IF YOU WORKED AT Vanguard Group, you felt like a kid in a candy store when it came to picking investments. There were so many well-run, low-cost funds to try. Yet my favorite fund wasn’t offered as an investment option in the Vanguard 401(k) plan. Ironically, it’s the fund that made Vanguard’s reputation.
Vanguard opened its S&P 500 index fund (symbol: VFIAX) in 1976. This first commercially offered index fund was designed to earn the U.S.

To travel or not is right up there with when to claim Social Security, if a Roth conversion is desirable or the amount of retirement income needed – many answers and personal choices.
I will admit travel can be a hassle, mainly the getting there and back if flying is involved and while trying to get through customs. Because of an incompetent desk agent we missed being stranded in Istanbul by seconds. Leaving Moscow was a nightmare as we were intentionally ignored while Russians were put ahead of us,

THESE DAYS, IT SEEMS every other article on retirement talks about a neat division between the go-go, slow-go and no-go years, with retirees moving seamlessly from one to the next.

I don’t remember seeing anything about these stages back in the late 1990s when I was contemplating early retirement. Instead, when I quit full-time work in 2000 at age 53, I just wanted to travel before I got too decrepit.

I did travel—extensively—right up until 2017,

Here’s the 3×5 card challenge: Summarize everything essential for retirement on a 3×5 card, and then share your summary here. For the sake of this post, please limit your advice to eight to ten bullet points.
This is the first in a series of posts on: Everything You Need to Know on a 3×5 Card.
Have fun…
Bill

In going back over the comments on my last couple of articles, two reader concerns popped out at me. One, many of you still had faith in the Vanguard 500 S&P ETF (VOO/VFIAX) despite its concentration in giant AI-infused technology stocks. But, two, some readers would like to know how they might increase their diversification by adding a fund that did not always fluctuate in tune with one of the country’s most trusted large cap index funds.

My wife and I moved from PA to NJ about 3 years ago. After we moved I looked into whether we should update our estate documents since we changed states. It seemed like a smart thing to do, but it took us 3 years to get around to it.
We recently met with a local estate attorney and reviewed our wills and POAs. There was some specific Pennsylvania language having to do with setting up a trust for contingency heirs – our grandsons – if one of our sons pre-deceased us.

A Pew Research Center study (here) found that 23% of 50-year-olds in the United States have never had children.
As a 57-year-old who chose not to raise a child, I wonder how others feel about how this lifestyle choice has, or hasn’t, changed their retirement plans.
For myself, choosing to remain childless allowed me to save more of my salary than would have been possible if I had chosen to raise a family. I’ve seen online articles that suggest it costs nearly $250K to raise a child from infancy to adulthood.

How do you “stay the course”—in Vanguard founder Jack Bogle’s oft-used phrase—when those around you are losing their heads?
That can be exceedingly difficult, as the late July-early August market swoon demonstrated.
I like the old aphorism from legendary financier and advisor to U.S. presidents Bernard Baruch: “The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.”
You can easily appreciate that sentiment when the market seems to be gunning directly for you,

IT’S ONLY BEEN relatively recently that mankind has come to rely on banks, brokerage firms and investment companies to build wealth.
Tangible property—land, gold bars, houses, livestock and so on—was the standard of wealth just a couple of centuries ago. The Bible frequently cites cattle to signify someone’s wealth. If folks had “cattle on a thousand hills,” they were a billionaire in that era. Wealth was something that you could physically lay your hands on.

Ken Cutler’s question about his retirement status made me think about how my retirement started. I’m curious about what path you all followed. As I approached retirement in 2020, I considered how much notice to give my employer. I had worked for the company for 20 years. I was not a manager, but I was an expert technical professional and had carved out a very specialized niche within the organization. Substantial organizational changes were implemented during the first three months of the calendar year and as a result I had three different managers over a very short span of time.

IN THE BIBLE, YOU’LL find the parable of the talents. Talents were a form of money. The story goes that, before a master left on a trip, he entrusted money to three servants. Two of the three doubled his money, and are praised for the intelligent way they handled the master’s money. The third worker simply buried the money, so it wouldn’t lose value. The master criticizes the third worker for being lazy, and takes the money away from him.

The 401k plan is often maligned by pension and retirement advocates. There’s is no guarantee with a 401k and it requires participants to take responsibility, contribute and to take the investment risk. That’s all true but there is more to the story.
I live on a pension as do some HD readers and writers. Would I trade my current fixed pension for a 401k plan, would you?  Not back in 1961 I wouldn’t have, but if I was entering the workforce today,

Do you rebalance your retirement portfolio?  Many studies have shown that you should. The folks at Hartford Funds compared the results of a 70/30 buy-and-hold strategy with annual rebalancing of an $100,000 lump sum investment from 1999 through 2023. The asset manager found that the rebalanced portfolio produced a nest egg over $13,000 greater than simple buy-and-hold.
But rebalancing does much more than just improve performance. It encourages you to sell high and then buy low,

A recent forum post explored the topic of how to financially protect a surviving spouse. Several commenters mentioned they either had, or were planning to, delay the higher earners Social Security (SS) retirement benefit until 70 to assure that the surviving spouse received the maximum benefit. This is the plan my wife and I are employing, delaying my benefit until I reach 70.
We are currently updating our estate documents, and during a discussion my wife asked me what would happen if I died before I turned on my SS benefit.

Health care costs, taxes, or general inflation?