I HATE TO BE WRONG. I’ve written before about the technique I’ve developed for evaluating health insurance. My wife and I have used it over the years to decide which plan to select. I’ve shared it with friends and colleagues, and many have found it useful in gaining insight into their own health insurance options. I still think it’s a valid and valuable method.
But our recent experience, after switching health insurance mid-year, made me realize it was missing one important variable—the length of time you’ll be in the plan.

THE HOLIDAYS MARK a festive period for stock market bulls. The final two weeks of the year and the first several trading sessions of January have historically seen unusually strong gains for the S&P 500 stocks, according to research from Bank of America. Since 1928, the final 10 trading days of December have averaged gains of 1.19% and the first 10 sessions of January have returned 0.72%.
Why has the S&P 500 performed well during this stretch?

WITH THE SURGE of urbanization in the 19th century, many folks became concerned by the seeming rise in bad behavior. This behavior could be illegal—such as theft—or legal but undesirable, like alcohol abuse.
Nascent social sciences, including sociology and psychology, developed two alternative theories. “Moral Deficit” theorists said people engaged in bad behavior because they were internally “weak.” You might have seen a movie scene where a hysterical person is slapped with the admonition to “get a hold of yourself.” Or you might be familiar with the approaches of The Salvation Army and YMCA,

LAST WEDNESDAY, the Federal Reserve’s policymaking committee concluded its quarterly meeting with two big announcements. First, the Fed is going to scale back its monthly purchases of Treasury securities. Because these multi-billion-dollar purchases have helped keep interest rates low, the Fed’s objective here is to let interest rates begin to rise. That was the first announcement.

The second is that the committee expects to raise its benchmark rate by nearly a full percentage point next 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, not true electric trains. One year, I pleaded for a real set. To my surprise, American Flyer trains were under the tree Christmas morning.

I WAS WRITING magazine stories back in 1996, recommending stocks and mutual funds. Privately, I worried that readers might think I had some genuine insight—and they might even invest in the ways I suggested.
Propelled by that fear, I favored safe stories, like the best electric utility stocks or the outlook for U.S. savings bonds. I ransacked the library, looking for sure-fire, can’t miss investments. Surprisingly, I found one—something called an index fund.
Twenty-five years ago,

IS A DEGREE FROM AN elite school the golden ticket? I recently read Jeffrey Selingo’s excellent book Who Gets In and Why—and came away with some fascinating insights.
Selingo says experience and skills often trump where someone went to college. Each year, 1.8 million students graduate from four-year colleges, with 54,000 leaving with a degree from an elite institution. Simple math confirms employers must fill jobs with more than just graduates from elite schools.

TRAVELING DURING the holidays? As we drive east out of Ohio and into Pennsylvania, we know to fill the gas tank before we cross the border. According to the Tax Foundation, Pennsylvania has the third-highest gasoline tax in the country, behind California and Illinois, and about 20 cents per gallon higher than Ohio.
All states have to balance their budget. But they take very different approaches. This provides 50 experiments in taxation—and those taxes influence our behavior.

I STARTED MY CAREER with a little-known engineering company called SAI. It’s now called SAIC, short for Science Applications International Corp., a publicly traded and internationally renowned technology firm. But when I started in 1980, there were only a few thousand employees and several small, independently run offices scattered across the country.
SAI was started in 1969 by Dr. J. Robert Beyster, a nationally recognized expert in nuclear physics and national security. He started the company with the dual tenets of technical excellence and employee ownership.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH COVID-19 began on March 4, 2020. That morning, I got off a plane in Buenos Aries. While standing in line with my passport, I noticed several people wearing masks, so I put one on as well. Back then, we were being told to go about our business. “It’s like a bad cold.” If only.

We boarded our ship for a 30-day cruise, which I documented in five articles for HumbleDollar.

GIFT CARDS ARE BIG business. More than $28 billion is expected to be spent on gift cards this holiday season, with an average value of almost $50 per card, according to the National Retail Federation’s winter holidays report. This season, consumers want gift cards above all else, says the survey, and restaurants are the most popular category.
I’ve changed my mind about gift cards. I used to think they were a ridiculous way to show appreciation.

A FEW WEEKS BACK, Jonathan Clements wrote an article reminding readers that they, too, likely made financial missteps in their younger days. His article was in response to comments by HumbleDollar readers about the perceived lack of financial discipline shown by those currently in their late teens and early 20s.
Before my recent career change, I would’ve had the same opinion as many readers. With my new job teaching accounting to undergraduates,

INVESTMENT RESEARCH has overwhelmingly shown that active stock strategies perform poorly over long periods compared to buying index funds and simply collecting the market’s return.
There’s still some debate about whether the best active managers are a smart bet—and whether we can count on them continuing to perform well. But there’s no question that active stock management, on average, has destroyed value for clients.
Yet active strategies remain popular with both individual investors and their wealth managers.

INFLATION CONTINUES to sizzle. November’s Producer Price Index (PPI) rose 9.6% from a year earlier. Even after removing food and energy, PPI was up 7.7%. Both figures are the highest since 2010, when such data were first compiled.
This follows last week’s Consumer Price Index report, which showed inflation climbing 6.8% over the past 12 months. Since consumer prices lag producer prices, we can expect little relief from inflation in 2022.
All this must be foremost on the minds of Federal Reserve members as they meet this week.

NATIXIS INVESTMENT Managers just released its 2022 institutional investors’ outlook. The firm surveyed 500 portfolio managers, asking their thoughts on what the next year might look like in the financial markets. The managers—who oversee $13.2 trillion of assets—were generally optimistic, but didn’t expect the recent torrid pace of stock market gains to continue.
The survey found that 35% of institutions plan to decrease exposure to U.S. stocks, allocating more to developed European and Asian markets,