On August 31, 2024 Jonathan wrote What We Believed which included the following. How right he is. I experienced it first hand over my near fifty years working for the same employer.
“Employers care. My parents worked for a paternalistic employer, and I certainly thought of my initial employers in those terms. But how many folks today believe that, if they work hard, their employer will return that loyalty and that their job is truly safe?

I TOOK MY REQUIRED minimum distribution, or RMD, at the end of July. I was planning on taking it at the end of the year, but my allocation to stocks was more than five percentage points above my target of 40%. I thought selling some of my stocks would be a good way to rebalance my portfolio and fund my RMD, so I sold a portion of my overweight in Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (symbol: VTI).

Covid. Third time and pretty bad. Feels almost over after thirteen days. That Paxlovid’s a miracle medication, but I’m afraid I’ll rebound from it. All very scary for a 79-year-old with an immune system compromised by an anti-cancer drug. Very little fever though, surprising given how out of it and weak I’ve felt.
Actually, most of my fever has not been of the temperature kind. It was more about my money or, more accurately, my fear of losing control over my money.

Her life is slipping away as I compose this forum topic. Both her daughters, my daughters, have been camped at her bedside for the past 10 days as hospice provides comfort care until my ex-wife dies. No words of sympathy need be offered to me, she and I fell out of love a long time ago. Still, this is the person responsible for 11 beautiful family members that would not be in my life without her.

COULD SOMETHING like the Great Depression happen again? During that unpleasant episode, the stock market dropped 90%, unemployment rose to 25% and gross domestic product fell 30%. In making a financial plan, is this a scenario we should worry about?
While no one can predict the future, it’s worth taking a closer look at one key variable: the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed has a reputation for helping smooth out economic cycles. But those who worry about Depression-like scenarios point out how powerless the Fed was to prevent the collapse that occurred in the 1920s and 30s.

My investing strategy is closely aligned with the game of darts. Aim and hope my picks land in the right place. Does it work?
I make no claim to investing acumen. However, I am proof that even those who know little of what they are doing with no patience for nitty gritty analysis can make money. 
Since all my investments are with Fidelity I used their analysis of my account to evaluate where my darts landed.

As a compulsive list maker, I’m updating my list of finance-related
action items and analysis to do around year-end. Here are a few things on my list:
– Estimate taxes
– Consider year-end contributions
– Target income levels to maximize ACA credits
– Consider Roth conversions
– Assess prior year’s returns
– Analyze last year’s spending
– Project “safe spending” for the coming year
– Re-balance investments if needed
What’s on your list?

THE OLDER WE GET, the easier it is to see the progress we’ve made, both as individuals and as a society. But I’m not just thinking about personal wealth, higher standards of living, better health care and extraordinary technological advances.
As I look back, I also see impressive progress in our financial thinking. Here are eight notions that were conventional wisdom half a century ago—but which today aren’t universally accepted and, in my estimation,

If you’ve ever wondered whether Vanguard’s S&P 500 or total stock market fund is the better core holding in your portfolio, you’re probably not alone. Each ETF has over 400 billion in net assets, each has an expense ratio of .03, each has essentially the same dividend (1.25%) and each is categorized by both Vanguard and Morningstar as large blend. Both funds trade at very high volume, making the spread on purchases and sales all but nonexistent.

The Forum has been live for more than two months, and it’s been a hit with readers. Each day brings an impressive number of comments and often at least a few new discussion threads. But—as your most irritating boss would remind you—there’s always room for improvement.
Here are six suggestions for Forum participants:

Don’t refer to stocks and funds by their ticker symbols or, at a minimum, not on first reference. I’ve spent my career focused on this stuff,

When we set up our Trust our lawyer instructed us to change our children as our secondary beneficiaries to our Trust. I was just reading Ed Slott’s The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks LOUDER, and he states that there is no reason to have your trust named as a beneficiary for most people unless you have questions about the recipients responsibility. Also notes that your beneficiaries may have to empty the trust in less than 10 years.

I started listing the various taxes Americans pay, but gave up rather quickly. It’s a long list and some of them are a bit obscure like hotel room taxes, taxes on phone bills, a tax on scrapped tires and such. Of course there are Social Security and Medicare taxes as well. I paid $98,080 in Medicare taxes during my working life – one of those big scary numbers. 😎
What the US doesn’t have is Value Added Tax (VAT) –

I WAS A VICTIM OF identity theft. It wasn’t anything I did. Rather, it was what my former employer did.
During the pandemic, many employees were working remotely, including a member of the human resources department. She received an email from the CEO requesting that she send him the W-2s for all employees. So she did. Unfortunately, the email wasn’t from the CEO. It was sent from a shopping mall in Saudi Arabia.
As soon as she hit send,

As I approach retirement, I have utilized several free retirement calculators to help answer the question, “Can I retire?”.  The exciting thing is they all seem to be confirming it’s okay for me to punch out when the time is right.  Of course, like any model, these are only as good as the accuracy of the input and assumptions.
Below are the calculators I have used.  Do you have any comments in general about these tools or have you used something you found useful that’s not on my list?

Beautiful opinion piece, Jonathan  I tried to share as a gift article, but not sure if I figured out how to do.  Maybe someone else can?  Chris