I RECENTLY LISTENED to a podcast featuring Richard Thaler, the Nobel prize-winning economist. To say I’m a huge fan of his work is an understatement. Thaler has that rare ability to communicate a complex topic—behavioral economics—to a lay audience in a way that’s both accessible and enjoyable. His book Misbehaving offers a fascinating historical account of behavioral economics, a field he played a major role in developing.
But it was a casual comment that Thaler made toward the end of the interview that really caught my attention.

MY WIFE AND I are planning a cross-country trip next year, and we need a new vehicle for the journey. The dealer we visited didn’t have a lot of SUVs to choose from because of the global semiconductor shortage. The SUVs in stock had dealer add-ons, such as a $1,900 alarm system and $1,500 for paint sealant. My thought: The dealer was trying to take advantage of the vehicle shortage by adding more options to drive up the price.

WE’RE PROGRAMMED to believe that a four-year college degree is the only path to success. After spending several years on both a small-town school board and an economic development board, I saw the disservice that this belief is doing to many of our students.
Students and their parents are led to believe that everyone is taking a college prep curriculum in high school. There are indeed students who are actually preparing for college.

WHEN I MATCHED UP our monthly spending with the terms of the Starbucks Rewards Visa card, I calculated that I could potentially get a free drip coffee every day of the year. Given the proliferation of Starbucks in our Los Angeles suburb—including one within 400 yards of my office—it’s tempting to cover my caffeination by swiping my credit card.
After some deliberation, however, I’m going to focus instead on amassing travel rewards points. For the past five years,

ALL EYES ON FRIDAY were focused on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. “Will Powell announce an aggressive taper plan?” many market-watchers wondered. Not a whole lot new was presented, and that triggered a stock market rally. The S&P 500 notched its 52nd all-time high of 2021 and the Russell 2000 small-cap index had one of its best days of the year.
Small caps got off to a hot start in 2021. By mid-March, the Russell 2000 was up 19% on the year,

DEAR 18-YEAR-OLD: You may be better educated and more intelligent than me. You may have more potential. But for sure you don’t have more experience. I have 60 years on you, so—as hard as it may be—take my advice:

There are no guarantees in life. You have to make of it what you will. Never give up.
You will have obstacles placed before you. You will be treated unfairly. You will have to deal with less-than-honorable individuals.

A WHILE BACK, I assembled two personal finance reading lists—what I called 101 and 201 level titles. But time doesn’t stand still. Below is a list of newer books, along with a few classics that didn’t fit on the earlier lists. They’re organized into three categories: retirement planning, investing and behavioral finance.
Retirement Planning

Can I Retire? by Mike Piper. There’s no shortage of retirement books. But if you want a straightforward guide that covers the most critical topics in an easy-to-read format,

WOULD YOU ADVISE someone—who doesn’t drive, doesn’t need a car and doesn’t plan to get one in the foreseeable future—to buy car insurance? I wouldn’t. But it seems some financial advisors think otherwise. That, at least, is the impression I got when an acquaintance, whom I’ll call Laura, mentioned her variable universal life insurance policy to me.
A single woman in her mid-40s, Laura has a decent income and lives on her own. She has no one other than herself to support financially.

I’VE HEARD SOME parents say that, while they don’t like their kids watching online videos, at least they aren’t being exposed to the ads that inundate kids on regular TV.
Nope. Advertising is at least as pervasive, and definitely more insidious, on the web. Kids have shifted from network television to web-viewing, and advertisers have trailed right behind them with Willie Sutton logic—because that’s where the money is.
YouTube is the most popular video streaming site in the world.

WE SAVE TOO LITTLE, spend too much and what we buy often disappoints. Is there an antidote for this financially self-destructive behavior? One intriguing possibility: visualization.
If you’re like me, the word itself makes you a little queasy. It conjures up images of both self-absorbed, navel-gazing yuppies (not something I aspire to be) and Olympic athletes getting in the zone (not something I’ll ever be). Still, I think there’s value in spending serious time pondering our financial goals.

IT’S BEEN WIDELY reported that the Social Security Administration will likely announce a roughly 6% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for 2022. That would be the largest increase in monthly benefits since 1982, when retirees’ checks climbed 7.4%.
But the impact on retirees is more complicated than you might imagine. Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research recently published a paper entitled, “The Impact of Inflation on Social Security Benefits.” The paper investigates three ways that inflation interacts with benefits.

IF SOMEONE ASKS ME what my favorite day is, I’d have to say the second Wednesday of the month. That’s when my Social Security check gets deposited into my checking account. I’ve received three checks so far and each one has been a joy. The experts might be right when they say retirees who have predictable income are happier. At age 70, I feel like a little boy who just got his first bicycle.

WHEN I TELL FOLKS that they’ve just met the only guy to lose money on a house in New Castle, New Hampshire, they usually respond with great surprise.

The fact is, in good economic times and bad, it’s hard to lose money on a New Castle home. This quaint New England village—a collection of islands connected by causeways—has the honor of having some of the highest-priced homes and lowest property taxes in New Hampshire,

PARTICIPANTS IN 401(K) plans will soon be getting estimates of how much income they might receive in retirement if their plan savings were spent purchasing an annuity. Under a new rule, plan providers are required to provide participants with at least two annuity estimates annually on their account statements. One would project the lifetime income from the purchase of a single-life annuity and the other from a joint-and-survivor annuity. A joint-and-survivor annuity extends payments over two lives,

GROWING UP, my older brother beat me in just about every sporting match we played. Basketball, football, tennis—it was remarkable.
I noticed his key to winning was avoiding mistakes. Take tennis. My brother would casually return a soft lob over the net to avoid an unforced error. Meanwhile, I’d pretend I was Andy Roddick and go for the forehand winner every chance I got. My brother would simply watch as my aggressive shot landed outside the lines.