mirror their analog counterparts. A helpful way to introduce the new through the familiar.  Skeuomorphic design leverages the past to guide us into the future, but it's doesn't create that future.  If we think skeuomorphicly, we dream narrowly and fall into the classic "faster horse" trap - where the future is only an improved version of now. We predict better horseshoes and saddles, instead of self-driving cars.  Smartphones are not phones with internet, but entertainment consoles and payment systems. Youtube is not home videos online, but a medium for a whole new class of creators.  Amazon started as a bookseller and evolved into the world's biggest cloud provider - an innovation in its own right that spring-boarded countless others. Innovation by its nature is surprising. It's not ...

We admire commitment. Colleagues who put in extra hours to meet a deadline. Athletes who push through the pain to achieve the win. Those who simply "gets things done" despite it all. Commitment demonstrates grit and resilience. A strength of character that is often associated with success.  Conversely, the reverse can hold true. Expressing itself as stubbornness, commitment can be a lack of flexibility and growth that leads to failure. Athletes who stay with the same team despite a poor culture, businesses who double down on a product no one wants.  Commitment only works when committed to the right things. Knowing what's "right" is the tricky part. This is where testing things out helps.  Small experiments with minimal resource commitment is a great way to gather data. Data that can point us in the right direction.  Try out different jobs. Meet different people. Visit new places. Try a variety of hobbies. Unabashedly dip your toes in the spirit of continuou...

A best practice in portfolio management is to own many companies across many sectors, countries and sizes. Reducing the risk of one bad apple spoiling it all. Diversification, the only free lunch in investing, produces better returns with lower risks.  Diversification is helpful beyond investing.  Retirement is a trying time. This is most clear with pro athletes. Countless examples of downward spirals and overnight bankruptcies. We're just as susceptible. Many retirees report depression and anxiety due to loss of identity and structure. So much of us is tied to our careers, when it ends, it's devastating.  This is why we diversify. We're more than our jobs. We are sons, daughters, parents, athletes, book nerds, investors, gamers, and so much more. Work is a single slice of a much bigger pie. It's foolish to save our best self for one and neglect the rest.  When we feed other areas, we become more resilient. A bad meeting doesn't destroy us because we were still...

In high school I wanted to be fit so I could be better at basketball. Really I just wanted to dunk.  Never happened but it sparked something that would serve me long after my hoop dreams faded.  Wanting to be fit led me to learning how, which led me to training well, which made me feel good, which made me keep at it. I learned more, trained more, felt better and on and on. Wrapped up in this positive feedback loop, decades later I continue to reap the benefits. A lifelong passion for fitness, where making healthy choices has never been a chore.  Feedback loops are powerful and are all around us.  Costco provides quality goods at low prices, this leads to more memberships, which leads to more sales, which gives them more leverage over suppliers, which enables lower prices...  Feedback loops can also go astray.  Drinking soda feels good, so you drink more. You gain weight, feeling bad you drink more to feel good again, which leads to more weight.... Cycles ar...

Focusing too much on how much . Many companies measure success based on how many things they can build. For tech companies, it's features, for factories, it's widgets.

Hey, it's been a while!  You may have noticed that the blog has been a tad quiet lately. Our first break in the action since roughly 2 years of weekly posting. There's a good reason.  I covered a lot of what I wanted to in investing & finance. While there's always more, the core was covered and I felt I was getting repetitive.  TLDR: think long term, be rational, and compound that interest.   During my break, I explored other interests. Business, health, technology, and more. There's a lot to learn, and writing is a great teacher.  Going forward, I'll be covering a wider range of topics. No set theme, just whatever I'm interested in the moment.  Given the broaden scope, we've outgrown our beginning banking roots. I'm going to rebrand to simply hermanye.com.  I'm excited to write again and welcome you all to the ride. 

So you've landed an awesome job. Good on you! You skim over the package and see a retirement savings program. Even better! In Canada, these plans typically come in two shapes. A Group Registered Retirement Saving Plan (RRSP) and a Registered Pension Plan (RPP), aka a Defined Contribution Plan. Let's see how the two compare.  Starting with the similarities: Employer contributions and employee matching. This is w hy we love these benefits . Employers will contribute a percentage of your salary automatically to your account. On top of that, they will match a portion of your contributions. Who doesn't love free money? You'll also get a choice in what to invest in - though within the constraints of the plan provider. They'll unusually have a small menu of funds. Try to find the lowest fee option that meets your needs.   Onto the differences: The tax treatment is actually the same...but different. Both plans allow you you grow your money tax free. The difference is in ho...

Self-driving cars, NFTs, AI, SPACs - what a time to be alive. With so much excitement and promise, investors are jumping in to invest in seemingly world-changing projects. It's a fun time to trade. Endless options, big gains, compelling stories. Even I've been tempted to join the fun.  The lack of fun is the cost of admission when you choose to index. Speculation is taken off the table. You'll never get rich quick. Volatility will be limited. Never will you double your money overnight. Swings of about 10% is as exciting as it gets and these days are few and far between. You'll never have amazing stories about how you were able to successfully buy the dip of a EV stock that has since tripled. You'll never be able to brag about buying Amazon at 10 bucks. You'll never play visionary by yoloing into Bitcoin because you knew it was the future.  Active and concentrated portfolios lead to great stories (good and bad). Passive and diversified ones lead to snores. No one...

It's that time of the year. Bonus season! You got a great review and the numbers to match. You've already made big plans for it. Then the day comes. What?? It's half what I expected. Why are my taxes so high?  This sticker shock is very common. Don't be alarmed, it's not a mistake. Just standard payroll practices. It's important to remember that taxes are truly only assessed ( and paid ) once a year - when you file. All the other times you're " paying taxes " is just your payroll friends pre-paying for you. Payroll withholds from your paycheck to make sure you don't get a giant tax bill come filing time.  Payroll can only estimate your annual earnings. They have no idea how much you'll make throughout the entire year. So their software will treat every paycheck as if this is how much you'll make every period ( wouldn't that be nice ). Your bonus is probably multiples of your regular paycheck and this puts you in a much higher tax br...