The harder we try to beat the market, the more likely we are to fail, thanks to the hefty investment costs we incur.
Adam M. Grossman is the founder of Mayport, a fixed-fee wealth management firm. Sign up for Adam's Daily Ideas email, follow him on X @AdamMGrossman and check out his earlier articles.NO. 64: AS WE GROW wealthier, we should seize the chance to save on insurance—by raising deductibles, lengthening elimination periods and perhaps dropping some policies entirely.
CONFLICTS of interest. It’s hard to get unbiased financial advice. Insurance agents collect bigger commissions if we buy cash-value instead of term life insurance. Brokers make more if we trade frequently and buy high-commission products. Advisors who charge a percent of assets earn more if we keep money in our portfolios, rather than paying down debt.
NO. 60: WE TEND to ignore low-probability events. But low risk isn’t the same as no risk, so it’s crucial to weigh the potential financial impact. For instance, it’s unlikely we’ll suffer an illness or disability that prevents us from working. But if that happened, the financial consequences could be devastating, which is why disability insurance can be a smart buy.
FREEZE YOUR CREDIT—which you can now do at no cost. This will prevent data thieves from taking out loans and credit cards using your identity. But it also means you’ll need to contact the three credit bureaus and unfreeze your credit temporarily whenever applying for credit. Sound like a hassle? As an alternative, consider setting up a fraud alert.
NO. 64: AS WE GROW wealthier, we should seize the chance to save on insurance—by raising deductibles, lengthening elimination periods and perhaps dropping some policies entirely.
A FEW WEEKS BACK, Jonathan Clements wrote an article reminding readers that they, too, likely made financial missteps in their younger days. His article was in response to comments by HumbleDollar readers about the perceived lack of financial discipline shown by those currently in their late teens and early 20s.
Before my recent career change, I would’ve had the same opinion as many readers. With my new job teaching accounting to undergraduates,
WE’RE A SINGLE-INCOME family with five children, so the prospect of paying for college for all our kids is daunting, to say the least. Yes, our oldest is now in her second year of college. But we still have a long way to go before they’ve all crossed the finish line.
Our kids are ages 19, 17, 12, nine and six. We’ve been homeschooling them since the beginning, with a few brief exceptions, including one daughter in a Department of Defense high school in Korea for a year and another daughter in a private high school for two years.
I’VE TAUGHT BEHAVIORAL economics, which holds that even our most important decisions are influenced by unrecognized biases. For my students, there’s no better example than the choice of where they went to college.
Although the cost is enormous, the decision of where to go hinges on the smallest things. A teenager who says, “I want to be close to my boyfriend,” will zero in on a nearby college, even if her high school romance is fading.
WHAT’S THE REAL PRICE? In September, I wrote about the potential tab for sending our first child to college in 2025. The four-year cost was estimated at anywhere from $65,000 to $430,000, depending on the college chosen.
This wild disparity led me to conclude that college financial planning was like saving to buy a car—when you don’t know if you’ll drive off the lot in a Honda or a Lamborghini.
Since then, I’ve tried to put a sharper pencil to college costs.
STUDENT LOANS ARE a hot topic—one that’s fraught with confusion and complexity. Still, many borrowers should consider taking action this year. Want to get a better handle on what’s happening? Let’s start with three changes that have lately been in the spotlight:
Federal student loan payments, along with the interest charged, were paused from March 2020 to September 2023. That gave borrowers more than three years to make principal-only payments or, alternatively, to potentially accrue credit toward loan forgiveness without the need to make payments.
MY TWIN DAUGHTERS just finished sorting through college offers and making their decision ahead of the May 1 acceptance deadline. With nearly 3,000 four-year colleges to choose from, how did they decide?
It wasn’t easy. The pandemic didn’t just close our local public schools. It also ended visits from universities and limited school-based college counseling. Counselors compensated with lunchtime workshops, links to webinars, and lots of robocalls and emails urging students to fill out and submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
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Mark Crothers is a retired small business owner from the UK with a keen interest in personal finance and simple living. Married to his high school sweetheart, with daughters and grandchildren, he knows the importance of building a secure financial future. With an aversion to social media, he prefers to spend his time on his main passions: reading, scratch cooking, racket sports, and hiking.
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