For more than a decade and a half, my friend Alexander Green has been educating and entertaining investors as editor of numerous popular newsletters, many of which I’ve cited in my own writing.

For those of you subscribed to one or more of his services through the Oxford Club or Investment U, I’m sure you’ll agree that Alex is among the finest financial writers working today. His articles are brimming with intelligence, wisdom, humor, and candor—all of which he brings to his public appearances at investment conferences.

Last week it was my pleasure to speak one-on-one with Alex, and together we touched on subjects ranging from our favorite books on investing to the secret lives of millionaires to business moats.

Below are highlights from the interview, but this is only the first of two parts. 

Enjoy!

You didn’t go into politics or medicine or law. What triggered you to go into the investment world?

At the time, I was living in Orlando. I got a copy of the Orlando Sentinel, and on the front page of the business section was a headline that read: “The average stockbroker in the U.S. makes $187,000 a year.” This was in 1985. Thirty years later, that’s still a substantial amount of money. I remember thinking: “If the average stockbroker makes $187,000, what do the good ones make?”

I crammed the article into my wallet and started telling everyone that I was going to become a stockbroker. Someone then told me that he had just sold a phone system to a broker in Winter Park, Florida, and he was looking to hire someone.

I went out and talked to him and got my first job in the money management business. At the small firm where I started, I was writing research reports and client communications. I discovered I enjoyed research and writing even more than dealing with clients, so when the opportunity arose to become a time financial writer, I took it. That was about 17 years ago.

You’ve published four books so far—The Gone Fishin’ Portfolio, The Secret of Shelter Island, Beyond Wealth and An Embarrassment of Riches. Tell us about the genesis of one or two of them.

I was speaking at a conference in Phoenix about 10 or 12 years ago, and when I came off stage, this older gentleman was waiting for me. He poked his finger at me and said: “Money, money, money. You’ve made a lot of money over the years, but I have to ask, do you ever think about anything else?”

At first, I thought he was kidding, but come to find out, he really felt that I thought about nothing but money all day long. I realized then that I write hundreds of columns a year, and virtually every single one is about stocks or bonds, currencies or commodities, interest rates or economic growth. This guy figured I thought about nothing except money and how it’s made.

Of course, we all have our outside interests, and we hope for some kind of balance in our lives. And so when I went back home to Baltimore, I came up with the idea to write something expressing the idea that life isn’t just about making money. I wanted to talk about living a rich life, not just about getting richer.

This led to a column I initially called “Spiritual Wealth.” That name, though, became a problem since the word “spiritual” is one of the most nebulous words in the English language. It can mean any number of different things to different people.