The Author
About The Author
Greg Houser
Greg Houser has focused on writing, investing, and active philanthropy since selling his investment management firm in 2015, after a forty-five year career. He, and his wife of fifty-four years, live in Portland, Oregon, where they raised four children. Greg graduated from the University of Oregon, earned an MBA at UCLA and later was accredited as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). As a septuagenarian, he is vulnerable to senior scams, woke attacks, never-ending viral intrusions, telling cringe-worthy grandpa jokes and falling down stairs. Despite the world’s ills, he remains preternaturally hopeful.
My Writing Journey
Maybe it was the melodic flow of cursive letters, the revelations of Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” or the formidable lessons of high school Latin and French that sparked my interest and intrigue with words? They probably all influenced my early infatuation, that later became an obsession. Words had the power to express and impress when framed with creativity, honesty, and emotion.
My first choice in approaching writing was songwriting. But my penchant for polysyllabic words doomed me. Where I to have entitled The Castaways’ hit of 1965, it would have been, “Prevaricator, Prevaricator.” So, satirical writing became my default and passion; honed first in my periodic missives to my investment clients to communicate my views on the economy and financial markets as they related to our investment strategies on their behalf. Most financial reporting was repetitive, pedestrian “gruel,” so my objective was to uniquely engage them with both humor and incisive analysis.
Later in my career, I was freed, to some degree, from the probity and restraint required of client communication. The first manifestation of this was about 20 years ago when I wrote a travelogue of sorts (“Slow Food and Fast Cars”) that chronicled a trip my wife and I took to Italy. While creatively fulfilling, a general audience doesn’t give a damn about your vacations, unless you traveled with Moses, Odysseus, or John Glenn. Retirement allowed me to sharpen my wit and expand my oeuvre in the creative, non-fiction genre; the result of which, is this book.