One of my favorite things to do on Twitter is running polls on herd mentality. Since the vast majority of my followers are finance related, I like to use my audience as a test group; a science experiment if you will.

I took a personal day yesterday to enjoy the perfect spring weather and spend some time doing some much needed yard work. Specifically, I had to grind out four stumps and a bunch of roots. I cut down four trees last year and the stumps have since been sitting there looking like an eye sore. Don’t worry tree-huggers, I planted a new magnolia in its spot and I have some blueberry bushes being delivered today from a local farm.

I’ve read a handful of books recently that have discussed the psychology of investing (Thinking In Bets, The Geometry of Wealth, The Behavioral Investor) and I’ve become more enlightened on the concept of the behavior gap. Typically, I’m more attracted to the technical books since I have more of an analytical mind. However, reading these books has turned me onto something new and I wish I would have paid more attention to the behavior gap in my earlier years of investing.

My wife works for a public company. They IPO’d soon after she started working there.

For hitting certain performance metrics she was given a certain amount of restricted stock units (RSUs). The vesting schedule was such that after every year we were able to sell 25% of the total RSUs.

Get lucky. End of story.

In reality, there is a ton of luck involved. I don’t appreciate when I get beat by my wife who makes her tournament picks based on her favorite team mascot or “their jerseys look cute”.

This year I’m going to focus on the historical performance and statistics like a true market technician would (assuming we have absolute faith in the ranking committee).

Every year there are four #1 seeds that look unstoppable until they all meet each other in the Final Four, then all bets are off. But, picking your Final Four to contain all of the #1 seeds has historically been a terrible bet.

Should you tip on a carry out order? I struggle with this question.

When in doubt, it’s best to write it out. Here’s my thought process weighing the pros and cons.

The biggest news in the past couple of days has been the college admissions scandal. A slew of business executives and two high-profile actresses were among 50 people charged in a $25 million cheating scheme to help wealthy  students to gain admission to top colleges.  Why were these rich parents so obsessed with getting their kids into the top colleges?

I have some thoughts on this.

Q: Why do most people go to college? A: So you can get a good job when you graduate. There are multiple studies out there that show that college students earn much more than the typical high school graduate.