June’s Hits

WHAT CAUGHT THE EYE of readers last month? Below are June’s 10 most popular articles and blog posts:

• Planning your retirement? As Dick Quinn notes, there’s little agreement on the big financial questions—and most of the answers are too complicated for the typical American.
• Faced with so many unknowns and some crazy market behavior, should investors worry? Adam Grossman’s advice: Avoid market forecasts—and hedge your bets.
• You might have heard that retirement savings socked away before age 30 are as valuable as all the money saved thereafter. Jeff Actor decided to put the notion into practice, with his twins as guinea pigs.
• To trim his portfolio’s tax bill, Bill Ehart uses his taxable account to buy stocks, while holding much of his emergency money in his retirement account. No, it isn’t as risky as it sounds.
• “For the remainder of his life, my father took taxis everywhere, even to the convenience store for milk,” recounts Doug Texter. “This did not constitute a pleasant existence. Independence had disappeared.”
• Jeff Actor thought he’d simplified his finances as he got closer to retirement. But as he discovered when he needed major surgery, it didn’t seem nearly so simple to others.
• Can we commit to becoming super-agers through diet and exercise, or is it simply a matter of genetic luck? Sonja Haggert looks at the research.
• To reduce the risk of unintended consequences from your financial decisions, keep in mind the notion behind G.K. Chesterton’s fence, says Adam Grossman.
• “It’s likely that my investments and taxes will not be as optimized as I’d want them today,” says Bill Housley. “But I’m okay with that. It’s the price I need to pay to reduce the risk of bad future decisions.”
• Want to take a financial leap—but with a safety net? Consider a barbell approach, says Adam Grossman.

What about our twice-weekly newsletters? The most popular Wednesday newsletters were Howard Rohleder’s Many Unhappy Returns and Dick Quinn’s Not That Person, while the best-read Saturday newsletters were The C Word and Buying Freedom, both written by me. Don’t get our free newsletter? You can sign up here.

Read more by Jonathan Clements