ANYONE WHO FOLLOWS my work knows I am a staunch advocate of index funds and believe that stock-picking is a difficult road. That said, there are three undeniable facts about picking stocks:

All of the great fortunes—Rockefeller, Carnegie, Gates, Buffett—were built by owning one stock: a very good one but, nonetheless, just one.
There are rare investors who are able to outperform the market averages by picking the right stocks. It’s hard, but it can be done.

A MEDIA-SAVVY IRS often announces that one of its top priorities is combatting criminals who steal tax-related information. The good news: Reports of tax identity theft have declined markedly in recent years. The bad news: Resourceful identity thieves remain active and constantly introduce new schemes.
One consistently remunerative ploy is to use stolen Social Security numbers and other information to file fraudulent tax returns that claim hefty refunds—claims that generally are submitted at the start of the filing season.

MOST AMERICANS aren’t saving nearly enough. Last year, we collectively salted away just 3.4% of our after-tax disposable personal income. That’s a far cry from the 9% or more that Americans socked away every year between 1950 and 1984. Since those heady days, our ability to delay gratification has all but disappeared, with the savings rate averaging just 4.8% since 1998.
But HumbleDollar isn’t read by the typical American. This is the place folks end up after they’ve tried dating stocks,

IS FINANCIAL PLANNING a product or a process? In other words, is a financial plan a document that you can print, bind and put on your shelf—or is it an ongoing activity? This is something of a religious debate within the finance community.
Supporters of the “it’s a product” view are usually dyed-in-the-wool financial planners. Not surprisingly, they believe that financial planning should result in a physical plan—an exhaustive, detailed document that’s full of analysis and projections.

FINANCIAL FREEDOM is the ability to spend our days doing what we love—and, with any luck, it will come with age. As we amass more wealth, we should become less motivated by fears of layoffs and hopes of bigger paychecks. Instead, our motivation should come from within, because we are increasingly free to focus on the things we’re passionate about.
This, I believe, is one of the three pillars of a happy financial life: We have fewer money worries,

AS A FORMER journalism major, I’m a sucker for a good headline. I understand how difficult it is to grab a reader’s attention in ten words or less. So, when I came across a headline proclaiming that a group of Stanford researchers had determined the “best” retirement strategy, I admit I was intrigued. I clicked on a link to the study—and found not only a useful retirement planning system, but also a portal into the Stanford Center on Longevity.

OKINAWA IS A JAPANESE island that is southeast of mainland Japan and about two hours and 40 minutes from Tokyo by plane. It is famous for fierce Second World War battles and currently houses about 26,000 U.S. military personnel. From 2006 to 2008, I was one of these military personnel, working as an emergency physician in the naval hospital.
Okinawa, my new dream come true. Going to Okinawa was not my first choice.

PERHAPS YOU’VE HEARD the expression, “There’s no free lunch.” The idea is, you usually don’t receive something for nothing. Whether it’s with money or with time and labor, you almost always “pay” one way or another.
It’s an interesting concept—but whoever coined the phrase clearly never looked at the U.S. tax code, which is full of free lunches. Today, we’ll discuss one example, which may be of interest to the charitably inclined.
One of the most talked about changes in the new tax law is a provision that alters how deductions are treated.

THERE ARE MANY financial debates that shouldn’t be debates at all. Folks strike strident poses, but often their positions don’t reflect a careful weighing of the arguments. Rather, they either have a vested interest or their ego is invested. Think of commission-hungry insurance agents who pound the table for cash-value life insurance, or retirees who took Social Security early and then insist that early is always best.
In most of these cases, if we marshal the facts and apply some reasoning,

SUCCESSFUL INVESTING is simple, but it’s rarely easy. Yet millions of investors, both professional and amateur, assume they know what they’re doing. “We live in this mystical state where everybody thinks they can practice finance,” notes William Bernstein, retired neurologist and author of a fistful of acclaimed finance books. “But you shouldn’t practice without understanding the science of finance.”
What science? Bernstein, whom I’ve known for more than two decades, says it has four elements: investment theory,

UNIVERSITY OF California finance professors Brad Barber and Terrance Odean published a research paper on investor behavior in early 2000. The results weren’t pretty. By their reckoning, individual investors lagged the overall market by an average of almost four percentage points a year. The culprit: the costs involved in trading individual stocks.
It isn’t just individuals who struggle with stock-picking. Professional money managers, on average, also trail behind the overall market. Over the past five years,

ON THE AFTERNOON of Sunday, Sept. 28, 1941, it was cool and damp in Philadelphia. Inside Shibe Park, where the hometown Athletics were suiting up to face the Red Sox, all eyes were on Boston’s 23-year-old slugger, Ted Williams. It was the last day of the regular season, and Williams’s average stood just a hair short of .400, at .39955.
According to baseball’s official rules, this would have rounded up to an even .400 in the record books,

I HAVE ADVISED MANY clients on divorce and the related tax issues. The vast majority have been women, and they generally fall into three categories.
First, there are those who strive to obtain divorces that will finally end their agony. They ask for advice on things like property transfers, deductibility of legal fees and alimony payments.
Second, there are those who are already divorced. They need guidance on how to compel their former husbands to cough up overdue payments of alimony or child support.

LIFE MAY HAVE BEEN nasty, brutish and short at one time, but it sure isn’t today. Thinking ahead to retirement? Forget the famous quote by 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes—and ponder the famous wager suggested by 17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal.
As Pascal saw it, it’s rational to believe in God. If you believe and it turns out God doesn’t exist, the price is modest: an hour lost from every Sunday morning and a little less immorality.

IN MY NERDY PERSONAL finance world, there are perhaps two dozen folks I pay close attention to—and one of them is Mike Piper, the blogger behind ObliviousInvestor.com. He’s also written nine books in his “made simple” series, which offer great primers on financial subjects like taxes, Social Security and retirement, all in 100 pages or less.
An accountant by training, Piper brings his analytical mind and detailed knowledge of government rules to the topics he tackles.