I ARGUED LAST WEEK that bitcoin wasn’t a great investment. The reality: Only a minority of investors hold cryptocurrencies, which is a good thing, in my opinion. But there are, alas, many other ways to get off track when building a portfolio.

In fact, if I ever wrote an investment book, it might be in the style of Dr. Seuss and titled Oh, the Investments I’ve Seen. Want to build a sensible portfolio and avoid common pitfalls?

PEOPLE TEND TO attribute their investment gains to skill and their losses to bad luck. To these two categories, I’d like to suggest a third: making a fortune—thanks to good luck. Let me give you an example.
I’m a member of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. It’s a downtown club where reporters went for a drink and a bite to eat after they filed their stories. As you might expect, business was rocky during the pandemic.

ARE WE HAVING FUN yet? I take no pleasure in seeing my portfolio shrink, but I love buying stock index funds at discount prices and I’m always amused by the hand-wringing in the financial media.
Two years ago, we were hiding out in our homes, fretting over a global pandemic and worrying about an economic collapse. Today, COVID is still spreading like wildfire, but vaccines have helped slash the number of hospitalizations and deaths,

I PURCHASED MY FIRST home in 2005. At the time, I was a Major League Baseball prospect with the New York Yankees organization. I had always been taught that homeownership was part of the American dream. Looking back, I’m now much more skeptical.
Purchasing a home on my salary was difficult. Minor leaguers don’t land big contracts like their counterparts in the major leagues. In fact, I had multiple years when I made less than $10,000 as a professional baseball player.

I MENTIONED IN an earlier article that my wife and I were planning a trip to the U.K. Before we went, I thought I better see my primary care physician. I didn’t want any medical surprises. We’ll be gone for five weeks. A lot can happen to a 71-year-old during that time.
My doctor retired a few months ago, so I decided I’d go see my mother’s old doctor. He specializes in geriatric medicine.

AN OLD WALL STREET adage tells investors to “sell in May and go away.” If you’ve been around long enough to remember that phrase—and you heeded it this year—you’re probably feeling pretty smug, having sidestepped the ugly, unforgiving bear that’s lately been roaming Wall Street.
But such pearls of investment wisdom often make better cocktail chatter than they do an investment strategy, and for good reason: The advice can’t always be counted on. Then again,

WHEN I WAS GROWING up, my mother thought the best way to relieve my boredom during summer vacations was to get a job. She was a valued employee at a local business and she knew the firm was hiring.
I asked if part of the job was to calculate change for customers when they made a purchase. That terrified me. My mother said she wasn’t sure, but that I’d learn to do it if it was required.

EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT a doctor, I’ve been around medicine all my life. My father was a general practitioner and I spent my career in hospital administration. I had administrative oversight over three emergency departments of varying sizes. Based on my experience, here are 10 recommendations that may improve your experience should you need to visit an emergency room:
1. If you use the emergency room (ER) for a non-acute medical condition, bring a book.

I’VE WRITTEN BEFORE about stumbling on an unexpected way to save on auto insurance. My education continues: I’ve also learned of a way to save on Medigap coverage.
When I became eligible five years ago for Medicare, I bought Medigap Plan G supplemental coverage from Mutual of Omaha (MOO). Last summer, as my wife was about to become eligible for Medicare, we took another look at Medigap coverage. I was generally happy with MOO’s claims procedures and customer service,

THE MOST GALLING moment came when the notice of a sheriff’s sale was nailed to a tree in our front yard. The message to passersby was all too clear: “Deadbeats live here.”
Except they didn’t. Our house was in foreclosure—but the debts weren’t ours. They belonged to the people we had bought the house from. How did we escape what turned out to be a two-year ordeal? Three words: owner’s title insurance. How did we get caught up in such a mess?

IT SEEMS ALL MY LIFE I’ve been obsessed with one thing: not being average. It would be nice to be the best or the highest rated. But I have been happy simply to avoid average.

I grew up in a very average family. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. Throughout school, I was very average. But in my first job as a mail boy, I went to work wearing a dress shirt and tie.

LONG-TERM-CARE insurance and disability insurance can both be part of a comprehensive financial plan. But is it a good idea to have both coverages at the same time, or could one substitute for the other? After all, both policies are designed to help those who are, in some way, infirm.
To answer this question, let’s start with another one: What’s the purpose of insurance? The best use of any type of insurance is to guard against financial disaster.

MORE WEALTH HAS been lost in this year’s stock and bond market decline than in any previous downturn, according to research firm Bespoke Investments. And, no, that doesn’t include the $2 trillion of crypto value that’s gone up in smoke.
A counterpoint to this jarring reality: Folks today are wealthier than during previous bear markets. Goldman Sachs reports that U.S. household net worth as a percentage of disposable personal income remains sharply above pre-pandemic levels.

SINCE THE START OF the year, the stock market has dropped almost 24%. That’s significant, but it pales next to the losses suffered by cryptocurrency investors, with the shellacking continuing into this weekend.
Dogecoin is down more than 90%, and smaller currencies like terra have lost essentially all their value. Even bitcoin and ethereum, which are much more established, have suffered big losses. Ethereum is down around 75% year-to-date, and bitcoin has fallen some 60%.

I RECENTLY MADE a good decision, all thanks to director John Frankenheimer’s penultimate film, Ronin. In it, Robert De Niro plays a mercenary who, early in the movie, refuses to enter the roadway under Paris’s Pont Alexandre III because he’s wary of getting caught in an ambush. It’s a decision that saves his life and that of his colleagues. When he’s later asked about the decision, he replies, “Whenever there is any doubt,