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.

DIVIDEND YIELDS MAY be tiny, but they sure they get talked about a lot. As Rick Connor pointed out on Friday, the S&P 500 stocks collectively yield just 1.3%—near 20-year lows. Yields have fallen as share prices have climbed and as companies have put more emphasis on stock buybacks. In fact, today, companies spend more on buying back their own shares than paying dividends.
Companies continuously manage their capital structure—how much of the enterprise is funded by issuing stock and how much with debt.

AS SOMEONE WHO’S been employed in academia for more than two decades, I often wonder about the future of higher education. One trend seems clear: At a time when more companies are doing away with degree requirements for new hires, more colleges are doing away with studying. The so-called college experience appears to be more important than academics. Indeed, grade inflation has been running rampant since the 1960s.
Meanwhile, student debt loads are the highest they’ve ever been.

PERSONAL FINANCE pundits love to debate safe withdrawal rates—the amount a retiree can withdraw each year from a portfolio without depleting it too quickly. I agree this is an important topic. In fact, I’ve addressed it a few times myself in recent months.

In July, I discussed the well-known 4% rule. A few weeks ago, I described an alternative called the bucket strategy. But as you build your retirement plan, withdrawal rates shouldn’t be the only consideration.

A CRUCIAL STEP WHEN buying a preowned car is to scrutinize its Carfax report. A single-owner car with a regular maintenance history and which was driven solely for personal use should be a safe bet, while an accident record gives most people pause. All things being equal, a car that was in an accident, however minor, ought to cost less than a similar one with a clean history.
Some bargain hunters don’t mind taking a chance on a car with an accident history as long as it drives well.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT you pay for your 401(k)? Over time, even seemingly small charges can take a big bite out of your retirement savings.
That’s why a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report is so surprising. Fully 41% of people surveyed think their 401(k) is free. And I’ve got a unicorn tethered in my backyard. Not only are they incorrect, but also it suggests that those required fee disclosure documents from plan providers are written in ways investors just don’t understand.

OTHERS MIGHT BE hoping to add to their wealth by picking the next hot stock. But here at HumbleDollar, we’re much more concerned about subtraction.
The goal: Keep more of whatever the financial markets deliver by minimizing investment costs and avoiding unnecessarily large tax bills. This is a reason to favor index funds. But even if we index, we need to be alert to another threat—that posed by the person in the mirror.

WE’VE ALL BEEN looking for signs that the financial world is returning to some semblance of normalcy. I recently read a CNBC article that gave me hope. The article said that worldwide dividend payouts were expected to reach $1.39 trillion in 2021, almost back to pre-pandemic levels.
The data came from a report by Janus Henderson, a U.K. money manager. Dividends in this year’s second quarter increased 26% from 2020’s second quarter and were only 6.8% below 2019’s second quarter.

“THE REALITY IS THAT most working Americans will continue to struggle to achieve retirement security because the ownership of financial assets is highly concentrated among the wealthiest,” wrote Dan Doonan, executive director of the National Institute on Retirement Security, for Forbes.com.

I read and re-read that statement, especially the word “because.” It seems Doonan has concluded that the great wealth held by the top 1% somehow inhibits the rest of us from saving and investing.

“THERE IS A VERY fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘mental illness’,” according to humorist Dave Barry.
Some years ago, we had a weekend place—a cabin on acreage—which we greatly enjoyed, even if it did come with challenges. One thing I especially enjoyed: taking the kids on nighttime walks to see how many critters we could spot. That led to an interest in flashlights, and I collected a bunch of them. That, in turn, led to a keen interest in pocketknives.