Jonathan Clements

LIFE EXPECTANCY HAS increased sharply over the past century—if you consider life expectancy as of birth. But if you look at life expectancy as of age 65, which is what matters for retirees, the improvement for the broad U.S. population hasn’t been nearly so impressive, as I discussed recently.
But it’s a different story if you look at more affluent Americans, notes one of my e-mail correspondents, Bob Frey, a financial planner in Bozeman,

SOARING STUDENT DEBT is putting the kibosh on another major financial goal: buying a home. According to a study by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 40% of those age 18 to 30 have student debt, up from 27% in 2005. For these borrowers, the debt burden is staggering, with student loan payments estimated to devour more than 20% of their income in 2015.
With so much of their income devoted to servicing student loans,

I DON’T TRADE very often, let alone buy new funds. But there’s a good chance I’ll purchase the no-load Vanguard International High Dividend Yield Index Fund, which is slated to be launched this month. It will charge 0.3% in annual expenses for the Admiral Shares, which require a $10,000 minimum investment, and 0.4% for the Investor Shares, which will have a $3,000 minimum.
In theory, it shouldn’t matter whether a stock pays a dividend.

CYNICS SAY THERE are three kinds of falsehood: lies, damned lies and statistics. Yet the right number can pack a mighty punch—and the financial world is full of them. Here are five examples:
1. Most folks don’t beat the market. Consider the miserable performance of most mutual funds. Standard & Poor’s found that 75% of actively managed U.S. stock funds failed to beat the market over the decade through June 30.

STOCKS GET ALL THE attention, which seems a tad unfair. The value of bonds worldwide is some 35% greater than the value of all stocks—plus many other parts of our financial life look suspiciously like bonds. How so? Think about all the streams of steady income that folks collect.
We pull in interest from bank products like savings accounts and certificates of deposit. We collect Social Security retirement benefits. If we’re lucky, we are the recipients of a traditional employer pension plan.

SINCE RETURNING to life as an ink-stained wretch early last year, I have been talking about the likelihood of modest stock returns. My best guess: A global stock portfolio might notch 6% a year over the next decade, while inflation runs at 2%.
It turns out that the person I admire most on Wall Street, Vanguard Group founder John Bogle, also has modest expectations. This is no great surprise: How I think about stock returns has been greatly influenced by Jack’s writing.

FAMILY CAN BE A wonderful asset. Your parents, siblings and adult children might help with home repairs, offer free advice based on their professional expertise and take care of the dog while you’re on vacation.
When the circumstances are right, I think there’s an opportunity to take this even further. For instance, earlier this year, I provided my daughter with a private mortgage, which allowed her to purchase her first home. There aren’t many people I’d strike that deal with,

TWO KEY CHANGES to Social Security retirement benefits were wrapped into the budget bill passed by Congress last week. The changes have big implications for married couples.
First, after April 2016, if you suspend your benefit, any family members collecting benefits on your earnings record will also have their benefit suspended. Second, those who aren’t age 62 by Jan. 1, 2016, will lose the right to file a restricted application, where you claim just spousal benefits,

STOCK MARKET gyrations since mid-August have investors focusing intently on short-run returns. But if you can drag your gaze away from the daily turmoil, you’ll realize this is a colossal waste of time—and a huge distraction from the big story.
This thought occurred to me as I was playing around with the data available at MSCI.com. Take the MSCI World index, which includes 23 developed markets, including the U.S.  From the index’s year-end 1969 inception through Sept.

A GOOD GRASP OF compounding is fundamental to managing money. Without an understanding of the way money grows and shrinks over time, folks can’t fully appreciate the value of starting to save when they’re young, the damage done by large investment losses or the true cost of carrying credit-card debt.
Yet I fear compounding isn’t well understood. This has dawned on me over the past month, as I’ve been teaching an undergraduate course on personal finance.

IT’S ONE OF THOSE indelible teenage memories: visiting the Bank of Baltimore in suburban Washington, DC, in the late 1970s.  I would hand over my babysitting or lawn-mowing money to the bank clerk, who would slide my green bank book into some magic typewriter. After a joyous clatter of keys, my bank book would be returned, and there would be recorded not just my deposit, but also the latest quarterly interest payment.
My children and stepchildren—ages 10 to 27—all have bank accounts.

AFTER A TURBULENT few months for stock prices and with 2015 winding down, talk will soon turn to tax-loss harvesting. The notion: You sell losing stocks in your taxable account, and then use the realized capital losses to offset realized capital gains and up to $3,000 in ordinary income, thus trimming your 2015 tax bill.
Sound like a smart strategy? If you trade individual stocks actively or you’re a really bad investor, tax-loss harvesting might make sense.

IF WE WORK LIKE dogs for 40 years, we’ll get our reward, which is the chance to sit around and do nothing for 20 or 30 years. That’s the definition of a successful life, according to conventional financial wisdom. But it doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, does it?
My contention: It’s time to rethink the crazy distinction between work and retirement and, in the process, redefine what counts as a successful life.

AS I WATCH the recent market turmoil, three thoughts come to mind—and one great hope. First, I feel like a shopper waiting for the next sale. As of yesterday’s market close, the S&P 500 was down a relatively modest 8% from its May high. If this drags on, without any further decline, I’ll eventually do a little buying and selling, to bring my holdings back into line with my target portfolio percentages. But to get enthusiastic about stocks,

RETIREMENT MAY BE our final financial goal—chronologically speaking—but we should always put it first. Partly, that’s because retirement is so much more expensive than, say, buying a house or putting the kids through college, so it takes many decades of saving and investing to amass enough for a comfortable retirement. But among financial goals, retirement is also unique in two other ways: It isn’t optional—and we can’t pay for it out of current income.