I’VE BEEN WAITING since late last year for a stock market correction. No, I’m not sitting on a pile of cash and looking to time the market. Instead, I’m simply hoping to trim my tax bill.
Last October, I sold the recently vested shares of my company stock and used the proceeds to buy Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (symbol: VTI). This sell-high-buy-high exchange was meant for diversification, but I also hoped that the market would drop later.

IMAGINE PUTTING your teenager behind a steering wheel to take a driving test without any prior preparation. The result is predictable—she would fail and you’d be lucky if she didn’t crash. Would you reprimand her for this result? Of course not.
So why is it that so many of us are merciless—both to ourselves and even our loved ones—when it comes to our investing blunders? You know what I’m talking about: putting money into a meme stock that subsequently cratered;

WHEN A FRIEND TOLD me about his newfound interest in buying and selling sports trading cards, it reminded me of the joy that collecting brought me in my childhood. And when he asked me to explain the relevant taxation, it got me thinking: The core of the tax code is more logical than we give it credit for. It’s the ever-changing details that make it squirrelly.
If you buy and sell collectibles—whether it be sports cards,

LAST AUGUST, I wrote about the retention bonuses I scored by simply initiating a transfer of assets from one brokerage firm to another. Back then, I said I’d wait six months and then try again to capture this free money.
This time around, one broker offered me a promotion simply to stay put, but two others wouldn’t. I did some quick Google searches and found offers elsewhere, so I initiated the transfers and collected those bonuses.

I GREW UP IN INDIA. There, it’s quite common to have outside help for household chores. Most middle-class families hire someone to help with washing, dishes and cleaning. Affluent households typically have a cook, driver and housekeeper.
After coming to the U.S., I noticed that most households weren’t dependent on domestic help, thanks to appliances like a dishwasher, vacuum cleaner and washer-dryer. A few coworkers went as far as building their own cabinets and decks,

AS I PULLED UP IN my used Subaru wagon to the high school drop-off line with two grumpy teenagers on the first day of school, I noticed something was different.
Because of the pandemic, our sleepy, semi-rural town in upstate New York had seen an influx of Manhattanites and Brooklyners over the past year. My Subaru was now bracketed by a shiny Tesla sedan and a polished Mercedes SUV. The usual collection of less flashy cars and trucks seemed to be missing.

HOME AFFORDABILITY is finally taking a hit now that mortgage rates have ticked higher. Last May, I wrote that property prices were through the roof but homes were still affordable. The reason: Historically low borrowing rates, coupled with record high median family income, had offset robust home prices.
The National Association of Realtors’ latest figures show housing affordability rivals that of last May. But the figures don’t yet reflect higher interest rates. Freddie Mac posts the latest set of mortgage rates each Thursday.

ROUGHLY A QUARTER of my investment portfolio sits in three Roth retirement accounts. Ever since I first funded a Roth a dozen years ago, I’ve thought of this as money I’d avoid spending for as long as possible, so I milk maximum gain from the tax-free growth. But lately, it’s dawned on me that it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever dip into these accounts—and that realization has triggered a slew of investment decisions.
My three Roth accounts are all at Vanguard Group.

NOT ALL DEBT IS created equal—and that’s especially true when it comes to student loans.
For the vast majority of debt, we can calculate the ongoing monthly payment if we know the interest rate, number of payment periods, current balance and if the payment is due at the beginning or end of the period. But for federal student loans, we may need to know one more variable: the borrower’s discretionary income.
With federal student loans,

I WAS SURPRISED to realize the other day that, despite the varied topics HumbleDollar has addressed, I couldn’t recall a single mention of Sun-Tzu, the 6th century B.C. military commander who purportedly wrote The Art of War. The book is a favorite read of business schools. Even a cursory search on Amazon shows how often Sun-Tzu and The Art of War are invoked regarding business, finance and investing.

THE S&P 500 WAS UP 0.8% last week. It was a wild ride, with the Volatility Index climbing to almost 40—the highest level in 15 months—as investors grappled with the threat of rising interest rates. The Federal Reserve is steadfast in its plans to aggressively raise short-term interest rates. Bank of America Global Research was the buzz of Wall Street on Friday morning, with its economic team saying it now expects the Fed to hike rates by a quarter-point at all seven remaining meetings this year.

OVER THE PAST TWO years, we’ve seen everything from tornadoes to devastating fires to hurricanes, often at unusual times and in unexpected places. That got my husband and me thinking about how to prepare for what may come our way—and how we could document what we might lose.
We decided to make a home movie. Our new phones are perfect for taking videos. What better proof of what we have? You’ve probably seen the suggestion that you do this,

DOES IT MAKE SENSE to heed the advice of experts? This doesn’t seem like a hard question. I certainly listen to my doctor and to many others with specialized expertise. As a society, we all rely on experts—from civil engineers to airline pilots to firefighters—for our health and safety.
At the same time, however, human judgment seems to be riddled with flaws. Consider these examples:

After reading his senior thesis, Michael Lewis’s advisor at Princeton University gave him this advice: Whatever you do,

MANY OF THE WORLD’S religions view humility as an admirable trait to which we should all aspire. It’s frequently associated with poverty, as practiced by devout orders like Buddhist monks and the Sisters of Mercy. But when it comes to investing, humility can—ironically—make you significantly wealthier.

As documented by the behavioral finance research, overconfidence can lead to worse investment returns when investors presume, without justification, that they’re skilled at, say, picking market-beating stocks. The research on indexing versus active stock fund management overwhelmingly shows that,

TO BE AWARDED a triple-A credit rating was once a priority for some of the biggest and best-known U.S. companies. Only the financially strongest companies, organizations and governments can earn a triple-A rating.
The triple-A rating typically bestows the lowest borrowing rates and suggests the highest ability to repay bondholders. But the triple-A club has been shrinking over the past four decades. Apple recently became only the third current corporate member of this exclusive club.