Couch Potatoes for MoneySense Magazine

Sometimes, I lead a silly and wonderful life. Last month, part of my job involved discussing, thinking about and making a paper potato for the January/February issue of MoneySense Magazine. MoneySense recommends an investing strategy called couch potato investing (also called index or passive investing). The author of the article, Dan Bortolotti explains that "you simply choose a blend of stocks and bonds suited to your personal goals, and rebalance the portfolio back to those targets about once a year."  

Having thought way too much about this, I think there's something quite lovely about the process of couch potato investing: one needs to trust initial decisions, have some inkling that everything will work out for the best and essentially, stop being neurotic.

Dan outlines the various hurdles a couch potato investor faces, which are mainly psychological. There was a legacy of a potato character from a previous issue and I was asked to re-imagine that character. I named him Franklin (true design nerds will know why) and I was really surprised how much he was able to express! I think he's quite cute, but still a bit macabre, as my style tends to be.

Once the effervescent Ronit Novak shot Franklin emoting, I made some whimsical photo collages, depicting the various challenges an investor faces. I also designed the layout, which was really fun to do.

The series was art directed by the hilarious John Montgomery. John has more energy in his little finger than I have on my best days! It was a joy to talk potatoes with him for a couple of weeks.

Silly and wonderful life, yes?