Author’s note: This column was released in syndication on May 18, 2022. I had an uncle whose lifetime financial goal was to amass $1 million to leave to his children. A farmer, he was frugal by nature; in his 70s, he finally reached his goal. Rather than celebrating his wealth, be turned into …
Years ago, I stayed in a hotel on the Las Vegas strip where a message flashing on the big screen out front said “98% wild slots.” The sign was telling the public that the hotel’s slot machines paid out 98 percent of the money they took in, reducing the “house edge” to 2 percent. By …
I was asked this week for the best investing tip I could come up with for these wild times. My answer had nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, rising prices at the gas pump, the likelihood of interest rate increases or the stock market being off more than 10 percent and in correction …
Investors are struggling to put their finger on what has changed about the stock market of late. Yes, there’s war, the highest inflation we’ve seen in 40 years, the persistent promise/threat that interest rates are rising and more. Those economic and geopolitical events have driven the market down by more than 10 percent this year, …
The most common advice investors have gotten thus far in 2022 seems to be: “This is a good time to rebalance your portfolio.” It started right around New Year’s Day, because plenty of people simply hold fast to the idea that the start of a new year is the perfect time to rejigger a portfolio …
Walking my dog through the neighborhood last week, I came upon a friend who gave me his standard greeting for these occasional chance walk-bys: “What do you like in the market right now?” He knows I’m not handing out stock tips, but he usually follows it up by name-dropping, or we’ll spend a few moments …
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 …
(This column was released to newspapers on July 7, 2020.) Rick in Maumee, Ohio, has used stay-at-home time during the coronavirus pandemic to “clean up my life.” There was a de-cluttering of the house, followed by a purging of his financial files (in accordance with guidelines I laid out in a recent column). He …
