Author’s note: This column was released in syndication on May 25, 2022. If you wanted to justify any investment moves your mind is contemplating right now, you had no problem finding confirmations and explanations for almost everything at last week’s Morningstar Investment Conference. Among the messages that might have sent your head spinning at the …
I don’t remember the last time I celebrated one of my “half birthdays,” but it was almost certainly over a half century ago. Yet I couldn’t help but notice my most-recent half-birthday when it passed this week because for the first time since I was a youngster, it was noteworthy. I turned 59-and-a-half this week, …
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 …
I recently congratulated an old friend on the announcement of his impending retirement, and he dropped me a response asking for a chat. Joe had done all of the math on his retirement savings and spending plans – which include some nice travels in the next few years – and was trying to figure out …
Financial milestones should be celebrated. The question is whether they can be believed, whether savers and investors who pass key numbers on their lifetime financial journeys can trust the point they have gotten to. I’m concerned about it now because the buoyant stock market of the last year has created a bunch of situations with …
Jack Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group, used to suggest that investors think of Social Security as if it was a bond they had bought and paid for. The idea, he said, was to act as if that money was in your bond portfolio, generating income in the future, and to base your planning …
It’s all about the acronym. That’s why a 20-something member of the “FIRE movement” – which stands for Financial Independence Retire Early – told me last week at FinCon 2019 that I “don’t qualify as FIRE.” Mind you, this young blogger is working a corporate job, driving an Uber on the side and is anxious …
Americans don’t save enough for retirement. Countless studies show that. There are a lot of causes to the problem, and none of them are coffee. Yet the seemingly constant banter when it comes to people’s finances is that individuals can save a boatload of money if they just give up paying for …
