MORE THAN 40 YEARS ago, I was an agent for the Internal Revenue Service. During training, we learned about auditing individuals, corporations, subchapter S corporations, Schedule C businesses, partnerships and probably a few other areas that I’ve since forgotten. But there was one area we didn’t touch: trusts.
That puzzled me, so I asked the trainer why. His response: “You aren’t smart enough to audit trusts.” He told me that how trusts operate might change drastically based on slight differences in wording.

“WE GOT A THING going on, we both know that it’s wrong, but it’s much too strong to let it go now” are blues lyrics about a man and his lover. But they might as well be referring to my affair with the January effect.
Last year, I wrote about my favorite seasonal anomaly, the tendency for small-cap stocks to outperform large stocks during the first month of the year. In December 2022, I’d set out to see if the phenomenon was still alive.

SIX YEARS AGO, I MADE a big life decision: I opted to scale back my work week with an eye to easing into early retirement.
I stayed in the same role, but reduced my hours and responsibilities, took a proportional pay cut, and bid farewell to potential future promotions. Essentially, my human capital shifted from a growth investment to an immediate-fixed annuity for the remainder of my part-time employment.
The change turned out to be far more fulfilling than I’d anticipated.

THE HEADLINES SCREAM that retirees should learn a new skill to stave off dementia. Start playing a musical instrument. Learn a new language.
The reality: Gender in languages baffles me. I can’t carry a tune. I have no rhythm. Which is why you’ll find me on Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons in a repurposed warehouse learning tai chi. I was drawn to tai chi since it’s a form of meditation, and I’m aware of meditation’s medical and mental health benefits.

WHAT SHOULD BE THE first rule of personal finance? My vote: Always look for ways to stay in the center lane—that is, to take a balanced approach. As 2024 gets underway, here are 10 ways you could apply this principle.
1. Housekeeping. Over time, many of us accumulate a grab bag of investments—some good, some not-so-good. Those in the not-so-good category can pose a challenge. Suppose you own an expensive mutual fund.

HUMBLEDOLLAR JUST marked its seventh birthday. I didn’t set out to launch a site that would devour endless hours of my time and derail my plans for something that looked like a normal retirement. But I have no regrets.
The site hasn’t been a huge success. Still, I find running it to be hugely satisfying. It’s the reason I typically crawl out of bed before 5 a.m., and do so happily. Here are five key lessons I’ve learned from my first seven years running HumbleDollar—lessons that I suspect may be useful to others,

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to “live within your means”? To answer the question, we first need to define “means.”

If your gross income is $60,000, that income isn’t your means. For starters, you need to subtract income and payroll taxes. To live within your means, you need to spend no more than your net income—income after taxes and other withholdings.

I’ll go further and suggest that your true means are your income net of monthly savings for retirement and financial emergencies.

MY WIFE RECENTLY traveled to Connecticut for a week to help with loose ends following her brother-in-law’s unexpected heart surgery. I was left to fend for myself, with only three hard-boiled eggs, two ounces of nearly expired low-fat milk, half a jar of gourmet salsa and a moldy cucumber to keep me company.
Boredom quickly set in. For some inexplicable reason, I had an uncontrollable urge to spend money. The first activity that entered my forebrain was visiting a casino.

MANY YEARS AGO, a Wall Street Journal article quoted a source as saying, and I paraphrase, “Young-old age should last as long as possible, while old-old age should last 15 minutes.” Those of us who have visited nursing homes can all relate to this.
Public health initiatives and medical breakthroughs have extended lifespans significantly over the past 100 years. In his bestselling book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, Peter Attia argues that we should focus not just on lifespan,

ON ONE OF OUR TRIPS to visit my in-laws in South Carolina, my mother-in-law asked me what I thought of her home in a 55-plus retirement community.
“It looks like a house,” I said sarcastically.
Her response gave me food for thought. She said, “I feel rich living here.”
My mother-in-law’s home was far from being a McMansion. It was a single-story two-bedroom house, but it had cathedral ceilings. I think it was the high ceilings that,

I WAS FASCINATED with retirement planning during the final decade of my career. I read many financial books and focused on saving diligently. Yet, after retiring several months ago following a 39-year career as a research and development engineer, I had a rude awakening.
You can plan all you want, but then comes an unexpected situation that derails everything. As boxer Mike Tyson famously said, “Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time.”
In the brief time I’ve been retired,

I’M STILL KICKING myself for not getting a new Medicare Part D prescription drug plan during the enrollment period for 2023, even though our premium had gone up significantly. Most people, it seems, are like me: They stick with their current plan, rather than shopping for one that meets their needs at a lower cost.
For 2024, I vowed to do better.
Medicare’s open enrollment period ran from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, 2023.

MANY FOLKS EQUATE a stock market downturn with losing money. I often hear comments like, “I lost money yesterday. The stock market went down.”
I believe this impression of loss is an illusion, one that can be detrimental to our financial health—because it blinds us to certain fundamental truths.
1. Illusion of lost money. You only lose money if you sell shares at a loss. If you don’t sell amid a downturn,

WHAT’S VERNON SMITH been doing since he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics at age 75, and why should you care?
At 97, Smith is still on the faculty of the business and law schools at Chapman University. When he’s not traveling the country delivering lectures, he usually spends 10 hours a week writing and researching.
I read about Smith in a recent article in the AARP Bulletin devoted to super-agers, defined as those over age 80 with the brain of a person 20 to 30 years younger.

THIS YEAR SAW THE passing of two giants of the investment world. The first was Harry Markowitz, who in the 1950s developed a concept now known as Modern Portfolio Theory. His key insight was one that today we view as so fundamental that it’s easy to take it for granted: Markowitz was the first to articulate and quantify the importance of diversification. He later won a Nobel Prize for his work.
This year also saw the passing of Charlie Munger.