Jonathan Clements

AS INVESTORS FLOCK to stocks in search of heady returns, this is a good time to think about risk. Remember, nobody has a clue how stocks will perform over the short-term, so it’s best to focus on things we can control—namely investment costs, taxes, risk and our savings rate.
Short-term risk is often assessed using beta and standard deviation. I just added a section on those two volatility measures to HumbleDollar’s money guide. While researching the new section,

SAVING DILIGENTLY sounds like such a rudimentary skill that it gets scant respect. Who couldn’t spend 10% or 15% less than they earn, so they set aside a little money for the future? And yet the U.S. savings rate remains miserably low and many folks are pitifully ill-prepared for retirement.
The reality: Saving money may be simple but, clearly, it isn’t easy. What does it take? Here are six key ingredients.
1. There’s the obvious: We need an income.

WE IMAGINE WE finally have everything sorted out, only to wake the next morning with a gnawing sense of uncertainty, plus the milk’s sour and we’re out of coffee.
Welcome to the human condition.
We lead lives bounded by limitations, some self-imposed and some imposed on us. Here are just 15 of the obstacles we face:

No accomplishment leaves us happy and satisfied for long.
Our days are numbered, but we don’t know the count.

WE TRY NOT TO BE too judgmental here at HumbleDollar. But if any of the items below apply to you, you might want to get yourself to the financial emergency room. Here are 33 signs you could be in trouble:

You save on eating out by attending free financial seminars.
You earn extra income by purchasing mutual funds just before they make their distributions.
All your stocks are penny stocks, but they weren’t when you bought them.

“IF YOU DON’T MIND, I have a question for you,” wrote a former colleague. “Should folks be getting out of the stock market? This Trump bump seems like such a crazy bubble.”
Lots of folks are asking this question. How to respond? I fall back on three key points.
First, I believe U.S. stocks are expensive, while foreign stocks are cheap. But that doesn’t tell you anything about short-term performance and only a modest amount about long-run results.

WE’RE A NATION DIVIDED, two camps clinging fervently to their own unshakeable beliefs and baffled at the nonsense that the other camp accepts as truth.
Yes, you guessed it: We’re talking about money management. Let’s call the two camps the Sharks and the Jets. What divides them? Here are seven fault lines:
1. Get Rich vs. Meet Goals. The Jets have one overriding goal—they want to make heaps of money—and they’ll hop any investment train that can get them there.

JEALOUSY IS A TERRIBLE thing—and often unjustified. Our apparently self-assured coworker may be racked by self-doubt. Our rich neighbor may be far less happy than we imagine. And those institutional investors, who can buy all kinds of exotic investments that we can only lust after, may be clocking returns that are notably unimpressive.
This last thought was driven home by Ben Carlson’s short, engaging new book, Organizational Alpha: How to Add Value in Institutional Asset Management.

MANY EMPLOYEES deliberately have too much income tax withheld from their paycheck, so they receive a fat refund each spring. Federal refunds averaged $2,850 per income-tax return in 2014, the latest year for which data is available.
This is completely irrational and entirely sensible.
It’s irrational, because we’re making an interest-free loan to Uncle Sam. Why not have the correct amount of tax withheld, and then take a sliver of each paycheck and pop it in a high-yield savings account,

IN EARLY 2005, when Hannah was age 16 and Henry was 12, I took them out to a local diner and told them exactly how much financial help I’d provide. I would make sure they graduated college debt-free. I would seed a retirement account with $25,000 and a house-down-payment fund with $20,000. On top of that, I’d give them $5,000 upon graduation, plus another $5,000 toward the cost of a wedding or at age 30,

FORGET YOUR political persuasions. Forget health care, terrorism, Roe vs. Wade, the environment, education, women’s rights and voting rights. Instead, focus solely on the economy and markets. Should a Trump presidency affect how you manage your money?
No doubt about it, there’s a temptation to act—and I’ll admit to three modest portfolio changes. In recent months, I’ve invested more in funds that own gold stocks, inflation-indexed Treasurys and foreign stocks, especially emerging markets. But none of these would count as a major portfolio change,

HOMES HAVE BECOME less affordable. But this still looks like a good time to buy a house or trade up to a larger place, especially if you’ll need to take out a mortgage.
Affordability hinges on three key factors: home prices, mortgage rates and household incomes. Lately, both home prices and mortgage rates have been on the rise.
Property prices are up 38.2% from the early 2012 market low, including a 5.6% gain over the past 12 months,

WANT TO MAKE YOUR dollars work harder? Here are 11 of my favorite strategies. In each case, you can find additional information by clicking through to HumbleDollar’s online money guide.
1. Fund a Roth IRA—and let it double as your emergency fund. Ideally, you want to leave your Roth untouched, so you milk as much tax-free growth from the account as possible. But if you need to repair the car or replace the roof,

EARLY IN OUR ADULT life, we get involved with all kinds of dubious financial types. There are the actively managed funds that quickly lose their charm, the insurance salespeople who try to force their policies on us, the market strategists who take us to all the wrong places and the hot stocks that let us down none too gently.
By the time folks get to HumbleDollar, however, I figure they’ve finished playing the field.

IF YOU’RE READING the business section, you need to read between the lines. Here are 14 things financial journalists won’t tell you:

That unbelievably telling anecdote at the top of my article? I scoured the country for three weeks to find that schmuck.
The Dow industrials fell 263 points today. Why? By the time deadline arrives, I’ll have cooked up a reason.
What qualifications do I possess? An ability to dial a telephone.
Actually,

IS IT POSSIBLE TO have too much money? This falls firmly into the “nice problems to have” category. Still, imagine you’re the lucky recipient of a winning Powerball ticket or a rich aunt’s bequest. You might find yourself grappling with three threats to your happiness.
First, you could quickly get used to the finest things in life, with no prospect of ever enjoying anything better. If you’re occasionally upgraded to first class, it’s a treat,