LIFE AND CAREER ADVICE

ET contributor Brent Donnelly went out and asked some people he respects what advice they would give kids heading off to college. Here's what he found.

What does your money/happiness curve look like? Is it curved or linear? Does it flatline somewhere? If so, where?

There's the game of trading and the metagame of life. To win the latter, you have to Know Thyself.

The social rewards that come from imitating others feel good, but they come at a high price.

Here are 25 Anti-Mimetic ideas that can help us craft a life that is a little more free from the herd, and a bit more open to the spontaneity and wonder of new things.

The student loan crisis is a Big Deal. And it is only a part of a Bigger Deal: the Myth of College.

This issue will be front-and-center in the upcoming elections. We will all be handed our very own 'Yay, College' signs to raise high. More often than not, we will be asked to raise them in service of market-distorting policies which will make our problems worse.

"Oh, little Jimmy is going to 20-Years-Ago-This-Was-A-Second-Rate-University? I hear really good things about that school. Congratulations!"

"Thanks! We're all very pleased. Everyone except my bank account, that is. Hahaha!"

It's true, everyone is VERY pleased by the current system. Prestige university credentialing is a steam valve ... \whispers\ just like elections.

The problem isn't that we derive too much of our worth and value from work. The problem is that our jobs are becoming increasingly abstracted from work. Friends: Your work is holy.

It is a frustrating truth that good - even great - investors rarely know exactly what it is that makes them good. And so the inevitable guilty pleasure of investors - building portfolios from the best ideas of their various managers and advisors - is almost always doomed to fail from the beginning.

I can't advise you on the Answers. I won't advise you on the Answers. But I will advise you on the Process. Because that's what we do for our fellow pack members.

Nobody likes to admit it, but the investment industry hires and invests with the smartest-seeming people that seem sufficiently likable. And it doesn't work.