Bank OZKSmart Money Habits Blog

It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1998, there were no major retailers selling shoes online. The prevailing belief was people won’t buy shoes they haven’t tried on. Zappos.com founder Nick Swinmurn thought otherwise. Armed with a statistic that 5% of all shoes were sold from mail order catalogs, Swinmurn approached venture capitalists with his […]

Shortly before his death, author Kurt Vonnegut published a poem called “Joe Heller” in The New Yorker that contains a great financial lesson.  Check it out: True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, […]

Kids, go get your mother. She’ll never see another fire like this one. –Thomas Edison Many of us have burned through money. Even more of us have seen our finances go up in smoke. But Thomas Edison literally saw his life ravaged by fire over and over again. He lost his first job as a […]

Foodies already know this. And the rest of us probably suspect it, but there is no better place to buy produce than at a farmers market. Here’s why: 1. It Benefits Your Local Economy When food is bought at a grocery store, farmers only receive 14.8 cents of every dollar spent, but according to the […]

Working long hours is sometimes necessary, but it is not a badge of honor. You might think the key to success is working more and sleeping less. You might think it’s the small price all business owners must pay, but a Stanford study provided evidence that there’s little benefit to working excessively long hours at […]

Dr. John Nestor was a cautious man. So cautious that the FDA transferred him out of his position as medical officer in the cardio-renal-pulmonary division because he didn’t approve a single new drug in more than four years. His careful disposition blinded him to the risks patient’s faced when new medications weren’t available. In 1984, […]

We’ve already discussed why you should have an emergency fund and how to build one on a tight budget, but then what? When are you justified to spend it? The answer isn’t as complicated as you might think. You just need to take the time to think through your options, which is something so many […]

If you are saving for a distant retirement, it is crucial that you focus on the long-term.  The market will have gyrations that appear catastrophic today, but mean very little by the time retirement nears. Take this Dow Jones Industrial chart from the 1987 crash known as Black Monday, which included the single worst day […]

There are three reasons entrepreneurs don’t seek professional help: they don’t know it’s available, they assume it’s not needed, or they think it’s too expensive. All three of these are wrong. We all need help, and asking for it reveals strength, not weakness. According to a Harvard study, people who seek advice appear more competent […]

It’s the single best thing that I’ve ever done.  —Mikael Lindnord There was something bigger . . . than winning.  —Staffan Björklund I’d forgive you if you thought those quotes were referring to a small business. They’re not. They’re about the 2014 Adventure Racing World Championship, a grueling 435-mile race that reached 15,000 feet in […]