WANT TO IMPROVE your investment results? The deadly sins below are not only among the most serious financial transgressions, but also they’re among the most common. I firmly believe that, if you eradicate these 12 sins from your financial life, you’ll have a better-performing portfolio.
1. Pride: Thinking you can beat the market by picking individual stocks, selecting actively managed funds or timing the market.
Antidote: Humility. By humbly accepting “average” returns through low-cost index funds,

IT’S THAT TIME of the year—when we should all reevaluate how much we’re saving in our employer’s 401(k). The 2020 contribution limit is $19,500, up $500 from 2019’s level. For those age 50 and older, the catchup contribution was also raised by $500, to $6,500, so these folks can invest as much as $26,000 in 2020.
In addition, it’s a good time to check we’re getting the most out of our 401(k). What are the rules on the employer match?

I TURNED 32 LAST month. My mother, clearing through clutter as she and my father look to downsize ahead of retirement, found an old savings bond of mine issued shortly after I was born. It’s a series EE bond that cost a modest $25 in December 1987. The finance professor in me reacted with “imagine if that were invested in the S&P 500.”
The $25 savings bond had grown to $104, a 4.1% nominal annual return and 1.9% after figuring in inflation.

JUST BEFORE Thanksgiving, something odd happened on Wall Street. Three of the major brokerage firms issued remarkably similar reports declaring the death of the “60/40” approach to investing. What exactly does this mean—and should you be concerned?
By way of background, 60/40 refers to a traditional and very common strategy for building portfolios: 60% stocks and 40% bonds. Historically, most university endowments, as well as many individuals, have chosen this mix of investments because it offers a reasonable balance,

BEEN A DILIGENT saver during your working years? Upon retirement, you’ll likely find it tough to transform yourself into a happy spender. This is not a problem you’ll read much about—because it isn’t exactly a widespread affliction.
The fact is, most folks struggle their entire life to control their spending, only to reach retirement with too little saved. At that point, they have no choice but to tighten their belt. Indeed, the statistics are alarming.

LIKE OTHER WRITERS for this site, I blog often about what’s happening in my own life—my financial mistakes, early retirement, health scares I’ve had, my mother’s death and more. Here are four updates:
Spending. When it comes to parting with money, I have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. I sit home at night wearing three layers of clothing, two pairs of socks and a hat because I’m too cheap to turn on the furnace—and yet I don’t hesitate to spend hundreds of dollars to be pampered at a five-star hotel.

I RECENTLY READ about a trendy way to lose weight: intermittent fasting. Supposedly there are also health benefits. That got me thinking.
I’ve been roundly criticized for bashing the financial independence/retire early movement, otherwise known as FIRE, and for arguing that average Americans spend unnecessarily on all kinds of stuff, thus hampering their long-term financial security. My point of view hasn’t changed. But I’ve found room for compromise: Think of it as periodic financial fasting.

MONEY HAS ALWAYS caused me stress. As a child, I worried my parents didn’t have enough, even though I had no idea what sum would have been considered enough for our family of six. In college, I worried about accumulating debt. I ended up living so frugally that I managed to save nearly all of the Pell grant that the government awarded me. I not only graduated debt-free, but also had a sizable emergency fund in place as I moved into adulthood.

AS A KID, MY MOST revered manmade invention was not a train or a record player, but rather the Swiss Army pocketknife. When I saw it for the first time at a friend’s home, I was fascinated that it could cut paper, open bottles, file nails and more. I marveled at the engineering beauty and wished I had one of my own.
Years later, I was in Switzerland for a short business trip and had some free time for souvenir shopping.

I’M NOT THE TYPE of person who makes New Year’s resolutions. This year, however, I foresee some major changes in my life—and that’ll require some financial adjustments.
Now that my elderly parents have passed away, Rachel and I can live like a normal couple in our own home. As I mentioned in an earlier article, we will be moving into my parents’ house.
During the last several years taking care of my mother, I was constantly traveling from one house to another and living out of a suitcase.

IT’S THAT TIME OF year again—when magazine editors put on their Nostradamus hats to offer up get-rich-quick schemes for the new year. “What China’s Best Investor is Buying Now,” reads the cover of Fortune, along with “40 Stocks for the New Decade.” The magazine even praises perennially unpopular Goldman Sachs. “Not your father’s vampire squid,” Fortune says.
These kinds of headlines seem comical, but it turns out they may be good for more than just entertainment.

WE’RE THREE-YEARS-old, and we’ve grown to become something I never intended. When I launched HumbleDollar on Dec. 31, 2016, my plan was to take my money guide—which had previously appeared as an annual paperback—and make it freely available on the web. I also had plans to write an article every week or so and have others occasionally blog for the site.
Since then, HumbleDollar has morphed into a fulltime job that doesn’t pay me a salary and a site that—I like to think—occupies a small but unique place in the internet’s ongoing financial conversation:

Readers visited 937,000 of the site’s pages in 2017,

I CAN TELL I’M a little squishy on my investment plan, because the thought of making a public New Year’s resolution fills me with all the dread of a reluctant groom.
As I linger outside my metaphorical church, I imagine my bride wants to shackle me to allocation targets and rebalancing rules that I announce to the whole congregation. My aversion to such commitments competes with my realization that—without them—I’ll be back to my free-wandering self.

“RESOLUTE” IS THE wrong adjective to describe most of us at the start of a new year. We know what we should be doing for our future self. But within weeks, days and sometimes hours, we forget about the person we’ll become.
What can we do to improve our odds of success in 2020? As Stephen Covey taught us years ago in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,

MY WIFE AND I SPENT Thanksgiving on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. For 25 straight years, we’ve gathered there with my wife’s extended family to spend the week of Thanksgiving at the beach.
It started with about 15 of us in 1994, all in a seven-bedroom house. Over the years, the family—and the size of the house—have grown significantly. This year, we had 39 in attendance, representing four generations. For the past five years,