Good afternoon.

Everyone I talk to seems to think inflation is running much higher in the U.S. than the 8.3% annual rate measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Part of that could be because the most salient prices most of us see are for gasoline. If you drive almost anywhere except in urban business districts, you'll see gas prices displayed several times a day, so their record highs are impossible to miss.

Then again, to get the impression that inflation is out of control, all you have to do is eat.

My colleague Rachel Wolfe had a great story the other day about the workers who go to supermarkets, auto-repair shops, beauty salons and funeral homes to gather data for the U.S. government's official measures of inflation:

Supply-chain shortages have made it more difficult to check prices...since goods are often out of stock....

Crouching down to price a bag of potato chips, Ms. Mascitis notices a trend she has been seeing a lot of recently: shrinkage. The price of the chips has stayed the same but the contents of the bag have shrunk, from 12 to 11 oz.

If you think inflation is bad in the U.S. and other developed countries, consider this story from the Economist about inflation in Zimbabwe, running at an estimated 152%:

...inflation, which reached an annual rate of 231,000,000% in mid-2008, wiped out [Kelvin Chamunorwa’s mother's] savings. When she retired, her pension was so small it was barely worth collecting.

So Mr Chamunorwa...started a company, Nhaka Life Assurance, to sell inflation-proof pensions....denominated in cows, which the government can’t print. Savers, typically wage-earners such as teachers, chip in cash, which Nhaka immediately turns into cattle. The assets grow by breeding. When a policy matures, clients can demand payment in cows or the cash equivalent....

This reminded me that the U.S. has also experimented with bovine-backed finance.

Prices in Massachusetts shot up more than 32-fold between 1777 and 1780 after the state government printed vast quantities of money to pay for military expenditures.

By early 1780, investors were so distrustful that they were saying, in effect, "Where's the beef?" So the government in Boston had to back its bonds partly with beef, as this certificate shows.

The state promised to pay bondholders:
in a greater or lefs SUM, according as Five Bufhels of CORN, Sixty-eight Pounds and four-feventh Parts of a Pound of BEEF, Ten Pounds of SHEEPS WOOL, and Sixteen Pounds of SOLE LEATHER shall then coft, more or lefs than One Hundred and Thirty Pounds current Money, at the then current Prices of faid ARTICLES....

Fortunately, the government eventually got inflation under control, and by 1786 these pioneering inflation-protected bonds were retired, according to Yale University economist Robert Shiller.

As I wrote a few years ago:

High inflation is horrible, and the less money you have, the more it hurts. Perhaps there's a silver lining, though: Maybe inflation will make us all think more carefully about our capital before it just blows away.

On a long drive recently, I tuned into a series of four podcasts on financial decision-making, hosted by venture capitalist Josh Wolfe, with three great guests: poker champion and behavioral scientist Annie Duke, Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and investment strategist Michael Mauboussin.

These quick conversations cover:

• how a "pre-mortem" before you make a decision can keep you from overlooking possible causes of failure, 
• why it's so hard for people to change their minds, and what to do about it
• why it's so easy to misinterpret the odds of success and failure
• whether the "hot hand" exists in sports, investing and life

Go here and grab the four episodes on Risk, Bias and Decision-Making. It's a good decision!

I recently asked:

What's the best investing lesson you learned from your mom?

Here are some of the best replies from readers:

     My mother was the CFO of our family. As soon as I could add and subtract I no longer had an allowance; I had a dual-ledger, credit/debit account. Every month I entered my expenses on one page and my income from chores and allowance on the other, then carried the balance over. Not long after, she taught me the rule of 72.
     I realize this isn’t normal.
​—DS Bakker, Baltimore

“Buy Berkshire Hathaway.” Which served her well, even to the point of giving her grandkids each a share when they graduated college.
—Robin Hurley, Highlands Ranch, Colo.

     In the early 80’s I had a roommate that was personal friends with Phil Knight, Nike founder. One night my roommate commented, “Phil said we should buy some Nike, currently at $7/share.” Neither [of us] could afford $700 to purchase 100 shares.
     A year later I mentioned this story to my mom. She asked if it was a good company. I stated, “Well, everyone seems to wear the brand.” Mom purchased 100 shares, locked it in her safe-deposit box.
     Thirty years later, when I looked over her investment accounts she mentioned the Nike shares. Her 22.4% compound annual gain was rather impressive for her buy-a-good-company-and-ignore-it-for-30-years approach.
—Greg Olson, Lake Tapps, Wash.

"Gains aren't real until you sell."
—Doug Coombs, Ridgefield, Conn.

My mom, now 87, was a passionate, self-taught investor. When I started my first real job after college, she told me: "Contribute the maximum out of every paycheck into your IRA. You won't miss it and it will grow tax-deferred for many, many years." I can attest to her wise advice and have instructed my kids to do the same.
—Lauren Eder, Princeton, New Jersey

Save each month and don’t smoke!
—Fred Wlodarski, Orono, Me.

Money is just a tool: Having piles of money is not the goal. Being able to be generous is the true goal. She also taught me not to be timid about investing, as a woman. In my family, I’m the investor, and my husband, bless him, appreciates that.
—Greta Lacin, Sacramento, Calif.

1) Pay yourself first: Take advantage of savings plans, deferred or otherwise.
2) Don’t increase spending to match a raise in salary. Live like you have been, save part or all of the increase, “you’ll never miss it."
3) Bring lunch from home; it adds up over time. You’ll really appreciate the purchased lunch when you buy one from time to time.
4) Invest what you save; index it and let it ride. In the long run you will come out ahead.
     Mom and Dad retired very, very comfortably for a couple of teachers.
—Steve Francis, Richland, Wash.

Best investing advice from Mom: Buy and hold. Also: real estate is a license to steal.
—Megan Flynn, Newton, Mass.

Relationships matter. Derivative: to build a relationship, ask questions and listen. My mother is innately curious about people and loves asking them questions about their personal lives. While this has long been a source of ribbing among the family, the longer I've worked [at an early-stage venture capital fund], the more I've come to value this quality as a superpower. People love sharing their stories and, just by being patient enough to listen to them authentically, you end up standing apart from the crowd.
—Atin Batra, Hong Kong

As for me? My mom is 95 and still a steadfast investor. The greatest lesson she gave me is to stand apart from the crowd.

During World War II, when my mother was a teenager in northeastern Ohio, she rode a city bus to school. Black women who worked as house cleaners also took the bus then.

"If they happened to sit down, none of the white people would sit next to them," my mother recalls today. "They would stand up and walk away to another seat. I thought that was disgusting."

So my mom would deliberately get up and sit with the Black women and make some friendly small talk — a little act of kindness that must have taken considerable courage in the 1940s.

Perhaps because my mom first told me about this when I was nine or 10 years old, I learned early that when most people expect you to do something, it's important to ask whether it's wrong. That ability to interrogate peer pressure before you succumb to it has made me much wealthier — and not just as an investor.

Be well and invest well,

Jason

Did a friend forward this email? Sign up here.

📰 Enjoying this newsletter? Get more from WSJ and support our work with a special subscription offer.

During a period when the cost of living was very high, Rabbi Mendel [of Rymanów, 1745-1815] noticed that the many needy people whom he entertained as guests in his house received smaller loaves than usual. He gave orders to make the loaves larger than before, since loaves were intended to adjust to hunger and not to the price.
—Martin Buber