WE CAN MEASURE OUR financial progress by the size of our net worth. But that’s hardly the only gauge. Equally important, I’d argue, is the evolution in how we think about money—and how we use it to improve our lives.
What does this journey look like? I picture it as having five stages:
1. Head above water. This is when you emerge from the primordial financial swamp and begin to walk upright.

AFTER THE MARKET turbulence of recent months, the idea of a 100% stock portfolio would strike many folks as crazy. Yet, when I was in the workforce, that’s pretty much what I owned.
I never felt my all-stock portfolio was particularly risky. My wife and I had solid paychecks to rely on. We always maxed out our retirement plans, while also adding to other accounts, and then lived on whatever remained.
While the stock market’s volatility and the occasional downturns may have been disconcerting,

I’VE DISCOVERED THE solution for young people looking to save for retirement.
The typical engagement ring costs more than $6,300. Why so much? I recently learned there’s a rule that you should spend two months’ salary on an engagement ring. That means a guy earning $48,000 a year is expected to spend $8,000. Where did such a rule come from? Turns out it was started by the De Beers company. Need I say more?

INVESTORS OFTEN THINK of their portfolio as conservative or aggressive. More conservative investors put a larger percentage of their portfolio in bonds, while aggressive investors favor stocks. But there’s a different meaning of the word “conservative”—what I think of as behavioral conservatism.
Conservatism means you lean toward the safe side. You favor things that are familiar, preferring them to the new and uncommon. The dictionary definition of conservatism is this: commitment to traditional values and ideas,

I’VE BEEN RETIRED for a decade. During that time, I have often wondered what it would be like to live somewhere else. Europe, with its rich history, seems like an exciting option. If not Europe, why not move to another part of the country, like Old Town Alexandria in Virginia? Rachel has a son and sister living in the area. We’d be close to Washington, D.C., and other interesting new places.
As I ponder that question,

HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED a round of golf? If so, how many holes-in-one do you have? I’ve been playing since age four and have yet to make one. Even the best players in the world know how difficult it is to make a tiny ball go into a 4¼-inch hole that’s 200 yards away.
I got close once. It was a windier than normal day in Iowa, when I hit my first shot on a par three.

IMAGINE YOU’RE TRYING to guess the winner of a basketball or ice hockey game. Which of these methods do you think would work best?

Flip a coin.
Make an educated guess.
Gather data and conduct an informed analysis.

In a classic study, researchers Paul Slovic and Bernard Corrigan attempted to answer this question. Instead of basketball or ice hockey, they looked at horse racing, but the results are equally applicable.
In their study, Slovic and Corrigan asked expert handicappers to make predictions using varying amounts of data about the horses in a race.

WE NEED FOLKS TO STAY in the workforce longer—for their sake and the sake of the economy. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
I’ve written in the past about the demographic challenges facing the U.S. and other developed nations. The 10-second recap: Many of the economic issues we fret about—soaring federal government debt, lower long-run GDP growth, a shrinking Social Security Trust Fund—can all be traced to the same root cause. We’re rapidly approaching the point where we don’t have enough workers producing the goods and services that society needs.

FOR MORE THAN 20 years, I’ve been the biology department manager at a small, liberal arts college located in the Pacific Northwest. My job is unique because I interact, on a daily basis, not only with students, staff and faculty at the college, but also with various building maintenance personnel, sales reps and instrument-repair folks who are critical to the successful operation of the department.
For me, it’s an interesting study in contrast.

MY MOTHER IS 95 years old and still has her driver’s license. She drives her car on rare occasions. You might ask, “Why are you letting your mother drive at this age?” Answer: She passed her written driving test at age 93 and is actually a safe driver. She also doesn’t text or talk on her cell phone while driving, unlike so many other people.
My mother is an independent woman—and enigmatic, too. She’s self-assured about driving and yet fearful of seasoning the family dinner,

THE YIELD CURVE HAS lately received a lot of press. Specifically, the inversion of the yield curve has many people worried that a recession is around the corner. I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about the yield curve. I need to get a life, right?
You may be asking yourself, “Why should I even care about the yield curve, whatever that is?” Here’s why: The yield curve has inverted prior to every U.S.

AFTER NEARLY 50 YEARS in the employee benefits profession, there are a few conversations that stand out—and they all relate to money. What people do, or don’t do, when it comes to money never ceases to amaze me. All the stories below are true.
I received a call from a recently deceased employee’s wife, followed by a call from the same employee’s other wife, both named Mary. One was in New Jersey and the other in South Carolina,

SELF-EMPLOYED individuals, freelancers and commissioned workers all struggle with a key area of their finances: managing a variable income. When you don’t know how much you’ll make this month or this year, it’s tough to start saving. I know this all too well as a self-employed financial planner.
The uncertainty can leave you stuck, unsure which steps to take next. How can you risk putting money into long-term investments if you might need it to pay the bills a few months from now?

IN THE WORLD of personal finance, researchers have long understood that behavioral biases negatively impact investors. Examples include recency bias, hindsight bias, confirmation bias and many others. These are all well documented. Recently, a group of researchers uncovered yet another investor bias: This one is called “alphabeticity bias.”
Alphabeticity, as you might guess, refers to the bias that can occur when choices are presented in alphabetical order. This bias, the researchers note, is found in a number of domains: In elections,

FOLKS USED TO SAY, “You can’t go wrong with real estate.” They sure don’t say that anymore. It’s been a rollercoaster dozen years for home prices—and some experts think another rough patch is in the offing.
Since mid-2006, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index first tumbled 27.4% and then bounced back 53.6%, for a cumulative 12-plus year gain of 11.5%, equal to 0.9% a year. Could we be facing another dip?