The Codicil

The days are getting longer, Spring is in the air, and even a guy with no arms or legs can find joy in it all.

Isn’t that annoying.

(Or inspirational. Have you seen this quick video? No arms, no legs – no worries, mate.)

AFOP

This one is just about double where it was when Aristides’ Chris Brown suggested it in September, up from $8 to $15.60. He thinks it has the wind at its back. “It appears to have the golden triad of operational momentum, share price momentum, and undervaluation,” Chris writes. It’s perfectly reasonable to take some profits; but also perfectly reasonable to hold on. I’m holding on.

BEN FRANKLIN’S WILL

It was probably something I should have urged you to do last weekend – very much a New Year’s Day get-organized sort of thing to do – but . . . do you have a will? You should. And assuming your situation is fairly simple, here is one of the several free sites that make it easy to do on your own.

(You can also prepare other documents you should have, like a living will.)

Not prepared there – but on display for your interest anyway – is Ben Franklin’s will. (And Walt Disney’s, Napoleon’s, Michael Jackson’s, etc.)

You’re probably already familiar with its two most famous provisions, but just in case: they’re near the end, in the codicil, and they leave 1,000 pounds each to Boston and Philadelphia, each to be lent at 5% interest to worthy young people (and then re-lent again and again, upon repayment) for 200 years . . . with 100,000 pounds disbursed to each city at the halfway mark to fund good works, just to keep things interesting . . . such that in 1989 there might be more than 4 million pounds to be used by each city for capital improvements, whereupon the fruits of these two original £1000 bequests would have been exhausted, “not presuming to carry my views farther,” as Franklin puts it.

Here’s what actually happened over the course of the 200 years. Basically, it worked, helping countless young artisans and medical students along the way.

If you decide to do this yourself, you’ll need something considerably more complex than doyourownwill.com. And you should consider setting a 6% interest rate instead of 5%, as it would make each dollar grow not to a mere seventeen thousand dollars after 200 years, but to a hundred fifteen thousand. Add another quarter percent – make it 6.25% – and that same single dollar grows to a hundred eighty-four thousand.

Which will all be for naught if we render the planet uninhabitable in the meantime. But there’s always the chance we won’t (vote Democrat). Or even that Kurzweil will be right, and some of us will be around in the Twenty-Third Century to applaud your foresight, as we applaud Franklin’s in the Twenty-First.