I WAS HAPPY to read in The Wall Street Journal that 401(k) plans are “minting a generation of moderate millionaires.” I spent the last two decades of my professional life promoting 401(k) plans to workers, so the news felt like validation.
Moderate millionaires were loosely defined as coupon-clippers with seven figures. Sound familiar? It should to many HD readers. At Fidelity, a record 654,000 investors had a million or more in the 401(k) in the third quarter of 2025.

I wrote this article for HD four years ago. It was one of my favorites. It came to mind as we were setting up our Christmas tree this year.
EVERY YEAR AROUND this time, I think about one of the most memorable events in my life.
As a child, I was fascinated by trains. My father was a railway tower signal man during the Second World War and later a station master. My first toy trains were plastic and battery operated,

I dusted off this never published post after reading Mark Crothers’ recent post about killing a party by trying to offer advice. 
Have you ever been at a social gathering where the conversation turned to money matters?
I know a fella who has a reputation as an ace stock picker. I overheard someone recommending to a friend that they should talk to the guy for advice. The stock picker guy happened to be a tax client of mine.

This morning I had a surprise email in my inbox. I’d won a competition on Monevator, a fantastic, high quality UK financial blog site. The prize was a rather dapper festive Christmas sweater. I politely declined because, well, have you seen those things?
But the competition premise has been rattling around in my head ever since. The challenge was writing a note to convince someone—specifically, the partner of the finance blogger—to pay attention to her money,

Recently, a younger, intelligent, and well-educated relative approached me with questions about the book Lifecycle Investing by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff. His curiosity piqued my interest, so I decided to read the book myself.
In essence, the book suggests that when you’re young, your future earnings (your “human capital”) are substantial and behave similarly to a bond. To balance your lifetime risk exposure, you could invest heavily in stocks early, even using leverage, and then gradually reduce risk as you age.

I consider myself fortunate when it comes to Christmas—not just because the anxiety of buying gifts for my wife Suzie is long behind us, but because this year, despite thinking we wouldn’t, we’ll all be together.
My daughter who lives in London had to work the morning after Christmas day, which meant she couldn’t make it home for the holiday. We were disappointed—it would have been the first Christmas ever that one of our children wasn’t with us on that special day.

The best financial advice I know is “live on less than you earn and save the difference.” For too many, though, there’s nothing left over to save after paying the bills.
Basic living costs seem much higher these days. Housing can take an outsized bite of family income as rents and housing prices have risen. Factor in other big expenses like health insurance, childcare, and student loan repayment, and there may not be any money left to save at month’s end.

I read here and elsewhere concern about profits. It seems people are concerned about the profits made by car dealers, health insurance companies, drug companies, health care providers, mutual funds, etc.
On the other hand, we seem unconcerned over profits made by professional sports teams, concert producers, casinos, gaming companies, celebrities, etc.  This group provides very little real value to us.
The first group provides goods and services we need or want.
Is that the difference?

This is going to seem dark, but it’s not my intention to scare anyone, but I’ve had an through about our operational security as investors that I can’t shake.
We’re all already doing complex passwords and two-factor authentication, which I completely agree with.  Be as safe as you can.  But how can any of us fully protect against a home invasion type attack where we’re coerced by force to divulge passwords.  Allow me to explain.
Imagine the worst (Heaven forbid,

I’m planning to rebalance at year-end, and I’m going to do something index purists might consider heresy: deliberately tilt away from the market’s weighting.
Lately, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the portion of my portfolio devoted to the Magnificent Seven tech stocks, currently pushing towards 25%.
The index purist view would say that cap-weighted indices by definition represent the market’s collective wisdom about valuations. When the Magnificent Seven grows to nearly 25% of my developed world tracker,

I see a fair amount about how index funds will ruin the stock market. According to this Wall Street Journal article there is a different and more immediate issue. Seems that there is a drop off in companies raising capital on the open market, instead restricting IPOs or their equivalent to a hand-selected group of insiders. Is this a case for some kind of regulation? Hard to see what kind.

When it comes to our health care “affordable”takes on unique meaning.
For many (most) people affordable then means $0. I have been aware of and thought about this conundrum for over sixty years when I first became involved with healthcare benefits. I have seen it in action more times than receiving HD down arrows.
Health insurance evolved from true insurance in the 1940s to covering virtually all spending from the first dollar and then we made gradual attempts –

Walking past the shiny cars in the dealership towards the exit with the mortified 23 year old daughter of a friend trailing behind me, her face bright red with embarrassment, the thought crossed my mind: When did it become normal not to ask “how much does this car cost?” and start asking “what’s the monthly payment?”
I was walking out the door because, unbelievably, the sales person refused to engage with that simple question.
A recent trip to help this young,

Modern life depends on constant upgrade; but I am sitting this one out.
My 5-year-old laptop runs on Windows 10, and it cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 due to hardware requirements. Turbotax 2025 cannot run on it, and I’d rather avoid using the online version. Schwab’s ThinkorSwim app for stock market data display and transactions will stop supporting the Windows 10 version. Since Windows 10 support already stopped, I also worry about the security of my laptop with all the personal data stored locally.

Today, December 14, is our 57th wedding anniversary. Like back then, the weather is terrible, it’s snowing. In 1968 it was raining and that night  there was a blizzard and we were stranded at Kennedy airport for almost 24 hours before getting out for our shortened honeymoon for which I had taken advance leave from the army. 
Looking through some old papers I found the receipt for our tickets to Freeport. One ticket cost $143 round trip.