NATIXIS INVESTMENT Managers published its ninth annual Global Retirement Index last week, which focused on overall wellbeing and financial security. The U.S. slipped to an unimpressive 17th out of 25 countries.
Perhaps that isn’t surprising given the state of Social Security. Based on the program’s current financing, benefits would need to be cut after 2033. None of us wants to hear that, but we also aren’t surprised. The Natixis study reports that a whopping 77% of U.S.

IT’S ESTIMATED THAT up to $3 billion of unclaimed property is recovered every year. But another $49 billion is lost and still waiting to be claimed. How much of it is yours?

Whenever I check if I’m due anything, I always come up empty. But the memories of found money keep me checking and hoping something pops up. Who can ever forget finding that surprise dollar bill in the pocket of your recently washed jeans when you were 11 years old,

WHEN IT COMES to communication, I’m kind of a fanatic. (My wife would say I should drop the “kind of.”) More specifically, I’m a fan of responsive communication.
Back in my working days, when I practiced criminal law, I made it a point to return phone calls and emails from clients promptly. It was rare that I didn’t do it the same day. If that meant staying late at the office until I caught up,

MY FIRST JOB DURING high school was bagging groceries at Publix Super Markets. The starting wage was a cool $7 per hour in 2004. That was big money to me. It meant I could work the weekends and a few nights a week, and then buy music CDs on eBay. My 2005 goal was to earn enough to fund a Roth IRA at Vanguard Group.
Today’s teenagers have it better. Don’t take my word for it: The latest wage growth tracker,

IMAGINE YOU PLAN to retire next year. What can you do beforehand to gain the most later on? Here are some ideas to consider before you log off at work for the last time.
If you’re retiring mid-year, increase your 401(k) or 403(b) contributions. Raise your savings enough to make a full year’s allowable contribution in the months you have left. This may be your last chance to put away tax-deferred money. I retired mid-year,

THERE’S A SAYING in the military: Rank has its privileges. It’s absolutely true. The trappings that accompany the highest military ranks can include aides, personal drivers and even cooks, to name just a few. The best leaders I’ve worked with knew that these trappings were ephemeral and often the result of luck, albeit mixed with hard work and ability.
Not every leader—whether they served in the military, corporate America or elsewhere—understands this. After retirement,

WHEN MY PARENTS were alive, they would ask me what I was going to do with their home when they passed away. I knew they wanted me to live there. My sister and brother-in-law had no interest in the house. They were planning to move to Tennessee to be close to their son.
I never really gave them an answer on what my plans were. They probably never understood why I wouldn’t jump at the chance to live in a bigger house with more amenities in a safer neighborhood.

AFTER DEPARTING the U.S. stock market for the greener pastures of emerging markets, I recently hit a pocket of turbulence. Although emerging market stocks are virtually unchanged year to date, they fell as much as 12% in August compared to the recent highs reached in February. By contrast, the S&P 500 is up 17% for the year, with barely a pullback along the way.
The travails of Chinese stocks explain much of this underperformance.

MY ANDROID RANG on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The screen said it was from a police station. Hesitating, I took the call. My biracial son came on.
“I’m going to jail, Mom. But I didn’t do it.”
Instant memories, almost 50 years old, of police guns pointing at my African husband’s head and mine. Wrong profile of an interracial couple. It wasn’t us. Checking IDs, they realized we weren’t the suspects sought.
With my son’s phone call,

THE DEEPER I SETTLE into semi-retirement, the more I miss something that I didn’t realize was important to me: working with and learning from a diverse group of people. I was lucky that, for most of my four-decade career, I was employed by profit-making and nonprofit organizations that were committed to workforce diversity.

I miss how easy it was to be challenged and changed by difference. Sometimes, it was on pop culture. Sometimes, it was on something much more important.

I RECENTLY LEARNED that crooks like to use tungsten to defraud gold investors. Here’s how it works: Gold bars are typically validated by weight. If a standard size bar clocks in at the expected weight, it’s assumed to be pure. But tungsten, it turns out, has a very similar density to gold. Crooks will drill out a bar’s core, fill it with tungsten and then cover their tracks by applying a thin veneer of gold.

AT 40 YEARS OLD, I missed out on the phenomenal early years that allowed Berkshire Hathaway to return nearly 3,000,000% since 1964, versus a “mere” 23,500% for the S&P 500. Yet my investment time horizon is still long—and that’s a huge advantage as an investor.
How should I use that advantage? As I write this, Berkshire’s total stock market value is roughly $650 billion. By contrast, one of the stocks my wife and I bought—Boston Omaha—is worth less than $1 billion.

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMISTS long ago discovered that the pain we feel from a $1,000 loss is about twice as great as the joy we feel from a $1,000 gain. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky documented the phenomenon and coined the term “loss aversion” in 1979. That was just a few years before I began investing.
Since then, I’ve made a discovery about my own psychology: I’d rather underperform in out-of-favor stocks than risk losses in glamorous ones—because my gut tells me that the more something is celebrated,

THE BUREAU OF LABOR Statistics reported last week that consumer prices in August were up 5.3% from a year earlier. This means that, on average, we’re paying $105 for a basket of goods and services that cost us $100 a year ago. Investors and analysts are worried that higher inflation may be here to stay.
My contention: Inflation will prove to be temporary and the Federal Reserve won’t have to increase interest rates to slow consumer prices.

LIKE MANY READING this article, index funds constitute the lion’s share of my family’s investments. But I also own small positions in two individual stocks: Boston Omaha and Markel.
Why have I strayed from a 100% indexing approach? Both companies are conglomerates—multiple businesses that function as a single entity. Conglomerates should—in theory—be able to deliver slightly higher returns, thanks to the business efficiencies and synergies they realize. On top of that, they can offer some of the strengths of a mutual fund: diversification plus intelligent capital allocation.