Wall Street feeds the fantasy that we can beat the market, because the fantasy is a great moneymaker—for Wall Street.
TWO YEARS AGO, at age 59½, I thought I was on the verge of taking a major step toward retirement. At the time, my usual zest for my work as a physical therapist was waning. Though I don’t think the quality of my patient care suffered, I found it took more effort to maintain the energy needed to complete a day at the clinic, and concentrating on work became tougher.
In addition to the tension building on the inside,
HOW’S YOUR FRIENDSHIP account balance looking? I spent my life watching my bank account, and taking great pleasure as it grew and grew. I never cared much for what I could buy with the money, but I loved the feeling of security it offered.
Friendships, meanwhile, took a back seat. That was pretty much normal for my family, and maybe it’s more normal for most folks than we like to admit. We have a tight little circle that includes family,
IF YOU’RE IN THE market for a home and a mortgage, this is a tough time, with shrinking inventory, lofty home prices and interest rates that feel overwhelming. I know all about this—because I’m a mortgage broker.
For many, today’s housing and mortgage market mean putting their homebuying dreams on hold. What if you go ahead, despite 30-year fixed-rate mortgages above 7%? I advocate controlling what you can. One of the variables that you can influence—and which can help save a tremendous amount of money—is your credit score.
I ONCE DREAMED OF writing for one of the high-profile personal finance magazines—but that was before I had a rude awakening about the “journalism” they sometimes committed.
As a mid-career business journalist at a respectable daily newspaper, teaching myself about investing, I had looked up to these magazines, then in their heyday, and viewed them as a career possibility.
My worlds came together one day when a top magazine ran a story touting the stock of the electric utility that served my area.
MY PARENTS RECENTLY moved out of the house they’d lived in for 50 years. A half-century might sound like quite an accomplishment. But they stayed too long.
Their home was a 1940s two-story gray stone house north of Pittsburgh, with a three-quarter acre yard. At the 40-year mark, when my parents were in their mid-to-late 60s, the house began evolving from a safe shelter to a hidden hazard zone. The comfort and familiarity of four decades overshadowed the emerging challenges that would affect them as aging seniors.
FROM AN EARLY AGE, whenever I heard the word “stock,” it was said with a derisive tone. My father hadn’t owned any shares, but the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression still hit him hard. He wasn’t able to find steady work until after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Given its effect on our family, my father had a pathological disdain for the market that was, inadvertently, passed on to me. Without being aware of it,
MY WIFE AND I JUST finished watching the Netflix documentary Live to 100, which I highly recommend. The four-part series focuses on Dan Buettner’s study of pockets of people around the world who achieve amazing longevity, including many residents who live to age 100 and beyond.
The seven longevity locations include Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, California. These locations of long-lived people have been labeled “blue zones” based on the seminal demographic work on Sardinia by Giovanni Mario Pes,
AS I READ ARTICLES and comments on HumbleDollar, I see concerns about taxes, Medicare, Social Security, health care costs, college, inflation, investing—and the anxiety caused by the complexity of it all. I also see very different views on what’s earned and deserved. In some ways, it’s about what we consider fair.
I suspect the HumbleDollar community is more aware and more involved in their overall financial life than the majority of Americans,
DON’T BE TOO IMPRESSED with the magnificent chandelier hanging from the ceiling or the tastefully furnished lobby. A nursing home is a nursing home. It’s not the best answer, but sometimes it’s the only answer.
Mom grew very frail when she entered her 90s. She’d already been diagnosed with late onset Alzheimer’s. At age 91, she fell and broke her right hip and shoulder. At 93, she broke her left hip and, at 95,
BACK IN THE 1980s, Michael Milken earned notoriety as “the junk bond king.” With his swagger—and his toupee—Milken was an outsized personality in a normally staid industry. But that was four decades ago. It may have been the last time that bonds were truly interesting.
On most days, bonds are about as dull a topic in finance as you can find. But here’s the challenge for investors: While bonds might be boring, they’re important—and they can be tricky.
NO. 116: AVOIDING probate is a big cost savings in some states—but not others. A local attorney can tell you how things stand in your state. If probate is costly, you might place assets in a revocable living trust. That can also be a smart move if you own a house in another state—and face the prospect of your estate passing through probate in two states.
SEARCH FOR UNCLAIMED property. Every state has a program for returning lost and forgotten assets to their rightful owners. Those assets include stocks, uncashed dividends, bank accounts, traveler’s checks, the contents of safe deposit boxes and utility company security deposits. You can find further details and links to state websites at Unclaimed.org.
ILLUSION OF CONTROL. If we shake the dice vigorously, we feel we’re more likely to get the roll we want. Similarly, if we follow the stock market closely and trade often, we feel more control over our returns. But in truth, this can hurt results, as we act impulsively and rack up costs. A better strategy: Focus on things we can control, like risk, taxes and expenses.
NO. 3: WE SHOULD focus relentlessly on what we want from our financial life. That’ll motivate us to save, drive our investment strategy—and help ensure we pursue the goals we care about most.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE tax rate? This isn’t meant to be a trick question. If you’re like most people, your favorite rate is probably zero.
While a 0% tax rate is great, it isn’t easy to achieve. There’s just a handful of ways to create tax-free income. If you have young children, 529 accounts are a great option. If you earn a high income, you might buy tax-exempt municipal bonds.
And, of course, there are Roth IRAs.
I HAVE A WIFE, two children, two dogs, and the need for three bedrooms and two bathrooms. In March 2015, I purchased a four bedroom, 3½ bath, 3,000-square-foot house in a nice neighborhood with quality public schools.
The fourth bedroom was largely unnecessary but, like many people, we occasionally get visitors and feel it’s nice to have an extra bedroom for them, instead of spending money on a hotel room. This is the story of how that fourth bedroom cost me more than $121,500,
THE JAPANESE JUST “celebrated” the 30th anniversary of their stock market’s peak. The Nikkei 225 hit an all-time high of 38,916 in December 1989. Today, it stands at 23,320, or 40% below 1989’s level.
“But the Japanese stock market in the 1980s was the mother of all bubbles,” you might respond. Perhaps. But what about the Nasdaq bubble of the late ’90s? True, the Nasdaq Composite Index has finally returned to its 2000 peak.
I’M MANAGING MY MONEY with an eye to making it last another three decades. And yet, everywhere I turn, it seems somebody’s insisting I pay attention to what’s happening in the financial markets right now.
This isn’t just a coronavirus phenomenon. It is, alas, standard operating procedure for the financial media.
I understand the game. I’ve spent most of my career as a journalist, so I realize it’s no small undertaking to fill up a newspaper,
NOT LONG AGO, I RAN into my friend Martin, who works as a cardiologist at a local hospital. In the course of our conversation, I commented on the construction equipment outside his facility and asked what they were building.
His answer: “Building? No, they’re actually un-building.”
He explained that recently his hospital had been sold and the new owner was a for-profit company. As part of the transition, the new owner had evaluated the hospital’s facilities and discovered that a group of older buildings was largely unused.
NO. 3: WE SHOULD focus relentlessly on what we want from our financial life. That’ll motivate us to save, drive our investment strategy—and help ensure we pursue the goals we care about most.
SEARCH FOR UNCLAIMED property. Every state has a program for returning lost and forgotten assets to their rightful owners. Those assets include stocks, uncashed dividends, bank accounts, traveler’s checks, the contents of safe deposit boxes and utility company security deposits. You can find further details and links to state websites at Unclaimed.org.
NO. 116: AVOIDING probate is a big cost savings in some states—but not others. A local attorney can tell you how things stand in your state. If probate is costly, you might place assets in a revocable living trust. That can also be a smart move if you own a house in another state—and face the prospect of your estate passing through probate in two states.
ILLUSION OF CONTROL. If we shake the dice vigorously, we feel we’re more likely to get the roll we want. Similarly, if we follow the stock market closely and trade often, we feel more control over our returns. But in truth, this can hurt results, as we act impulsively and rack up costs. A better strategy: Focus on things we can control, like risk, taxes and expenses.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE tax rate? This isn’t meant to be a trick question. If you’re like most people, your favorite rate is probably zero.
While a 0% tax rate is great, it isn’t easy to achieve. There’s just a handful of ways to create tax-free income. If you have young children, 529 accounts are a great option. If you earn a high income, you might buy tax-exempt municipal bonds.
And, of course, there are Roth IRAs.
I HAVE A WIFE, two children, two dogs, and the need for three bedrooms and two bathrooms. In March 2015, I purchased a four bedroom, 3½ bath, 3,000-square-foot house in a nice neighborhood with quality public schools.
The fourth bedroom was largely unnecessary but, like many people, we occasionally get visitors and feel it’s nice to have an extra bedroom for them, instead of spending money on a hotel room. This is the story of how that fourth bedroom cost me more than $121,500,
THE JAPANESE JUST “celebrated” the 30th anniversary of their stock market’s peak. The Nikkei 225 hit an all-time high of 38,916 in December 1989. Today, it stands at 23,320, or 40% below 1989’s level.
“But the Japanese stock market in the 1980s was the mother of all bubbles,” you might respond. Perhaps. But what about the Nasdaq bubble of the late ’90s? True, the Nasdaq Composite Index has finally returned to its 2000 peak.
I’M MANAGING MY MONEY with an eye to making it last another three decades. And yet, everywhere I turn, it seems somebody’s insisting I pay attention to what’s happening in the financial markets right now.
This isn’t just a coronavirus phenomenon. It is, alas, standard operating procedure for the financial media.
I understand the game. I’ve spent most of my career as a journalist, so I realize it’s no small undertaking to fill up a newspaper,
NOT LONG AGO, I RAN into my friend Martin, who works as a cardiologist at a local hospital. In the course of our conversation, I commented on the construction equipment outside his facility and asked what they were building.
His answer: “Building? No, they’re actually un-building.”
He explained that recently his hospital had been sold and the new owner was a for-profit company. As part of the transition, the new owner had evaluated the hospital’s facilities and discovered that a group of older buildings was largely unused.
Which investments will perform worst over the next 10 years?
Would you risk your finances to help your retired parents?
What everyday purchase do you consider a bargain?