My oldest daughter turned 30 years old last month. So did the first of her United States Savings Bonds. Since my children often turn to me for financial counsel, it prompted me to take a fresh look at a stale investment. And right now, there’s a lot more reason to consider the lowly savings bond …
There was a lot of “bad-decision making” at my house this Halloween, and it wasn’t about eating too much candy. Instead, it was the way the children in my neighborhood responded to my annual effort to turn All Hallows Eve into a lesson about money. Each year, it’s a fun evening filled by conversations with …
I recently bumped into my friend Mike, a pilot and former lacrosse teammate who I hadn’t seen in years. After catching up about family and friends, he reminded me that our last conversation had included him asking about where to invest, to which I asked him “What is your greatest financial fear?” I had explained …
Linda and her husband Stan heard me as a guest on a podcast recently. They are retirees, living near Daytona Beach, Fla., unsure of “just what course to take with our monies.” Linda thought I sounded like “just what we are hoping to find, someone who speaks our language, who is honest, who can help …
More than half of Americans report that either no one taught them about money or that they learned how to handle finances on their own. Combine that lack of formal training with a desire to improve personal money management and you create as much potential for trouble as for profit. It’s hard to know who …
Two recent surveys highlight problems that American consumers and investors are having now, not with the market but with their own behavior. Finding the real lessons in each of these studies involves looking past the headlines and digging deeper, so let’s pick up the shovel and search for the hidden gems that people should really …
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 …
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 …
For the first time since I was a little kid, “the half’ is about to be important again. “The half” is something children care about that adults typically ignore. It’s the six months of age that kids include when telling you they are, say, “six and a half years old,” that grown-ups effectively discard the …
At a time when many Americans seem obsessed with shutting out messages and viewpoints they don’t support and believe in, I found it refreshing last week to chat with a guy who most optimists and long-term investors either disbelieve or hate. Harry S. Dent Jr. has been a soothsayer of sadness and gloom for ages …
