Greg Spears

LET’S NOT CALL THEM resolutions because that imposes a sense of obligation. Rather, think of these as adjustments that could give you—and maybe your kids—a smoother ride in 2022:

Check the beneficiaries on your employer’s retirement plan, IRAs and life insurance policies. Sometimes money winds up with an ex-spouse or maybe a younger child gets left off the list. This is an easy fix—while you’re alive. After that, it’s a mess.
How much do you pay for your investments—in dollars,

I WAS WRITING magazine stories back in 1996, recommending stocks and mutual funds. Privately, I worried that readers might think I had some genuine insight—and they might even invest in the ways I suggested.
Propelled by that fear, I favored safe stories, like the best electric utility stocks or the outlook for U.S. savings bonds. I ransacked the library, looking for sure-fire, can’t miss investments. Surprisingly, I found one—something called an index fund.
Twenty-five years ago,

IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, you almost dread looking at the morning newsfeed. This is why I’m happy to share some good news: The U.S. poverty rate has been cut nearly in half. What’s more, it was accomplished while the economy was practically flat on its back, with tens of millions out of work.
When I was a Washington, D.C., reporter in the mid-1990s, I reported from some of the poorest neighborhoods in Baltimore, Camden and Washington.

NEW RESEARCH suggests that target-date retirement funds—which currently receive a majority of contributions to 401(k) plans—are missing the mark.
Target funds’ returns, in aggregate, lagged those of replica portfolios built with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by one percentage point a year, according to University of Arizona finance professor David C. Brown, one of the study’s authors.
The majority of the underperformance was due to higher fees, Brown said. Target-date funds are funds-of-funds. Most fund families charge investors layers of management fees—both on the target-date fund itself and on the underlying funds.

GREEN INVESTORS TRY to manage their portfolios in ways that are good for the Earth. But are they rewarded with good investment returns? Researchers believe the answer is a qualified “yes,” according to a new paper titled “Dissecting Green Returns.”
The paper found that, between 2012 and 2020, U.S. green stocks delivered higher returns than environmentally unfriendly “brown” companies. But the paper argues this outperformance—which averaged about 0.65% a month—is unlikely to persist.
“Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance,

I’D ALWAYS THOUGHT that saints were long-ago martyrs, those people shown in paintings in the Louvre or the Prado.
That’s why I was surprised to find a plaque honoring a 20th century saint at the church I attend in Newcastle, Maine. The saint, Frances Perkins, had worshipped at that very church, St. Andrew’s Episcopal, until her death in 1965.
Who was Frances Perkins? My friends often draw a blank at the name, although she helped shape our lives.

IF YOU WANT PEOPLE to do something, make it easy. That’s the big idea behind a nudge, which helps people do the right thing for themselves. It turns out that nudge has an evil twin, called sludge. Sludge makes the right thing harder to do. If you look around, sludge is everywhere.
“If you cannot get financial aid without filling out a twenty-page form, then you have been subjected to sludge,” behavioral economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein write in the new “final” edition of their bestselling book Nudge.

THE NEWSPAPERS ARE full of reports that a new tax on billionaires may be uncorked. The Washington Post even ran an article estimating what the 10 richest Americans would pay over the next five years should it pass.
I take no stand on the politics of the proposal. But I have seen enough trial balloons to be skeptical that Elon Musk will soon write a 10-digit check to the U.S. Treasury. As Chuck Collins has written in The Wealth Hoarders,

I’M A FAN OF SUSPENSE novels. But the latest mystery keeping me awake at night isn’t a work of fiction.
On Monday, Oct. 4, Vanguard Group announced it was cancelling a long-promised benefit, a health insurance subsidy for its retirees, which includes me. The very next day, the investment management company abruptly reversed course. The benefit was extended through 2022. Vanguard said it would “take a step back and recalibrate” its decision.
What prompted the reversal?

VANGUARD GROUP is renowned for its rock-bottom investment costs, including announcing last week that it was lowering expenses on its target-date retirement funds. As a former Vanguard employee, I just learned how the company is, in part, paying for such cuts. Yesterday, Vanguard emailed retired “crew members” like me to say it was shutting down its retiree medical account program.
When my old newspaper company’s pension plan collapsed last year—it was underfunded by $1 billion—my payments were picked up by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

IF YOU’VE EVER wanted to own antique furniture, now is the time to buy. The cost of “brown furniture” has plummeted. That old-money mahogany is deeply out of fashion with today’s tastemakers, who prefer mid-century modern set out in spare, white rooms.

I won’t claim that 18th century goods are better aesthetically. That’s my personal preference, and probably an East Coast sensibility. Rather, I’d say that old furniture is better value. The fact that a table or desk has survived for two centuries is a testament to its durability—and it may cost less now than flat-pack furniture made of particle board.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT you pay for your 401(k)? Over time, even seemingly small charges can take a big bite out of your retirement savings.
That’s why a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report is so surprising. Fully 41% of people surveyed think their 401(k) is free. And I’ve got a unicorn tethered in my backyard. Not only are they incorrect, but also it suggests that those required fee disclosure documents from plan providers are written in ways investors just don’t understand.

FROM THE TIME I started covering Washington as a reporter in 1980, politicians have been condemning the federal budget deficit. Ronald Reagan was running for president that year. He excoriated his opponent, President Jimmy Carter, for increasing the federal debt by—brace yourself—$55 billion in 1979. These days, that wouldn’t pay a week’s bar tab for Uncle Sam.
With the sole exception of Bill Clinton, every president for 40 years has added to the federal debt,

THE GOVERNMENT will be able to pay full Social Security benefits only until 2033, according to the latest trustees’ report on the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. After that, Social Security’s trust fund will be depleted—and it could only cover 76% of scheduled benefits with the money it collects in payroll taxes.
The timetable is even worse for Medicare Part A, which pays for inpatient hospital care. Its trust fund will be empty in 2026.

OUR NEPHEW JESSE, age 19, took a gap year after high school to explore meditation and work for UPS. He’s a great kid. But he had worn out his welcome with family friends in Florida, so he decided to sleep in his car.
That was in May—and that’s when we invited him to live with us in Pennsylvania.
Jesse hasn’t had an easy life. His mother died of cancer when he was four years old.