YOU CAN TELL THE story of my generation in myriad ways—including through our evolution as investors. I entered the world of stock investing with the purchase of shares in Twentieth Century (now American Century) Select Fund. It was the summer of 1987 and I was 26 years old. By autumn, the stock market had crashed and the value of my shares along with it. It was the first of three major market declines that my generation would face.

OTHERS ARE LUCKY. But we deserve every penny we have, right? The distinction between “just deserts” and “just plain lucky” strikes me as far messier than we might initially assume. Consider just seven of the ways that we can be financially lucky or unlucky:
1. Birthplace. If we were born in the U.S. or another part of the developed world, we’re pretty much starting the 100-meter sprint within a few strides of the finish line,

I HAVE MADE SOME glaring investment mistakes over the years. For instance, in my 20s, I was too conservative. I opened an individual retirement account and regularly invested the maximum annual contribution in a mortgage-backed bond fund. I still think about how much further ahead I would have been, if I had invested more of the money in stocks.
In my 30s, I received a $5,000 performance award from my employer. I wanted to invest the money,

IN THE 1990S, WHEN I started working fulltime, conventional wisdom suggested two possible routes to a comfortable retirement: Find a public sector job that offered a traditional pension plan or, alternatively, join the private sector and set aside 10% of my salary each year in my employer’s 401(k) plan. I was led to believe that if I followed either recommendation, I could sit back, let compound interest do its magic and achieve a financially secure retirement.

IMAGINE YOU HAD ONE shot at offering financial advice to a high school or college graduate. Your mission: Come up with 10 rules that’ll help your graduate succeed financially in the years ahead. What would you recommend? Here’s my list:
1. Question yourself. No doubt you’re entering the adult world with a slew of strong opinions—about what you want from life, what will make you happy, what you’re good at, what constitutes success and how to achieve it.

I LIKE LEARNING from successful people. If you want to be good at something, why not hear from somebody who’s actually done it?
Back when it was first published, I read The Millionaire Next Door and became fascinated with these folks. Over the next couple of decades, I applied the book’s teachings and eventually reached millionaire status myself.
Along the way, I started writing about personal finance, combining my interest in millionaires with my passion for learning from experts.

WHILE TALKING recently to an estate-planning client about investments costs, she showed me a letter from her financial advisor stating that he charges her 1% of assets a year. Maureen didn’t understand that she also pays each mutual fund’s annual expenses, a portion of which is also paid to her advisor.
Her fund expense ratios average 1.14%, which includes a 0.25% 12b‑1 fee that her advisor pockets. Result: Maureen’s total cost is 2.14% a year,

NO DOUBT YOU WOULD draw up a somewhat different list. But here’s what I consider life’s greatest pleasures:

Talking to loved ones over a glass of wine at the end of the day
Losing myself for a few hours in an interesting piece of work
Walking in nature
Spending time with my kids
French fries
Waking up after a great night’s sleep
Knowing I did the right thing
Wrapping up work on a Friday
Making love
A raucous dinner party
Feeling physically spent after a good workout
Finally sorting out a long-simmering problem
People watching
Taking a nap
Ending the day with a sense of accomplishment

To me,

MY SISTER JUST HAD a baby, our family’s first grandchild. That officially makes me a PANK: a Professional Aunt, No Kids. This often-overlooked demographic takes an active role in the lives of children they’re close to. They spend not only time, but also money: 76% of PANKs lavish more than $500 a year on each of their nieces and nephews, resulting in some $9 billion in annual purchases.
The opportunity to buy adorable items for baby Henrik is not lost on me.

MY FAVORITE DIVORCE quote, if one can have such a thing, comes from comedian Louis C.K.: “No good marriage has ever ended in divorce. If your friend got divorced, it means things were bad. And now, they’re better.”
For myself, these words certainly ring true. But “better” comes at a price: Being a divorced, middle-aged woman means looking at financial matters from a different perspective than my married friends. Since I no longer have a spouse,

YOU CAN BUILD a great portfolio with just three index funds: a U.S. total stock market fund, an international fund that buys both developed and emerging stock markets, and a high-quality U.S. bond fund. Thanks to the ongoing price war among major index-fund providers, all three funds are now on offer at extraordinarily low annual expenses.
Below are some of the funds available, with their expenses listed in parentheses. These figures come from fund company websites or a fund’s latest annual report:
Total U.S.

MY WIFE AND I JUST got back from two weeks of travel through Vietnam and Cambodia. For us, traveling strengthens our relationship and reminds us what we want in life. International travel is a luxury—there’s no doubt about it—but it’s also a meaningful experience that is easier to afford if you follow some basic principles before crossing oceans or international borders:
1. Save in advance. Before booking a trip, take the time to build up the funds needed to cover your expected costs.

AS I PREPARED TO retire at the relatively young age of 52, it was important to me not to become isolated, not to lose touch with the world beyond my home. My husband continues to work, leaving me on my own for much of the day. I consider myself a social person. All my jobs have involved working with employees and customers, from my first job as a delicatessen cashier through to running my own landscape maintenance company with 25 employees and hundreds of accounts.

MOST OF US WILL never be fabulously wealthy and we’ll never earn huge incomes. Self-help authors, get-rich-quick seminars and motivational speakers might try to convince us otherwise. But if we turn to these folks for assistance, they’re the ones who typically make heaps of money—at our expense.
Such hucksterism doesn’t just carry a short-term cost, however. It also causes us to think about our lives in the wrong way, leaving us with an unwarranted sense of failure and distracting us from the right path forward.

OUR STANDARD OF living has more than doubled over the past four decades. Has all that extra money bought happiness? Not a chance. In 1972, 30% of Americans described themselves as “very happy.” As of 2016, we’re still at 30%, according to the latest General Social Survey.
Over the 44 years, there was a slight uptick in those describing themselves as “pretty happy” and a tiny decline in those who said they were “not too happy,”