WITH NO DISRESPECT TO our representatives in Congress, a new rule taking effect in January reminds me of a scene from The Jerk, an old Steve Martin movie. Playing the role of a carnival huckster, Martin shows off a wall of attractive prizes, but then narrows the choices to an impossibly small set of options.
Congress did something similar when it instituted a new rule governing 529 education savings accounts. The rule in question opens up greater flexibility in how surplus 529 funds can be used.

IT’S THE HOLIDAY season, which means I get to enjoy one of my favorite movies, A Christmas Carol. I’ve watched it every Christmas for as long as I can remember. I guess you could say it’s cast a spell over me, but in a good way.
To be honest, I don’t watch it in its entirety anymore. Instead, I usually just tune in for when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas Day as a changed man,

AT THE RISK OF CAUSING readers to think too much on a Saturday morning, let me start by offering a pair of seemingly contradictory statements:

The financial markets are efficient, but occasionally go stark, raving mad.
Nobody knows what stocks are worth, but they have fundamental value.

My contention: There’s a payoff to be had from grappling with these two apparent contradictions—a payoff that takes the form of greater calm in the face of market turmoil and improved long-run portfolio performance.

I PAY FOR MY OWN partial retirement with a university pension, income from rental properties, income from the remnants of my private psychology practice and, of course, Social Security. I long ago emptied my retirement accounts to pay for our son Ryan’s college education and to help launch his career.
What about my wife Alberta? She has income from her fulltime psychology practice, her share of our rental income and Social Security. But unlike me,

RETIREMENT PLANNING is about much more than money. As regular readers of HumbleDollar know, getting the social aspects right is just as important—and perhaps more so—than nailing the financial issues. 
In 2019, before we retired, we took a trip to the desert southwest, a region we love. It was our first visit to Canyonlands National Park in Utah. I was captivated by the beauty of the rock formations, canyons and mesas. The most striking memory was the path of cottonwood trees,

MY MOTHER AND MY future mother-in-law met at a funeral 37 years ago. They started discussing their respective families. It was during that conversation that they realized they each had an unmarried child, and they decided it would be nice if their two children got together. Thus, on that fatal day, my life was changed forever.
One of the stories I heard early on about my mother-in-law was how she lost a house to foreclosure.

I INVEST FOR GROWTH, not income. That will likely change as I get closer to my 2028 planned retirement. For now, I diversify my portfolio mainly with cash and short-term bonds with the goal of stability, not yield. Yet this article is about the yield I receive.

Why focus on yield? Some say everyday investors overemphasize the importance of dividends, and maybe that’s true of me. But with much of the U.S. stock market richly valued—and now that I’m only five years from retirement—I feel pretty good about my portfolio’s yield,

I SPENT A GOOD portion of my early adult life in neighborhood taverns. Back then, I sold beer for a living. You can imagine that I saw and heard some crazy things. Remember the sitcom Cheers? I knew doppelgangers for each and every Cheers character.
But the things I heard in those bars didn’t come close to the things I heard later when I worked as an income-tax preparer.

EVERY GENERATION HAS its own unique perspective—one that’s shaped by its environment, but also limited by a lack of appreciation for the past. Are things all that bad in the 2020s? I think not.
A recent Bloomberg radio discussion mentioned that, when families go out to dinner, they become keenly aware of inflation when they pay, which in turn affects their view of the economy. It took me a minute to digest that. Is going out to dinner no longer a luxury?

STOCK INVESTORS TALK about taking advantage of market inefficiencies. That sounds nice, but I don’t have any confidence I can spot mispriced stocks, which is why I stick with mutual funds, especially index funds.
But there’s a market inefficiency where I’ve done pretty well—train tickets. In my late 60s, when I was in my final job, I commuted from central New Jersey to Philadelphia by train. This meant parking my car at the station,

THE SECURITIES AND Exchange Commission recently proposed that registered financial advisors be compelled to act as fiduciaries when recommending rolling over 401(k) money to an IRA. Whether this rule gets adopted or not, plenty of advisors are eager to help investors with the issue.
Indeed, as I approached retirement, a number of advisors contacted me about rolling over my 401(k). Of course, these advisors also offered to manage my funds for a fee, usually around 1% a year of assets.

I GET A THRILL FROM saving money on groceries. We have customer loyalty cards for the two local grocery stores where we do most of our shopping. The sales receipts list total savings for that shopping trip. I love to see big numbers on that line.
I’m a prodigious cereal eater, and my favorite is Cheerios. The regular price for the smallest box is $4.99. Of course, I never pay that. Fairly frequently, one of the local stores runs specials on General Mills brands,

AS WE HEAD INTO year-end, many are cheering the financial markets’ returns. The S&P 500 has gained nearly 25% and now sits just a hair below its all-time high. Bonds are also looking more attractive, with yields at 15-year highs.
As a result, many investors are feeling a whole lot better about their portfolio balances. That’s certainly one way to measure financial progress, and it’s an important one. But as you make plans for 2024,

INVESTING IS ABOUT finding a strategy that’ll allow us to meet our life’s goals—and which we can live with along the way. That brings me to a major portfolio change I made two years ago, and a series of changes I’m planning for the years ahead.
In late 2021, I split my portfolio in two. One part I’ll use to fund my retirement, while the other part I’ll leave to my two kids. This “bequest” portion consists of my three Roth accounts,

THESE WORDS STRIKE fear into the heart of any husband: “Honey, the [insert: A/C, heat, refrigerator, roof, foundation] doesn’t seem to be working.” But from 2017 to 2021, they were mere words to me, no different than, “Honey, let’s go out for coffee.”
For four glorious years, my wife and I traveled around the world and the country, unfettered and unburdened. If we ran into any equipment issues, they were immediately referred to the landlord for rectification.