THIS PAST FATHER’S Day, I was listening to a financial talk show. The host asked listeners to phone in and describe how their father influenced their thinking about money.

Callers related that their fathers told them to save early, to not waste money, to avoid debt and a few other basic ideas like “don’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses.”

I told my wife I couldn’t recall my father ever talking to me about money.

WHEN I WAS A KID in the late 1950s, if a toy was stamped “Made in Japan,” it meant it was cheap and poorly made. A decade or so later, that label began to mean something entirely different: If you wanted a top-notch TV, you were considering a Sony. If you were shopping for the most reliable car, Toyota, Datsun (later renamed Nissan) and Honda were on your list.
There’s a parallel today with China,

EARNINGS SEASON is wrapping up on Wall Street. Analysts’ predictions and companies’ profit guidance is a bit of a dog-and-pony show, as HumbleDollar contributor Kyle Mcintosh recently described. Still, there’s some useful information to be gleaned from second-quarter results and from executives’ comments.
In particular, I look forward to the FactSet weekly earnings season update to see which pockets of the stock market have the best and worst figures. According to last Friday’s report,

THE 19TH CENTURY feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys doesn’t hold a candle to the debate between supporters of index funds and supporters of active management.
Those in the index fund camp cite decades of data—going back to the 1930s—to support their view that active management is a fool’s errand. In fact, Standard & Poor’s regularly publishes a study it calls SPIVA, short for S&P Index Versus Active. Each time, analysts there reach the same conclusion—that it’s exceedingly difficult for an actively managed fund to beat its benchmark.

I SUGGESTED a thought experiment in my last blog post—one in which the stock market shut down for six months at the start of the pandemic. I believe it helps explain why financial markets recovered with such a vengeance.
Today, I take a different tack, one based on financial theory. It’s easy to forget that stocks are not pieces of paper (remember stock certificates?) or ticker symbols on a computer screen. Rather, they represent a claim on company profits,

THE SOCIAL SECURITY Administration began rolling out a new, smaller annual statement on May 1. As reported in Think Advisor and other publications, a small percentage of online “my Social Security” account users, who aren’t currently receiving benefits, will get the new printed statement.
The new statement is two pages instead of four. One significant improvement is a graphic that shows what your estimated monthly benefit could be if you started taking benefits in any of the nine years between ages 62 and 70.

I’M NOT SURE HOW anyone can achieve financial peace and prosperity without addressing the “b” word—budgeting.

I got my first credit card in my late teens. I bragged that—in my wallet—I had whatever my credit limit was and could do anything I wanted with it. By my early 20s, I was in credit-card debt. But as long as I could pay the monthly minimum, I didn’t think I had a problem. Of course, the interest rate was astronomically high—sadly,

MY SON AND I recently completed a cross-country road-trip with Poppy, our two-year-old goldendoodle. We got Poppy just before the pandemic and she’s our first dog, so we learned a lot on this adventure. If you’re a first-time dog owner planning a trip that involves hotels, here are three money-saving recommendations:

Call ahead. I booked rooms many months before our trip and ensured all hotels were “pet friendly.” As I was new to traveling with a dog,

I HAD PLANNED a trip to Vietnam for 2020—which coincided with the start of the pandemic and got scratched. I naively rescheduled the trip for this summer. Unfortunately, countries that lack vaccines have been forced to lock down and keep out even vaccinated tourists like me, so that trip also got nixed.
Ever the optimist, I rescheduled for Europe in July. This time, it was the delta variant and changing travel restrictions that ended my third international trip before it even began.

MY BROTHER AND sister-in-law are approaching retirement age and will likely relocate so they can be nearer their children. The last time they sold a house, it took more than a year to find a buyer. But they’ve spent time and money fixing up their current home, and it’d likely sell quickly, especially in today’s hot real estate market. Their thought: Why not sell now, and then rent for a few years until they retire and move?

DO YOU HAVE A LOT of stuff—all those things that fill your basement, attic and garage? Dealing with these accumulated possessions is hard. But there are folks who have figured it out: They sell everything, even their house and car.

I regularly read blogs written by people who “retired” in their 30s and 40s, all of them living in stressless financial bliss. These folks live frugally off their dividends, other passive income and, of course,

THREE YEARS AGO, I bought a home a few weeks before getting married. The purchase wasn’t so much an investment as a necessity: My new husband and I owned four dogs between us, and we knew we’d have a difficult time finding a rental that would allow that many pets.
I’d lived in the Portland, Oregon, metro area for nearly 30 years and had owned two other homes. I knew which neighborhoods to avoid,

I’VE BEEN READING UP on stock buybacks because I want to know how they’ll impact my investments. As best I can gather, there are two schools of thought: Those who love them—and those who hate them.
Those who love them point to the reduction in the number of shares, which means the value of those that remain should increase. Earnings per share (EPS) is net income divided by the number of shares, and EPS increases when shares decrease.

I RECENTLY HAD LUNCH with four friends I’ve known since the seventh grade. Because of the pandemic, this was the first time we’d all seen each other in more than a year. Every time we’re together, I’m reminded of how important my friends were in helping me start a new life when I left home for the first time. Our continuing support for each other is probably the reason we’ve stayed close for 57 years.

THE MOST FAMOUS market-timing (mis)statement may be that of Irving Fisher, who—as a result—ultimately suffered a fate similar to that of President Herbert Hoover. Both men are inextricably linked to the Great Depression, despite a lifetime of achievement and their positive work to improve the lives of humans everywhere. Fisher, whose theories on capital, interest rates and lifecycle investing are still relied on by economists today, will likely continue to be remembered for his statement nine days before the 1929 market crash that,