Happy birthday, Calico!

This year was intense for Calico. He started 1st grade on February 1st and 2nd after summer break. He didn’t know Portuguese and had to learn a language this year. He is almost fluent and just missing some vocabulary now. Plus, he is learning to read in two languages! Huge props to his fantastic teacher and the tremendous support she has given him (and us).

There were many tough times as he had to learn how to deal with bullies and the intensity of school. He is doing great now, and I am proud of him. Seeing his friends and classmates’ enormous impact on him is wild. He is really into Pokemon and Sonic right now. For Christmas, he got a bunch of Ash outfits.

I feel so lucky for my time with my son before he started school. This is an abrupt change for our little family.

The poor little guy is sick for his birthday. Up all last night with a fever of 104 :(. I think he slept most of the day and feels terrible. His fever is down a bit today, but just laying on the couch. Ouch!

My dad and Marian are visiting us in Portugal over Christmas, Calico’s Birthday, and New Year’s. It has been fantastic to have them here, and we have taken a pretty relaxed pace with some wandering around Viseu, some day trips, and enjoying the holidays. Fun times!!! We even managed a trip to the beach with some good weather a few days before Christmas. And then the Douro Rivery Valley a few days after.

I cooked a roast for Christmas Eve, and it turned out pretty good. I did a bit of red wine in the bottom and used a Dutch cast iron pan.

Congrats to us on making it to 9 years!!! We both feel that things are much smoother in day-to-day operations (which is a good feeling to have).

We are going out to eat at our favorite restaurant shortly, and with grandparents in town, we have some free babysitters, which is nice! We are hoping to do something extraordinary for our 10th anniversary.

I’ve been thinking a lot about AI this year (mostly in the context of search engines). I wanted to share one amazing example where it was 100x better than a search engine. What was I researching?

I am rebalancing our retirement fund (Bogglehead style) and was researching a few different stock and bond ETFs to understand them. Usually, I go to Google and use them to search the Bogglehead forum and Reddit group for questions I am having (and in rare cases I might post on the forum).

Specifically, I was looking at three bond ETFs to understand the difference. Usually, this takes a lot of research reading the prospectus (highly technical language), and reading about 20 different threads on financial forums. And it doesn’t always have the answer as I am reading around the subject and hoping someone talks about it.

What can ChatGPT do?

I asked ChatGPT to explain the differences between the 3 bond ETFs I was looking at. The summary was fantastic and accessible, and then I could sit there and ask specific questions about all three to understand them better. Specifically what percentage of treasury bonds were within them and which was better for what type of investor. I also was able to ask it to explain the risk of treasury repo funds versus others. I also did this with a couple of stock ETFs to understand them.

The result was so personalized, quicker, and so much easier to understand.