MORGAN HOUSEL, author of The Psychology of Money, once made this observation: “Before the 1700s, the richest members of society had among the shortest lives—meaningfully below that of the overall population.”
It was counterintuitive, but Housel cited a hypothesis, developed by historian T.H. Hollingsworth, to make sense of it: “The best explanation is that the rich were the only ones who could afford all the quack medicines and sham doctors who peddled hope but increased your odds of being poisoned.”
Housel then added this thought: “I would bet good money the same happens today with investing advice.” Wealthy folks,

THIS HAS BEEN A YEAR of living large in the Kerr household.
I just finished adding up the numbers for 2024, and between my son’s wedding in Colorado in June, my own wedding in October, our honeymoon afterward, a vacation to Key West, a new car for my new wife, and various long-overdue repairs to Rachael’s townhouse, I spent upwards of $60,000 on items I hadn’t budgeted for in 2024.
The tally doesn’t include the $9,000 I spent on a hot tub for the mountain house.

IT’S THAT TIME OF year when people think about giving. For my wife, this is what she lives for. She loves buying presents. She’s a very giving person and puts a great deal of thought into the gifts she buys.
She’ll buy gifts all year round, even when the event—such as Christmas—is months away. Problem is, she frequently forgets where she’s stored the presents she’s bought. They’ll eventually be found, but in many cases long past the date when she wanted to give them.

“YOU WILL ROTH!”
“But Dad, I’m only 10.”
“Evan, it is never too early to start saving. Besides, this gives you 70-plus years of compounding.”
“Yes, Dad, but didn’t you tell me last week that I need a job and earned income to contribute to a Roth?”
“We can arrange to get you a paycheck. I’ll get a friend or neighbor to hire you. What would you like to do?”
“I like to play soccer.”
“Evan,

I FEEL GRATITUDE for the life I’ve had. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few regrets: Friendships that turned sour or simply faded away. People who died before I got to see them one last time. Professional endeavors where I felt I could have done better. Purchases I made that didn’t live up to my expectations.
But my list of regrets has three glaring omissions.
First, it doesn’t include any of the investments I’ve made.

BENJAMIN GRAHAM, the father of investment analysis, made this observation: “The investor’s chief problem—even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself.”
Why? One reason is our intuition can sometimes lead us astray. Things that seem like they make sense, and seem like they ought to be true, often turn out not to be supported by the data.
Perhaps the best-known example is the divergence between growth and value stocks. Intuition suggests that growth stocks—companies like Apple and Amazon—would deliver better performance than their more pedestrian peers on the value side of the market.

IT’S AN ARGUMENT I’ll never win. But perhaps I can sow a few seeds of doubt.
The anti-foreign-stock drumbeat has grown louder with each additional year that international markets underperform U.S. shares. Indeed, even though foreign stocks beat U.S. shares in the 1970s, 1980s and 2000s, there are folks today who argue there’s no reason to own foreign shares.
Really? Before you throw in the towel, ask yourself six questions:
1. If U.S.

FOUR 20-SOMETHINGS named Ben, Duncan, Jonnie and Dave came up with a great idea for a reality show in 2010. It involved a purple bus named Penelope, a cross-country road trip and a list of 100 things to do before you die. For every item they crossed off their list, they’d help a stranger achieve something on his or her own list. 
Some of their to-dos were ambitious, with a low probability of success: host Saturday Night Live,

IN JANUARY, I surrendered to passionate irrationality, buying a park unit in Arizona that has become my second home.
Now I understand why, at least in the movie cliché, a man might buy house slippers for his long-suffering wife’s birthday, while giving flashy, expensive baubles to his girlfriend for no reason at all.
My single-wide “girlfriend” is tiny and fragile, the bloom off her youth. Things that improve her are easily obtained. A phone call to a friendly fellow at a store,

MY LIFE’S GOAL WAS to make money. I make no apologies for this. I’m not particularly gifted in this pursuit, but I did persevere.
I take satisfaction that I stuck to my goal despite all obstacles. There were many trips, falls, mistakes and failures along the way. I had to work hard and seek a new job each time my old employment ended. I set out to do something—and I did it.
That all changed when I retired.

THE JUNE 16, 2021, edition of The Washington Post carried this headline: “Cristiano Ronaldo snubbed Coca-Cola. The company’s market value fell $4 billion.”
The incident in question had occurred a few days earlier, at a press conference in Budapest, where the soccer star was set to play in a high-profile championship game. Coca-Cola was a sponsor of the tournament, so when Ronaldo sat down at the microphone, he found two bottles of Coke positioned in front of him.

THE TOUGH PART COMES last.
Saving for retirement is pretty straightforward: You sock away as much as you can, favor stock funds, diversify broadly, keep investment costs low and make the most of tax-advantaged retirement accounts. By contrast, paying for retirement can involve mind-boggling complexity—and a big reason is the tax code.
The good news: Once you quit the workforce, you have a fair amount of control over your annual tax bill, especially if you aren’t yet taking required minimum distributions (RMDs) from your traditional retirement accounts,

THE WAVES AND WEATHER are always changing on the coast of Maine. Last summer, I paddled my canoe to a nearby island in the sun, and two hours later had to feel my way back through a fog that hid the mainland.
There are longer-term forces at play here, too. The black mussel beds I steered around as a child are all gone now. So is the sea grass that made a good hiding place for crabs.

NOW THAT I’M RETIRED and have all the time in the world, I often use that time to worry about money. That brings me to a recent offer from Wells Fargo to get a $525 bonus for depositing $25,000 in a savings account for 90 days.
My immediate concern was whether the $525 would more than compensate for the paltry interest rate that Wells Fargo pays. A quick calculation determined that investing $25,000 in a Wells Fargo savings account and getting the $525 bonus—rather than the 4.25% I could then earn with Capital One 360 Performance Savings—would still leave me almost $260 ahead.

IN THE EARLY 1980s, I was a bachelor in Brooklyn. Unskilled at cooking, I didn’t eat at home unless my food came out of a cereal box or snack bag. For regular meals, I depended on a small neighborhood diner.
It was open for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. On weekends, it was my main source of food. Like so many diners I’ve visited since, it offered complete meals—soup, main course and dessert—for one price.