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.

I MAY BE THE POSTER child for the new retirement, switching back and forth between standard employment and side gigs, as I seek work that I find fulfilling. I’m not alone: It seems many people are retiring earlier than they planned and then working part-time, moving in and out of the workforce based on need and opportunity.
The annual Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) shows that—while workers expect to retire at age 65—the median retirement age is actually 62.

OVER THE PAST decade, my wife and I have hired others to handle most home improvement projects. It all came down to a lack of time: We had two young children and demanding jobs in the corporate world. But thanks to my recent switch to teaching, I have more free time, so I decided to tackle a few projects this summer. Here are three things I learned:

Painting is possible. For more than a year,

I’VE NEVER BEEN a fan of financial planning rules of thumb. To understand why, consider a common shortcut for choosing an asset allocation: The allocation to bonds in a portfolio, according to this rule of thumb, should equal an investor’s age.

For example, if an investor is 65 years old, his or her allocation to bonds should be 65%. That sounds reasonable—until you realize that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is 65. Should he have the same asset allocation as everyone else his age?

IN CASE YOU’RE wondering, that means, “Where is my blog?”

In retirement, it’s important to keep busy doing things you enjoy. For me, that’s blogging. It’s fun and I learn from readers’ comments.

On Aug. 17, I received an email addressed to “Karen” saying my site’s domain was expiring. Who’s Karen? It must be a scam, so I ignored it. The next day, my blog couldn’t be found.

I logged on to the domain seller and paid the fee.

I FELL IN LOVE with baseball in 1965. My parents were in the midst of divorcing. I found sanctuary listening to San Francisco Giants’ games on the radio. I put on my batting helmet and pretended I was Willie Mays swinging at every pitch or diving on my bed catching imaginary lines drives. Willie had a magical year and, although the hated Dodgers nosed us out in the end, a lifelong passion was born.

ON THE NEWS the other day, they were discussing technological change. “It happens gradually and then suddenly,” said the guest commentator.
The commentator was borrowing a memorable phrase from a book written almost a century earlier, Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
Although this fictional conversation refers to financial ruin, “gradually and then suddenly” is also how most financially successful people accumulate wealth.

AT THE START OF THE pandemic, we picked up a nice chunk of capital losses. I say “nice” because these were intentional. When the market dropped significantly, we realized losses and immediately reinvested the proceeds in other fallen stocks.
What about capital gains? In 2020, some of our mutual funds distributed capital gains, but we didn’t intentionally realize any other gains. Some of our realized losses offset the distributed fund gains. Another $3,000 was applied against ordinary income.

ON AUG. 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon made the weighty decision to end the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold. By doing so, he drove a stake through the heart of the gold standard, a monetary system which fixed the worth of a unit of money to a specific amount of physical gold. Before that day, foreign central banks were able to exchange $35 for one ounce of gold from the vaults of the U.S.