This week, I’m gathering some wisdom I learned from our partnership with John Maxwell.

Big “aha” moment for me here was, I don’t have to be great at everything I do throughout the day. I only have to be at my best for the Main Event of that day…

trick is knowing and planning for the main event.

Here are your Quick Hits:

How Far $100 Goes at the Grocery Store After Five Years of Food Inflation

• I know I’ve shared a lot of pieces around inflation, but it still seems like people are “feeling it” more than what the reports are “saying.”
• Food is an area where an extra dollar here or there doesn’t seem that noticeable until months later where you notice you are spending $500 more a month on food!
• Or if you are like me with a minivan bursting full of kids it’s gone up $1,000 at least!

Great quote on why small decisions matter:

• “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.” – C.S. Lewis

A Short History of Stocks

• I thought this was a good read and taught me a few nuggets about wall street that I didn’t know.
• “In the 1960 and 70s, Merrill Lynch was bullish on America – they set their sales staff loose trying to sell the American dream to upper-middle class households. The technology didn’t really exist to easily track performance or costs – we simply took it on faith that equities would do well over the long haul.”

America’s Bonds Are Getting Harder to Sell

• Great article to put out in your newsletters this week – especially if you are using FIAs as a bond alternative!
• “Balance-sheet runoff, known as quantitative tightening, is meant to drain the banking system of reserves and increase the market’s share of the sovereign-debt pile. With the Fed paring back that program, and prepping to stop it sometime in the future, investors will have to absorb a smaller net share of Treasury securities.”
• “If we continue to see hot inflation prints, it’s going to keep a lot of people on the sidelines,” said Sierra’s St. Aubin.