FORGET BUYING A HOME or paying for college. In terms of complexity and cost, nothing comes close to retirement—a topic that encompasses saving, investing, taxes, Social Security, health care expenses and countless other financial issues.
Fortunately, there’s a growing body of research to guide us, and some of the best studies come from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research (CRR). Here are just some of the insights I’ve lately garnered from CRR studies:
Valuing annuities.

AS I MENTIONED in an article back in June, my wife and I funded a custodial account for our son three years ago. He used the $1,000 we gave him to buy shares of Nike and Exxon.
We figured what’s good for our oldest child would also be good for No. 2. Our daughter recently completed fifth grade and is now age 11. Earlier this summer, we set up an account for her and added $1,000.

MONEY MANAGER GMO recently noted that, “There are no bad assets just bad prices.” The occasion was the S&P 500’s price outrunning earnings by 70% over the seven years through March. GMO’s punchline: The same thing happened in the seven years that ended with the dot-com peak in March 2000. This, of course, did not end well.
Two decades ago, I remember a friend telling me of steep losses in his retirement savings, the result of moving his entire 401(k) into aggressive,

AS MY TWINS DEPART for college, they leave behind a home base where they find food in the refrigerator, get new clothes and shoes when needed, have bills paid and extra-curriculars funded, and receive a small weekly allowance to save or spend.
Now, they’re headed far from familiar security. They gain instead independence and the opportunity to explore other ways of living and spending, all part of their higher education. Cold cereal for supper?

ONE FUN FACT I TELL my students about Daniel Kahneman: He won the Nobel Prize for economics without ever taking an economics course in college. Kahneman is a psychologist whose discoveries laid the foundation for the new science of behavioral economics.
One of his most important findings is that loss feels twice as painful to us as gain feels good, so the emotional scales aren’t balanced when we make economic decisions. For instance, workers will wait years to join a 401(k) because contributions can feel like a loss in spending power.

IN THE PAST THREE years, Jim and I have moved five times—three times in Spain and twice in Dallas. We sold almost all our possessions when we moved to Spain, taking just four suitcases and two cats. When we returned to Dallas, we didn’t bring home much more—five suitcases and two cats.
Fortunately, I’ve discovered that I prefer living in a smaller home. I love the design of Spanish houses, which are—on average—just half the size of equivalent U.S.

CONGRATULATIONS, your family has grown with the arrival of a first child or grandchild. As the celebration subsides, reality sets in: You want to do everything you can to pave the way for a secure future.
For new parents, the first step is to obtain two basic documents that’ll last a lifetime: a birth certificate and Social Security card. The hospital will start the process, but you need to be diligent. Is the name spelled correctly?

REAL ESTATE PRICES in California are through the roof. The price of a smaller home in our neighborhood just sold for $80,000 above the list price. Not only is housing expensive for retirees like us, but also the cost of living in California is very high. Gas, food and taxes are a lot higher here than in other places favored by retirees, such as the Sunbelt.
When I was going to school, I was never good at math.

WHEN YOU’VE BEEN saving and investing for a long time, you have a long list of things you wish you could do over. Like hanging on to Apple, instead of selling at $85 a share. Like buying an index fund, instead of that hot mutual fund that quickly turned cold. My wife calls these “what ifs.” We have a rule not to talk about them because they almost always lead to arguments about who was wrong.

THE AMERICAN DREAM. Rags to riches. The self-made man—or woman.
Everyone growing up in the U.S. is told of these ideals. We are sharks who must keep moving to survive. The only acceptable direction is up. We do it for ourselves, believing happiness is just over the next hill of “more.” We do it for our family because providing is an act of caring.
If there’s a least-debated rule in economics, however, it’s that everything comes at a cost.

IF YOU’RE MARRIED, it’s almost certain that one of you will outlive the other—perhaps by many years. What are the financial implications? Here are 10 issues to keep in mind:
1. Social Security. For a married couple, their Social Security benefits can consist of two workers’ benefits or a worker’s benefit and a spousal benefit. On the death of either spouse, the remaining benefit is the higher of the two benefits. For instance,

LIKE MOST READERS of this site, I’m committed to index fund investing. Still, even though I know I’d have little chance of beating the market as a stock-picker, I’m periodically tempted to buy individual stocks. When a former mentor who’s a brilliant strategist joined Moderna in May 2020, I strongly considered buying shares. Given where the economy was at the time, I passed on buying the company’s shares (symbol: MRNA) and stuck to my standard S&P 500-index fund investing.

FINANCE NERD THAT I am, I gleefully dug into the 2021 Capital Markets Fact Book that was just published by SIFMA. I was particularly humbled by a chart showing the breakdown of the global stock and bond markets. Why humbled? The data show just how great we U.S. investors have had it in the past decade.
The Fact Book first displays the $58 trillion global stock market’s composition in 2010.

AS AN INVESTOR, I’d describe myself as a small-cap-value-aholic with a worldly outlook. Right now, I’m betting that one of world’s least loved overseas markets will finally return to favor after decades of disappointment. You can laugh out loud now.
Last year, my investment in U.S. small-cap value stocks was a great play from the March 2020 market bottom through about mid-May of this year. I didn’t catch the market bottom perfectly, but—luckily—I was close.

I’VE LONG STRUGGLED with the fact that, despite living in one of the world’s richest nations and having the best medical care in the world, Americans have a shorter average life expectancy than the citizens of 30 other developed nations.
I believe it all comes down to the high level of stress that Americans carry, much of it caused by economic hardship. Far too many Americans, both young and old, live paycheck to paycheck.