I HAVE NO IDEA HOW stocks will perform this year or next. But I have full confidence that a globally diversified stock portfolio will fare just fine over the decades ahead.
My optimism, it seems, isn’t shared by many HumbleDollar readers, who fear we’re facing some rough years for the economy and the stock market. How do I justify my optimism about the long term? Here are five reasons.
1. Heads I win,

EVER SINCE I RETIRED, mornings are the best part of my day. I always go for a long, quiet walk before sunrise. The only person I usually see is Mark, walking his dog. It’s a great way to start my day. By the time I get home, my wife is up and we have breakfast together.
Last week, I had coffee with Eric, Rob and Craig. We met at a Starbucks in the neighborhood where I used to live.

THE LONGER I SPEND in retirement, the more convinced I am of the benefit of reliable income. One of retirement’s most pronounced psychological shocks is the loss of a regular paycheck. After four decades of working, you get used to one coming in every two weeks. The occasional consulting paycheck, even a small one, makes me inordinately happy.
I’m fortunate to have a traditional defined-benefit pension. It built up over 31 years of working with a large aerospace engineering firm.

ONE OF MY FAVORITE books is The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Its subtitle is Why More Is Less: How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction. The principles that the book discusses have important implications for how we manage our money.
Schwartz distinguishes between “maximizers” and “satisficers.” A maximizer is someone who needs to be assured that he or she is making the best decision possible.

SOME PEOPLE CAN LOOK at a blank page and imagine a new creation—perhaps a new business or a new house. I can’t.
What I seem to be pretty good at is taking something that’s broken and coming up with creative solutions for fixing it. It’s like a game or a puzzle. The goal: Bring this broken object back to life as cheaply as possible.
When, say, a washing machine or a dishwasher breaks, the repair person will look up the manufacturer and order the necessary replacement part.

HOW CAN WE GET greater satisfaction from our life—and what role does money play? Below is an edited excerpt from A Wealth of Well-Being, published this month by Wiley.
I often note that the biggest risks in life aren’t found in the stock market. If you want real risk, I say, get married. And if you want more risk, have children.
People laugh. The point is obvious.

I KEEP SEEING THEM—overly complicated, overly expensive investment portfolios. The most recent belonged to a widow in her 70s, with modest earned income, Social Security benefits and about $5,000 in taxable fund distributions for 2023. She was someone I helped during the recent tax-filing season, when I was volunteering at an AARP TaxAide site in Monmouth County, New Jersey.
Her portfolio held about a dozen mutual funds, most of which I’d never heard of.

IN MY EARLY 50s, when retirement began looking like a viable option, I started thinking seriously about what my life might look like after I stopped working as an engineer at a nearby nuclear power plant. Earlier in my career, I’d imagined living off my pension and not working at all. But by my 50s, I wasn’t so sure. I felt retirement could be a time to explore other work opportunities.
My favorite hardware store is less than a mile from my house.

I’VE FOUND RETIREMENT to be a conundrum. We finally have the time to pursue any activity we want in a leisurely manner—spend time with family and friends, exercise, sleep, travel, read, binge watch TV, knock items off our bucket list. On the other hand, I now hear the constant ticking of life’s clock.
Tick tock, tick tock.
For the decades before retiring, life for my wife and me was pedal-to-the-metal with work, children, commuting and chores,

I WAS A PART-TIME instructor in public speaking for Dale Carnegie & Associates during the 1980s and early 1990s. I taught a course at the Downtown Athletic Club in lower Manhattan.
At the time, my wife and I were living in northwestern New Jersey, and we each took the bus into Manhattan to our respective jobs. The course was given after work, so I had to take a late bus home. This meant my wife needed to drive to the bus depot to pick me up.

“IT’S TOUGH TO MAKE predictions, especially about the future.” That’s one of the more amusing quotes attributed to Yogi Berra, but there’s also a lot of truth to it. When it comes to financial markets, the track record of those making forecasts is not good.
That’s why a rational approach to decision making is to avoid predictions, and instead base choices only on an assessment of where things currently stand. But even that approach can be fraught: Financial trends have a habit of reversing when least expected.

OUR ANNUAL INTEREST and dividend income in 2024 will exceed my inflation-adjusted pay as a mailroom boy in 1961. Of course, back then, I earned a bit over minimum wage. It’s been a long journey.

Below are the daily net portfolio gains and losses for the third and fourth weeks of last month. These figures reflect our cash account, index and actively managed stock funds, corporate and municipal bond funds, two utility stocks and two variable annuities.

IF YOU THINK IT’S irritating to debate an issue with folks who have already made up their mind, there’s one situation that’s even worse: debating an issue with those who have not only made up their mind, but also gone ahead and acted on their decision—especially if that decision is irreversible.
And, yes, many retirement decisions are irreversible.
Take issues such as when to claim Social Security, whether to take pension payments or a lump sum,

EVERY TIME I READ about the decline in traditional defined-benefit pension plans, and the rise and supposed failure of 401(k) plans, I get annoyed.
You’d think all Americans once had good pensions that provided a secure retirement. That isn’t—and never was—true. Barely half of American workers ever had a pension and many of those received little value from them because their job tenure was too short. Job tenure has long averaged some four years or so.

I’M NOT A GENEROUS guy. Which brings me to tipping.
I see a price on the menu, and I’m willing to spend that amount on the food. Then I have to spend additional money, after having consumed that food, because someone served it to me. Why?
What about the kitchen staff who cooked my meal? Should I tip them also? After all, I can’t cook, so the kitchen staff is doing me a more important service than the person who carries my food to the table.