Americans are so busy working on retirement savings that most of them aren’t properly planning their retirement spending. The result is that they’re not living their best life, actually getting the gold out of their golden years, because they spend too little of the money they amass. As problems go, this is a nice one …
A lot of Americans improved their financial habits during the pandemic, cutting back on spending, recognizing the value and impact of emergency savings, and gaining a sense of how important it is to build a war chest to face the financial challenges of the future. All those good lessons will be put to the test …
It’s easy to overcomplicate your investments, and hard to fix that problem. Investment portfolios age, grow and change with their owners. Many people gather investments and amass a collection without managing positions, selling and trimming to concentrate on strategy. It might be easy to solve that problem if there were rules for everyone to follow, …
Simplifying your finances isn’t so simple. That was clear from the response I got to a recent column on cleaning up a portfolio, consolidating accounts, getting rid of extraneous dribs and drabs of money and clearing out the clutter. And I got that big response without ever going into the nitty gritty of investment performance, …
On Monday [July 19], the stock market had its worst day thus far this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost roughly 725 points, 2.1 percent, its biggest one-day loss since late October 2020. The Standard & Poor’s 500 lost 1.6 percent for the day; the Nasdaq Composite Index declined about 1.1 percent. It felt …
Searching for something on my desk and actually finding it can be two very different exercises in my life. Last week, while seeking something I needed, I instead came across a small stack of paperwork that I had put off for a couple of years. It was forms a brokerage firm had sent me when …
I recently reconnected with Dave, a former colleague who lost his job as the economy was reopening from the pandemic. He’s actually a few years younger than I am, but doesn’t think he can get another job that he’d enjoy in his field, nor does he want a job that forces him to commute and …
Investors haven’t been losing money in this stock market, they’ve been losing their minds. They have disconnected with reality and checked into an alternative universe, a land of milk, honey and above-average stock returns. Way above average. According to the latest Global Survey of Individual Investors from Natixis Investment Managers, U.S. retail investors now expect …
Jack is a recent college grad who did some work for me around the yard when he was in high school. I bumped into him the other day and, after a brief talk about his collegiate sports career, the conversation quickly turned to money. He was particularly proud of having bought his first individual stock …
My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Lewis, always said “One reason might make you believe something, but I need three sound judgments to be convinced.” He was teaching us to make intellectual arguments, preparing us for debate – whether with classmates or within our own minds – and hoping the process would give us sound, sensible …
