If you’re making money on your insurance policies, let’s hope things get better.
CONGRESS IS BACK at it, aiming to change the tax laws again. Just since 2017, there’s been the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the SECURE Act and the CARES Act, each of which contained tax provisions, some very significant. As I type this, Congress and the White House are horse-trading on another round of changes.
Because new legislation is still being negotiated, I think it’s too soon to change your financial plan. But there’s one strategy that makes sense for a lot of people,
RETIREMENT MAY MARK the end of fulltime work—but that doesn’t mean we should stop working on our finances. Even after we quit the workforce, there’s much we can do to strengthen our retirement plan and, indeed, that may be necessary if we find we’re drawing down our nest egg too quickly.
Are you concerned that you might outlive your savings? Consider these six financial tweaks:
1. Work part-time. I’ve heard folks claim that if you’re still doing some work for pay,
I THOUGHT SAYING goodbye to my coworkers, and walking out my office door for the last time, would be the most memorable moment from the beginning of my retirement. But, no, that moment didn’t come until the next day.
I woke up, got out of bed and walked into the living room. Staring out the front window, I felt this sense of calm and peacefulness that I can’t remember ever feeling before. I felt so relaxed that I could swear I was weightless.
TWO YEARS AGO, I was 100 pounds overweight and constantly hungry. I had been overweight most of my life. But as a father of young kids, I was newly motivated to try to improve my life expectancy. I fortuitously discovered intermittent fasting and the low-carbohydrate way of eating, and instantly had success. Right away, I set an ambitious goal of losing the entire 100 pounds in one year. With a lot of hard work and dedication,
STOP LUSTING AFTER homes on Zillow. It’s time to get serious about the property market—and ask whether houses today are a good value.
Make no mistake: Real estate is red hot. Bloomberg recently reported that demand is so strong that almost half of U.S. homes sell within a week of coming to market. The S&P Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index surged 12% over the 12 months through February, with the Phoenix and San Diego markets leading the way with 17% gains.
TERRY ODEAN has been studying investor behavior for decades. The University of California at Berkeley finance professor has proven again and again that everyday investors often harm their performance by trading too much.
Last year, Odean and his fellow researchers turned their attention to the Robinhood phenomenon. Result? When I spoke to Odean, he said the only thing that surprised him was the magnitude of the self-inflicted investment wounds by users of the free-and-easy trading app.
NO. 58: IF WE HAVE a long time horizon, we should aim to be owners—by buying our cars, our home and a diversified stock portfolio. The latter will make us part owners of companies large and small.
NO. 51: ANNUAL FUND expenses are the biggest driver of differences in fund performance. A stock-fund manager may get lucky and post big gains, despite a hefty expense ratio. But that’s rare with bond and money-market funds: Investors should favor the lowest-cost funds, because they invariably dominate each category’s list of top five-year performers.
REASSESS YOUR emergency fund. Experts often recommend keeping three-to-six months of living expenses as an emergency fund. Just left a secure job to strike out on your own? You should probably hold more cash. Just retired? Now that losing your job is no longer a risk, you might shrink your emergency fund—and perhaps shutter it entirely.
RISK TOLERANCE. Objectively, we may be able to take a lot of investment risk because we have a secure job and a long time horizon. But before we invest heavily in stocks, we should consider our personal tolerance for risk. This isn’t easy because it changes with the market: We grow braver as stock prices climb—and fearful when the market falls.
I WAS LISTENING recently to a Bob Dylan song, From a Buick 6. One of the song’s lines is, “I need a dump truck, baby, to unload my head.” That’s how I sometimes feel about the churning in my own mind concerning retirement.
I turned 67 this year. This is probably one of the most critical periods for me as a retiree. There are things in my life I need to sort out,
I RECENTLY LEFT my fulltime position at an energy trading company. I had a good run and enjoyed the job. It was mainly the people, both my coworkers and our clients.
I also liked the business travel. It broke up the daily routine and put faces to names, plus there were the awesome ribeye steak dinners with clients. Speaking at conferences was fun, too.
But things evolve. To quote Rocky, “If I can change and you can change,
MY FRIEND Rostislav, who would know, tells me that in Russian there’s no equivalent for the word “privacy.” That’s because privacy—as we understand it—is a foreign concept. Children’s grades are posted publicly in schools and it isn’t considered impolite to ask someone’s salary.
Why is this relevant? As a stock market investor, if you have international exposure, you’ll want to be aware of these cultural differences, because they impact how other countries run their economies and how they regulate—or don’t regulate—their investment markets.
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK this morning, as my wife and I tried in vain to wake our children for school, we heard a similar response as we went from room to room: “My head hurts.” Nobody wanted to get up.
I have to say, I don’t blame them. It’s the middle of winter here in Boston. The sky is gray and the thermometer seems stuck below zero. It can be hard for anyone to feel motivated,
THE STOCK MARKET this year reminds me of one of those Rorschach inkblot tests. The broad U.S. market has gained more than 4%, including dividends, but it’s difficult to know what to make of it. Bulls point to this year’s tax cuts and believe that the market’s gain makes complete sense. Bears, on the other hand, note that the market has quadrupled in less than 10 years and conclude that it’s at an unsustainably high level.
CONGRESS IS BACK at it, aiming to change the tax laws again. Just since 2017, there’s been the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the SECURE Act and the CARES Act, each of which contained tax provisions, some very significant. As I type this, Congress and the White House are horse-trading on another round of changes.
Because new legislation is still being negotiated, I think it’s too soon to change your financial plan. But there’s one strategy that makes sense for a lot of people,
RETIREMENT MAY MARK the end of fulltime work—but that doesn’t mean we should stop working on our finances. Even after we quit the workforce, there’s much we can do to strengthen our retirement plan and, indeed, that may be necessary if we find we’re drawing down our nest egg too quickly.
Are you concerned that you might outlive your savings? Consider these six financial tweaks:
1. Work part-time. I’ve heard folks claim that if you’re still doing some work for pay,
I THOUGHT SAYING goodbye to my coworkers, and walking out my office door for the last time, would be the most memorable moment from the beginning of my retirement. But, no, that moment didn’t come until the next day.
I woke up, got out of bed and walked into the living room. Staring out the front window, I felt this sense of calm and peacefulness that I can’t remember ever feeling before. I felt so relaxed that I could swear I was weightless.
TWO YEARS AGO, I was 100 pounds overweight and constantly hungry. I had been overweight most of my life. But as a father of young kids, I was newly motivated to try to improve my life expectancy. I fortuitously discovered intermittent fasting and the low-carbohydrate way of eating, and instantly had success. Right away, I set an ambitious goal of losing the entire 100 pounds in one year. With a lot of hard work and dedication,
STOP LUSTING AFTER homes on Zillow. It’s time to get serious about the property market—and ask whether houses today are a good value.
Make no mistake: Real estate is red hot. Bloomberg recently reported that demand is so strong that almost half of U.S. homes sell within a week of coming to market. The S&P Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index surged 12% over the 12 months through February, with the Phoenix and San Diego markets leading the way with 17% gains.
TERRY ODEAN has been studying investor behavior for decades. The University of California at Berkeley finance professor has proven again and again that everyday investors often harm their performance by trading too much.
Last year, Odean and his fellow researchers turned their attention to the Robinhood phenomenon. Result? When I spoke to Odean, he said the only thing that surprised him was the magnitude of the self-inflicted investment wounds by users of the free-and-easy trading app.
NO. 58: IF WE HAVE a long time horizon, we should aim to be owners—by buying our cars, our home and a diversified stock portfolio. The latter will make us part owners of companies large and small.
REASSESS YOUR emergency fund. Experts often recommend keeping three-to-six months of living expenses as an emergency fund. Just left a secure job to strike out on your own? You should probably hold more cash. Just retired? Now that losing your job is no longer a risk, you might shrink your emergency fund—and perhaps shutter it entirely.
NO. 51: ANNUAL FUND expenses are the biggest driver of differences in fund performance. A stock-fund manager may get lucky and post big gains, despite a hefty expense ratio. But that’s rare with bond and money-market funds: Investors should favor the lowest-cost funds, because they invariably dominate each category’s list of top five-year performers.
RISK TOLERANCE. Objectively, we may be able to take a lot of investment risk because we have a secure job and a long time horizon. But before we invest heavily in stocks, we should consider our personal tolerance for risk. This isn’t easy because it changes with the market: We grow braver as stock prices climb—and fearful when the market falls.
I WAS LISTENING recently to a Bob Dylan song, From a Buick 6. One of the song’s lines is, “I need a dump truck, baby, to unload my head.” That’s how I sometimes feel about the churning in my own mind concerning retirement.
I turned 67 this year. This is probably one of the most critical periods for me as a retiree. There are things in my life I need to sort out,
I RECENTLY LEFT my fulltime position at an energy trading company. I had a good run and enjoyed the job. It was mainly the people, both my coworkers and our clients.
I also liked the business travel. It broke up the daily routine and put faces to names, plus there were the awesome ribeye steak dinners with clients. Speaking at conferences was fun, too.
But things evolve. To quote Rocky, “If I can change and you can change,
MY FRIEND Rostislav, who would know, tells me that in Russian there’s no equivalent for the word “privacy.” That’s because privacy—as we understand it—is a foreign concept. Children’s grades are posted publicly in schools and it isn’t considered impolite to ask someone’s salary.
Why is this relevant? As a stock market investor, if you have international exposure, you’ll want to be aware of these cultural differences, because they impact how other countries run their economies and how they regulate—or don’t regulate—their investment markets.
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK this morning, as my wife and I tried in vain to wake our children for school, we heard a similar response as we went from room to room: “My head hurts.” Nobody wanted to get up.
I have to say, I don’t blame them. It’s the middle of winter here in Boston. The sky is gray and the thermometer seems stuck below zero. It can be hard for anyone to feel motivated,
THE STOCK MARKET this year reminds me of one of those Rorschach inkblot tests. The broad U.S. market has gained more than 4%, including dividends, but it’s difficult to know what to make of it. Bulls point to this year’s tax cuts and believe that the market’s gain makes complete sense. Bears, on the other hand, note that the market has quadrupled in less than 10 years and conclude that it’s at an unsustainably high level.
What investment will perform best over the next 10 years?
What costs are you most loath to pay?
Does it ever make sense to buy actively managed funds?