Last week, my family hosted my wife’s niece and family from California. The parents in this family are both in their 40s.
Prior to their visit, we resolved to ask them what plans they had made for their retirement. On their first evening with us, we were encouraged to learn they each had a pension, and were also saving additional money for retirement through their employer-sponsored plans. That was as far as the financial conversation got,

THE YEAR’S MIDPOINT is here, with the stock market on track for its second consecutive year of above-average gains. This has many investors asking about rebalancing. Below are some commonly asked questions.
What is rebalancing? Let’s say that, to get the right mix of risk and return, you’ve settled on an asset allocation of 50% stocks and 50% bonds. Now, suppose the stock market rises 10%. This would lift stocks to some 52% of your total portfolio,

Times have changed a lot since we graduated from high school or college. We have experienced many ups and downs in life and observed what works and what doesn’t. Some financial and life lessons we learned are still valuable to the next generation.
Let us share it here!
Sundar Mohan Rao
 
 

Note: This is the second Forum piece from my ‘shelved articles’ archive. It was written months ago but never submitted to Jonathan.
These days, people often debate the value of a college education, but what about the value of a good high school education? I was fortunate to attend high school in Moorestown, New Jersey, a community that has always valued having an excellent school system.
With the perspective shaped by over 40 years of life post-graduation,

I am not opposed to college and certainly not education.
However, college can be a waste of money. Completing college takes too long. College is too expensive and we are lured unnecessarily into a cost/prestige trap.
My college experience is not typical so I am not a good example. I got out of the army a few months early to attend college. I was 26. For the next nine years I attended a community college and then a state university nights and weekends.

Let’s play a hypothetical – a married couple 60 and 58, with a net worth of $10M.  No debt, no children.
What roles does a financial advisor play, assuming the couple is content on how they invest?
What role might a tax expert play for planning and managing cost avoidance over time?
 

WE MET IN THE GALLEY, the cafeteria in Vanguard Group’s nautical lexicon. Jack Bogle shook my hand. My pulse raced.
I’d learned about Vanguard’s founder while working at Morningstar. I’d read about him in Jonathan Clements’s Wall Street Journal columns. And I’d devoured his first book, Bogle on Mutual Funds.
“Where’d you go to college?” he asked. “Good board scores?”
We sat down, tucked into our meals—some sort of industrial casserole for me,

My husband and I are new retirees, age 63 and 61.  Fortunately, we have enough savings to wait until 70 to collect SS, but this means we need to spend from our savings to cover living expenses.  Which should be spent first? Taxable accounts or 401Ks (we have about 65% of our assets in tax deferred 401Ks, most of the rest is in regular taxable accounts, and some in Roth accounts.  Obviously we are saving the Roths and doing some conversions,

You have probably read the claim 70+% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. We usually interpret that to mean they have limited income, but tend to ignore spending which is half the equation.
Today is the last working day of the month. My pension arrived in my checking account. Money has been auto transferred to an account used to pay ongoing bills. Money has been transferred to an emergency fund as happens each month. I just paid two credit cards in full.

IT PAINS ME TO SAY this, but I hurt—everywhere. I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up. My feet hurt, my knees hurt, my hips hurt, my back hurts and my shoulders hurt. One more thing: I can’t remember. My memory is in decline.

Cataract surgery improved my eyesight. Hearing aids mean my grandkids don’t have to be two rooms over when we watch TV together. Exercise seems to reduce my pain slightly and increase mobility.

AS AN ENGINEER and a believer in keeping things running, I haven’t owned many automobiles during my lifetime. Instead, my focus has been on extending each one’s longevity.
Among the maintenance and repairs I’ve undertaken: oil changes, spark plug and wire replacements, carburetor cleaning and adjustment, belt and hose replacements, distributor and timing settings, brake replacements (disk and drum), master and slave brake cylinder repairs, clutch adjustment, alternator repair, radiator repair, heater core repair,

Todays article Digging Out is about a solution for credit card debt. However it has morphed into a discussion about our pets. What length will you go to if your beloved pet needs expensive medical procedures? What goes into your consideration?
A good friend rescued a young dog that soon became very ill. He spent nearly $8000 at the vet without any regrets at all. What would you do?
 

Question for the forum, does anyone research the banks/CUs they use to assess bank health/safety?  I have leveraged Veribanc for years to check up on my banks and have both left banks as the ratings for that bank fell into disfavorable as well as not choose a bank after reviewing their report card and finding it less than stellar.  Just wondering what others on here might be doing (looking for ideas that will improve my processes here). 

Adam Grossman recently wrote a good piece about “barbell” strategies.
A barbell—literally—is a metal bar with weights on each end like you see in a gym or an old Popeye cartoon. There are no weights in the middle, just on the opposite ends.
In investment terms, a to implement a barbell strategy is to overweight assets at opposing ends of the spectrum. A common approach is to create a barbell of bond funds with short-term maturities and those with long-term maturities and not much in the middle.

I was just on Threads and read a discussion about tipping. One person from the U.K. noted that they don’t tip. It’s not up to customers to pay servers wages he said. Really? I’m guessing the expense of those wages are built in the price of food. In other European countries a close look at the bill shows a service charge. We all tip, one way or another.
Then you have the folks from Canada or U.K.