I was a writer for 'New York' magazine. I had been to business school, but what did I know? Still, everybody from the receptionists on up to the editor would ask me what they should do with their money.

The best thing I have are 5 percent bonds from 1780, denominated from $1 to $20. As far as I can tell, they are obligations from the United States of America, so I should be able to walk down to the Federal Reserve and redeem the uncanceled ones. With 217 years of accrued interest, for a $20 bond, that's about $800,000.

The first American insurance company was the Friendly Society for the Mutual Insurance of Houses Against Fire, founded in Charles Town in South Carolina, in 1735.

The industry cannot long offer unneeded or overpriced insurance if people will not buy it.

But successful investors tend to be not too self-destructive. They tend to be patient, they tend not to follow the crowd, and they tend not to be too guilty about winning.

Having no national system of catastrophic health insurance, we have, through the courts, managed to patch together pieces of a not very satisfactory one.

Summers are the best. And I figured summer was my best time for meeting someone, too, because in the summer people are looking for someone to snuggle up with for the winter. And because in the summer I could take off my shirt.