Jonathan Clements

MILLIONS OF RETIRED baby boomers struggle financially, and yet they don’t eat avocado toast, don’t have a daily Starbucks habit and didn’t graduate college with a degree in women’s studies.
What’s my point? In the comments section of HumbleDollar, there are two recurring themes—that young adults spend recklessly and that college is of questionable value. I understand these concerns and even share them to some extent. But I’d favor a more nuanced view.

WHAT SEEMS OBVIOUS isn’t always true. Here are seven examples from the financial world:

Just because an investment has performed well doesn’t mean that’s a good guide to the future. This is usually mentioned with regard to stocks. But today, my bigger concern is folks who are extrapolating past bond fund returns. Their strong past performance was driven by a huge drop in interest rates over the past four decades—something that can’t be repeated starting from 2021’s tiny yields.

HOW DO WE KNOW we’re ready to retire? When I posted a link to Mike Drak’s recent article on HumbleDollar’s Facebook page, one commenter offered three questions that those approaching retirement should ask themselves:
1. Do I have enough? This, of course, is the question that gets asked most often. Do we have the financial wherewithal to carry us through a long and comfortable retirement?
2. Have I had enough? This may be easy to answer for folks who are lukewarm about their work,

THE S&P 500 STOCKS are up roughly 100% since March 2020’s market low. I’m 100% clueless about how much longer this remarkable run will last. But I’m 100% confident that, when the next downturn comes, many investors will rush for the exit, fearful that their stock holdings will soon be worth little or nothing.
Which brings me to one of the most important investment concepts: intrinsic value.
No, intrinsic value isn’t a simple notion and,

BURTON MALKIEL, in his bestseller A Random Walk Down Wall Street, recounts showing a stock chart to a friend who was a devotee of technical analysis.
“What is this company?” the friend asked Malkiel. “We’ve got to buy immediately. This pattern’s a classic. There’s no question the stock will be up 15 points next week.”
Problem is, the chart that Malkiel shared wasn’t that of an actual stock. Instead, it was the result of flipping a coin and then assuming the share price rose or fell each day depending on whether the coin came up heads or tails.

WE ALL TEND TO VIEW our money as a series of distinct financial buckets. Economists consider such “mental accounting” to be irrational, and perhaps it is. But it’s also mighty useful. Consider some recent articles from HumbleDollar’s writers:

Bill Ehart talked about the separate savings accounts he has for financial emergencies, a new car and his daughter’s wedding. Sure, it would be simpler and perhaps more rational to have a single savings account.

PANDEMICS MAKE US hungry and thirsty, or so say the monthly spending data from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
In March 2020, as the pandemic hit with full fury, our collective spending on groceries jumped 23% from a month earlier. We can chalk that up to hoarding. Since then, monthly spending on groceries has never matched March 2020. Still, it also hasn’t fallen back to pre-pandemic levels, no doubt partly because of food price increases.

SUPPOSE THE S&P 500 ended the year at Friday’s close of 4455.48. Let’s also assume that the analysts at S&P Dow Jones are correct, and the S&P 500 companies have 2021 reported earnings equal to an index-adjusted $185.32. That would put the S&P 500 at 24 times earnings, versus today’s 34.8.
That would be considered high by historical standards, though it isn’t outrageous given today’s low interest rates. But what would it take for stocks to look like a compelling investment?

OTHERS MIGHT BE hoping to add to their wealth by picking the next hot stock. But here at HumbleDollar, we’re much more concerned about subtraction.
The goal: Keep more of whatever the financial markets deliver by minimizing investment costs and avoiding unnecessarily large tax bills. This is a reason to favor index funds. But even if we index, we need to be alert to another threat—that posed by the person in the mirror.

ON SEPT. 11, 2001, I spent an hour and a half standing on a crowded subway train two blocks from the World Trade Center. During that time, both towers collapsed. No smoke came shooting down the subway tunnel. The earth didn’t noticeably shake. There were no deafening noises. Instead, we were just another subway car packed with disgruntled passengers, muttering about the perils of public transport.
It was only when the train backed up to Penn Station in midtown Manhattan that we learned what had happened that day.

U.S. AND FOREIGN STOCKS are highly correlated, with monthly returns that move in the same direction almost all the time. Because of this, some have argued that there’s scant reason to diversify internationally.
But there’s a small problem with this argument: Just because investments move in the same direction doesn’t mean they generate the same return. For proof, consider the past 20 calendar years.
Over that stretch, there were only three years when U.S.

WHEN WE CHOOSE TO do one thing with our time and money, we’re also choosing not to do countless other things. The purchases made and the possibilities forgone sometimes turn into lasting regrets.
That is, to a degree, unavoidable. We often misjudge not only what we want today, but also the wants of our future self. Still, I firmly believe we can all do better—if we avoid impulsive decisions and instead spend time thinking through life’s key tradeoffs.

WE SAVE TOO LITTLE, spend too much and what we buy often disappoints. Is there an antidote for this financially self-destructive behavior? One intriguing possibility: visualization.
If you’re like me, the word itself makes you a little queasy. It conjures up images of both self-absorbed, navel-gazing yuppies (not something I aspire to be) and Olympic athletes getting in the zone (not something I’ll ever be). Still, I think there’s value in spending serious time pondering our financial goals.

FORGET BUYING A HOME or paying for college. In terms of complexity and cost, nothing comes close to retirement—a topic that encompasses saving, investing, taxes, Social Security, health care expenses and countless other financial issues.
Fortunately, there’s a growing body of research to guide us, and some of the best studies come from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research (CRR). Here are just some of the insights I’ve lately garnered from CRR studies:
Valuing annuities.

IT’S RISKY TO LAY down hard-and-fast rules for money management because, for every rule, there will almost inevitably be exceptions.
Still, as they say, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Below you’ll find 18 rules. Want to quibble? Hey, that’s why HumbleDollar allows readers to comment on articles.
1. Minimize cash. With short-term interest rates so low, keeping money in savings accounts and money market funds seems especially grim right now. But the truth is,