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As Robert Heinlein famously shared: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. At the time he was writing, some bars sold lunch to patrons, others provided a ‘free’ lunch to theirs.

Care to guess the name of the newspaper I’ve read virtually every day for the past 45 years? Since I live in the world of business, you might not be surprised that it’s the Wall Street Journal.

Sometimes in the past I’ve suggested that a current or historical figure might have made a good financial planner but today I’m looking at a different theme – people who get excited for no real reason.

Do any of these phrases sound familiar?

• Stock market rout

• Beaten-up stocks

Fred Rogers was probably the best-known actor/producer of children’s programming in the country until his death in 2003. For an interesting look at his life, I recommend the documentary film, Won’t You Be My Neighbor which was released earlier this year.

Individuals as different as H. L. Hunt (Money is just a way of keeping score) and Mae West (The score never interested me, only the game) have commented on how money affected their lives.

Home ownership has always played a significant role in the American Dream. Especially among those who watched people they knew lose homes during the Depression, paying off the mortgage became an almost universal aspiration. The lesson learned was that paying rent was just wasting money; the best approach was to buy your home and pay it off as soon as possible.

Poor Charlie Brown. Just as he’s gearing up for a big game, his hopes for a smooth kickoff are dashed when Lucy pulls the football away. With apologies to Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men don’t always come to fruition.

Actor Tom Cruise has famously played a fighter pilot, a sports agent and a secret agent but his first starring role was as a budding entrepreneur in the 1983 film which supplies the title of today’s article.

I haven’t read the new tax law yet but I suspect very few of those who voted on it have either.

Tis the season when people’s thoughts turn to evaluating how the year went and what they might want to do differently during the next.