It’s real, it’s global, it can’t be stopped and it can be good or bad.
It is inflation. 
I had someone tell me recently that U.S. annual inflation has been 10% for the last several years.  That is not true of course although it may feel like it to some people. 
My guaranteed income is a pension and Social Security. There is no COLA on my pension. Since I retired in 2010, the buying power on the great majority of my income has eroded by 43%. 

Financial articles warn about sequence of return risk early in retirement. A retiree who experiences a poor stock market early in retirement has a lower portfolio to withdraw from going forward potentially putting their retirement finances in jeopardy. Someone who experiences a down market later in retirement is at less risk of poor returns affecting their financial security as they have less years that they have to fund expenses.
My question is does anyone really know when they are past this danger zone?

When I get an article to edit that includes a quote from a famous person, I almost always put the quote into a search engine to make sure the person in question really said it. Often, it was somebody completely different—or, alternatively, it’s not clear who said it.
Consider five examples:

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” This one is frequently attributed to the economist John Maynard Keynes. But it was probably said by the financial analyst A.

You don’t need Eli Lilly’s Ozempic to slim down. If you want to lose some of that tech bloating in your S&P 500 or total market index fund, I’ve got just the medicine to reduce the overweight.
Several sponsors offer ETFs that cut your exposure to possibly overvalued large technology stocks by weighting each company in the sector equally rather than by size. This strategy greatly reduces the impact of the largest companies in the fund,

COULD SOMETHING like the Great Depression happen again? During that unpleasant episode, the stock market dropped 90%, unemployment rose to 25% and gross domestic product fell 30%. In making a financial plan, is this a scenario we should worry about?
While no one can predict the future, it’s worth taking a closer look at one key variable: the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed has a reputation for helping smooth out economic cycles. But those who worry about Depression-like scenarios point out how powerless the Fed was to prevent the collapse that occurred in the 1920s and 30s.

MARKET OBSERVERS have been predicting a recession for the past two years. Why? They’ve pointed to what’s known as an inverted yield curve, when short-term interest rates are higher than long-term rates. Historically, this has been a bad omen for the economy. The yield curve has been inverted since 2022—and yet, despite that, the economy has remained strong and stock markets have continued to hit new highs.
That all changed on Aug. 2, when a little-known indicator known as the Sahm rule began flashing red.

In 2024, it seemed like the stock market went in just one direction—up. That notion has been shattered in the past few weeks. The Nasdaq is well into correction territory. The Japanese stock market tumbled 12.4% on Monday alone. Legend has it that the great banker, John Pierpont Morgan, was once asked what was going to happen in the stock market. His answer: “It will fluctuate.”
Stock market volatility is nothing new. But investors have hardly mastered their nerves and emotions in the face of it.

We’re once again suffering a bout of stock market indigestion–hardly surprising after a robust two-year market rally. We’ve enjoyed healthy returns since October 2022. Now it’s time for a taste of risk. Indeed, today, the Nikkei Stock Average fell 12.4%, its worst one-day performance since 1987.
No doubt market pundits will start focusing intently on what the Federal Reserve will do in September, and whether indications of economic weakness will result in a larger-than-anticipated interest rate cut.

A lot of HD readers are DIY investors who value ease and simplicity. That means we are managing our own online accounts with no advisor middleman, for better or worse.
Reading this recent forum post about protecting your retirement accounts from scammers, with all its great comments, prompts me to share this experience.
Before dinnertime the other evening I logged onto my Vanguard account and at the top of the familiar red VG dashboard I was greeted in display-size type,

AMONG THE FINANCIAL topics grabbing investors’ attention, inflation for many years was near the bottom of the list. In fact, between 2010 and 2019, inflation averaged just 1.8% a year, and the Federal Reserve was looking to lift that rate. Throughout 2019, the Fed lowered its benchmark interest rate multiple times, citing inflation that was running below its preferred level of 2%.

But just a few years later, in the midst of the pandemic, all that changed.

 
This month’s AARP bulletin has an article titled “Make your Retirement savings last”.
 
 
This article points out that retirement investing is for the longer term and one should not sweat short term market movements. It also points out that there is one short term danger, however, that we should all be aware of.
 
 
Let us assume when you retire, the stock market is doing very well. You take a lump sum pension payment or consolidate accounts into an IRA and fully invest your nest egg.

In 1975 the Social Security COLA was 8%, in 1979 9.9%, 1980 14.3% and 1981 11.2% reflecting soaring inflation. I project 2025 will be 2.3% or less if inflation keeps falling. 
During the oil embargo in 1974 gasoline jumped 35% a gallon in one year to $0.53 a gallon equivalent $3.36 in 2024 – if you could get gas then. As of July 8 the average US price a gallon was $3.608 with significant variations by state and individual station –

FROM THE COLOSSEUM in Rome to the palace at Versailles, look around Europe and you’ll find artifacts of once-great empires. What happened to them?
Each faced its own challenges, but there was also a common theme: They had poor financial management and became overburdened by debt. That’s why a recent analysis in The Wall Street Journal—titled “Will Debt Sink the American Empire?”—is worth our attention.
In 2024, the federal government’s budget deficit will come in at $1.9 trillion.

Question for the forum, does anyone research the banks/CUs they use to assess bank health/safety?  I have leveraged Veribanc for years to check up on my banks and have both left banks as the ratings for that bank fell into disfavorable as well as not choose a bank after reviewing their report card and finding it less than stellar.  Just wondering what others on here might be doing (looking for ideas that will improve my processes here). 

How Long, a big rock hit in the seventies, opens with, “How long has this been going on?” A guy who suspects his lady is cheating on him declares “I’m not dumb.” I can’t say the same for  myself, because I’ve been having a five-year affair with the wrong size stock and I’m not so sure I can take it anymore.
While the whole world has been piling into large cap stock funds,