Jonathan Clements, through his decades of work and his recent “Getting Going on Savings Initiative,” has inspired countless people—including me—to think about how to empower the next generation. The initiative’s core mission is to give young adults a tangible head start by funding their Roth IRAs, a concept that perfectly aligns with the most important lesson I’ve ever learned about money: time is a young adult’s greatest asset.
For many years I’ve been that person who talks to younger people about saving for retirement and investing for their future.

I’m a first time poster and long time reader (including WSJ Getting Going) and saw an article today with behavioral finance observations.  It may be of interest to some.
The names of equity-income funds imply that they are aimed at investors who desire to withdraw their higher dividends as cash flow for spending. On the other hand, equity funds are aimed at investors who seek to reinvest their lower dividends for capital appreciation. However, more than 74% of equity-income investors reinvest their dividends—a reinvestment rate similar to that of investors in equity funds.

Suzie and I have a strange little anomaly in our mainly index tracker portfolios. This came to mind when I got a reminder to vote in the AGM of one of them. Our little anomaly is owning real shares in two separate businesses. We can’t seem to let go of them although I always think of breaking up. One is in the UK banking sector and the other is an asset management business. The banking shares have posted an impressive 53% capital gain on a rolling year basis with a 2.3% dividend and the investment company has had a more average 6% gain but an excellent near 8% dividend yield.

Two  roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference
–Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken, 1915
I have volunteered to teach a module on stock fund investing for students taking a new elective course at a small private high school in Sacramento. Here is a fleshed out outline of what I’m thinking about presenting. I want to educate “my kids” about the factors that ushered in the advent of the index fund and ETF and how to distinguish between the virtues and vices of their investment options.

We’ve all been told that index funds are the smart investor’s secret weapon. Low fees. Broad diversification. Market-matching returns. What’s not to love? But here’s the thing: not every fund labeled as an index fund behaves like one.
In fact, sometimes an “index fund” is not truly an index fund at all. Let’s unpack what that means—and why it matters for your money.
The Original Promise of Index Funds
When Jack Bogle launched the first index fund for ordinary investors in 1976,

Has anyone used iShares Target Date iBond ETFs to build their bond ladder? If so, I’d love to know your experience as I start to consider my own ladder.
Here is how iShares describes this product: “iBonds exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”) are an innovative suite of bond funds that hold a diversified portfolio of bonds with similar maturity dates. Each ETF provides regular interest payments and distributes a final payout in its stated maturity year, similar to traditional bond laddering strategies.

An article yesterday by David Lancaster detailing his bond fund investments going pear-shaped during the 2022/23 bond market crash got me thinking about what I have actually learned from this costly experience that took many of us by surprise.
Like David, I perceived bond funds as a “safe” or “stable” investment, assuming they behaved like individual bonds held to maturity. The recent downturn, however, exposed my lack of understanding. When rates rose rapidly, the market value of the bonds within the funds dropped.

As I shared a few weeks ago, I’m in the process of moving the money from my workplace retirement accounts at Fidelity to my rollover IRA at Schwab.
This, like other aspects of my retirement transition, has had its bumps in the road. Fidelity will only mail a check to your home, no electronic or direct transfers, so I called them a couple of days before we left San Diego last week to begin the process.

In January 2020, I invested 150K I had inherited from my parents from the sale of their house. I knew it would be years before I would tap this money, so I invested in Vanguard’s intermediate bond fund in my brokerage account. I had learned that bonds were a safer investment than stocks and I could earn a somewhat higher return than in CDs that were paying next to nothing in interest. By September of ‘21 I was looking like a genius as I had earned 10K.

Trying to guide some “30 somethings” on appropriate holdings for a taxable account. I’m a little out of my element as almost all my personal investment experience has been in some type of qualified account where taxes don’t matter. Christine Benz recently did a piece that suggested 3 exhange-traded funds – Vanguard Total US Stock (VTI), the Total International (VXUS) and a Tax Free Municipal Bond (VTEB) in varying asset allocations depending on risk.  I’m just wondering if this is “too simple”

I have a confession to make: Over the past year, I’ve been moving money out of U.S. Treasuries and into international stocks. For someone who’s long preferred safety over risk, this marks a major shift.
The catalyst, somewhat surprisingly, was a 2024 memo: Howard Marks’ “Sea Change.” Marks—a legend in the investment world—made the case that we’re living through only the third true inflection point in markets since the 1970s. He highlighted structural shifts: the end of a four-decade era of declining interest rates,

In recent years, I’ve regularly heard from readers who have faced service snafus at Vanguard Group. Many of these folks have stuck with Vanguard’s exchange-traded funds, but moved their accounts to Charles Schwab or Fidelity Investments, with an eye to getting better service.
Over the past 12 months, however,  I’ve heard far fewer complaints from readers. Does that mean service has improved—or does that just reflect the fact that the disgruntled have moved on and those who remain are willing to live with occasional poor service?

There are an ever increasing number of ETFs available to investors.  There is also the “tokenization” of stocks, but that is for another post.
Jason Zweig addresses the proliferation of ETFs over at the Wall Street Journal:
“deworsification: cluttering a portfolio with too many investments.
I think many investors should worry instead about deversification…..That’s the opposite of diversification. Rather than spreading your bets, you concentrate them—and that can be dangerous.”
Over at another forum there has been a running debate about how many stocks to own to achieve diversification.

We welcomed guests to stay over at our holiday home yesterday. It was a lovely sunny day in the low 80’s and we spent our time at the beach. They’re a young couple we’re very close to who are getting married next week. We are looking forward to attending their wedding. They are a very sensible duo in their late twenties with good jobs, they also managed to get on the property ladder through their own hard work.

OVER THE JULY FOURTH weekend, a friend asked me what I thought about the new financial instrument known as a “stock token.” Developed by the online broker Robinhood, a stock token is designed for investors to buy stakes in private companies such as OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT. It’s a novel concept because private company investments are typically inaccessible to individual investors.
Despite the appeal, I urged caution. Why? These tokens may not perform as expected because they aren’t the same as actual equity in a company.