Insights by Dr. Daniel Crosby | Cahaba Commentary by Don Keeney, CFA, CFP®
10/2026
A Note from Don: While this article extends beyond finances to the broader pursuit of continual self-improvement, it reminded me of a quote that I often use with clients, friends, and family (particularly my kids!): “Pay yourself first.” This quote was first used as far back as the mid-1920s, but it was popularized for modern readers in the 1997 bestseller Rich Dad Poor Dad. Regular, automated transfers of money into savings are the single best way to financial success. Savings are definitely not whatever is left over at the end of the month; savings need to be intentional and prioritized. Once taxes and savings are carved out, whatever lands in your account is yours to spend without guilt.
Enjoy the second article, and if you missed the first one in the series, you can check it out here: Why Trying Less Hard Sometimes Works Better
The Most Reliable Investment You’ll Ever Make
In the early nineteenth century, a young girl in the small English coastal town of Lyme Regis began collecting fossils along the cliffs of the English Channel with her father. Mary Anning was born in 1799 into a poor family. She had no formal scientific training, no university affiliation, and was systematically excluded from the scholarly societies of her era because she was a woman. By the time she was twelve, she had unearthed a 5.2-meter-long ichthyosaur skeleton that townspeople reportedly believed to be the remains of a sea monster. Over the course of her career she discovered the first complete Plesiosaurus specimen, multiple new species, and contributed foundational evidence to what became the modern theory of extinction. Major scientific publications cited her work, even as the institutions producing them refused her membership.
Most investors spend an enormous amount of energy trying to beat the market. The instinct is understandable. The activity is exciting, the potential payoff is large, and a handful of stocks every year deliver eye-popping returns. The problem is that the strategy almost never works. According to the year-end 2022 SPIVA scorecard from S&P Dow Jones Indices, 93.4 percent of all large-cap U.S. equity funds failed to match or exceed the S&P 500’s total return over the prior 15 years. These are professionals with credentials, tools, and full-time devotion to the task. The amateur trading from a laptop is not, statistically, going to fare better.
The far more reliable path is exactly the one Mary Anning walked. Bet on yourself.
The economics of self-investment are striking. According to recent U.S. Census Bureau data, median household income for someone with only a high school diploma is roughly $50,000. The median for a four-year college graduate is approximately $106,000. For a PhD holder, it is around $162,000. The differences compound dramatically over a lifetime. The Social Security Administration has estimated that a male college graduate out-earns his high-school-only peer by roughly $900,000 over a working lifetime. The figure for women is over $630,000. Even accounting for tuition costs and forgone early-career earnings, the math overwhelmingly favors the educated path.
Education, though, is only the most obvious form of self-investment. Several other categories produce measurable financial returns alongside their direct benefits.
Regular exercise. A study published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine found that habitual physical activity can produce roughly $2,000 in annual healthcare savings. Compounded over decades, the figure becomes substantial.
Mental health care. A 2018 study published in the European Economic Review found that therapy was associated with a 12.4 percent increase in annual earnings for men and 8.1 percent for women. The mechanism is intuitive. Better mental functioning produces better professional functioning, more durable relationships, and clearer financial decisions.
Mentorship. Workers with mentors consistently outpace their unmentored peers in promotions, raises, and long-term earnings. Mentors themselves also benefit financially, both through stronger networks and through the leadership skills that mentoring develops.
Each of these is, in financial terms, an investment with returns that rival or exceed what most market-beating strategies have ever delivered. None requires extraordinary timing, special access, or unusual luck.
Mary Anning never controlled the institutions that excluded her. She controlled what she did in the meantime, day after day, along the cliffs of Lyme Regis. The same option, in some form, is available to nearly everyone reading this.
This week’s challenge: Identify one specific, modest investment in yourself — a course, a habit, a professional relationship — that would meaningfully improve your earning power or well-being over the next five years, and take the first concrete step toward it this week.