What’s a good investment? Go home from work early and spend the afternoon throwing a ball around with your son.

Stein reframes “investment” away from financial instruments and toward time deliberately spent on family. The rhetorical question implies that the best returns are not measured in money but in relationship, memory, and a child’s sense of being valued. “Go home from work early” also critiques the default priority given to career and productivity, suggesting that choosing presence over overtime is a rational, even prudent, allocation of one’s limited resources. The image of “throwing a ball around” evokes ordinary, repeatable rituals—small acts that compound over years into trust and intimacy—casting parental attention as a form of long-term capital with uniquely human dividends.