RINGLING BROS. and Barnum & Bailey Circus operated Clown College from 1969 to 1997. I attended in fall 1978 in Venice, Florida, home of Ringling’s winter quarters. Clown College was a one-semester, tuition-free, rigorous training program in clowning.
After completing General Electric’s two-year financial management program, I wanted to do something different. I applied to both the Wharton MBA program and Clown College. To my surprise, I was accepted by both. The decision was easy.

I RECENTLY HAD a chance to go back in time. An alumnus from my high school is spending his retirement documenting the school’s football program. He’s done an amazing job. He created a YouTube channel populated with an extensive library of game films dating back to the 1950s.
I recently stumbled across the channel, and scrolled to my senior year, which was 1974-75. I played tight end on arguably the worst team in my high school’s long and storied history.

AS A YOUNG ENGINEER at General Electric, I took a three-day class on career development. That class strongly influenced my thinking about my career—and my life. The class made use of a great little book by David P. Campbell called If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, You’ll Probably Wind Up Somewhere Else.
The premise of the book is that life is a journey, not a destination. We should set some basic goals that help guide our journey,

BY THE TIME WE GET to middle age, we all supposedly have a book inside us. (Maybe that explains the weight gain.) We have a wealth of experience we want to share. Perhaps it’s about money. Maybe we want to tell the family history. Perhaps there’s a great novel we’ve been writing in our head for years. We finally sit down and hammer it out and, of course, edit and rewrite, rinse and repeat,

I’VE FINALLY DECIDED when to claim my Social Security benefit. Along the way, I realized that calculating the ideal start date is easy—provided you can predict your retirement income needs (doable), your investment returns (hard), the inflation rate (hard), your future tax rate (hard), your date of death (hard) and what Congress will do in the future (impossible).
This particular financial journey began when I was preparing a recent blog post on the knotty issue of when to file.

JUST HOW ROUGH HAS 2022 been for retirees? Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund (symbol: VTINX) is down nearly 6% so far this year. Barring a strong comeback, this could be among the lousiest years for this conservatively positioned mutual fund since its October 2003 inception.
The pandemic led to a rash of retirements. Soaring stock prices, booming real estate values and flexible work arrangements helped change the employment landscape. Many Americans finally called it quits in recent months.

“MARGIN OF SAFETY” is a concept with deep roots in finance, going back at least as far as Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis, first published in 1934. The idea: Investors should never be too confident in any analysis and should leave the door open to the possibility that their analysis might be right but not precisely right.
Suppose you’re interested in buying Microsoft stock. And suppose that, after analyzing it,

ONLINE SPORTS BETTING is currently legal in 30 states but eventually will be legal everywhere—because the tax revenue is simply too attractive. All this was made possible by the Supreme Court, which in 2018 struck down federal legislation prohibiting online sports betting.
The sports leagues spent decades denouncing gambling, saying it threatened the integrity of the game. But my concern isn’t the “integrity” of the game. Rather, I worry about the individual bettor who ends up wagering too much.

A FRIEND ASKED ME if I was buying cryptocurrencies or nonfungible tokens. When I replied that I was not, my friend asked if I was afraid that I was missing out on the investment of a lifetime. That got me thinking about three great investments where I did indeed miss out.
First, in 1981, some young engineers were sitting around talking about what we should invest in. One fellow said he was going to buy a share of Berkshire Hathaway,

WHEN I STOPPED AT CVS the other day to pick up a new charging cable for my iPhone, I was reminded just how woefully out of fashion I am.
The young lady behind the counter handed me a box from the rack and watched as I took the cable out to make sure it was the right one. I guessed her to be in her early 20s. She was wearing a pair of those huge loopy earrings that you could jump hoops through out in the parking lot.

AT FIRST GLANCE, personal finance might appear to have nothing in common with the world of personal fitness. I’d argue otherwise.
Perhaps the clearest parallel is between the gains from diligent investing in low-cost index funds and the gains from proper diet and exercise. Both are hardly noticeable at first and, as a result, there’s a temptation to stray. But if we continue the process of saving and investing—or eating correctly and exercising—we can see tremendous gains over time.

IN THE FIRST WEEK of March, prices for regular unleaded gas sprinted past $5 per gallon in Ventura County, California. Last week, a station I pass on my way to work increased its price three times in 36 hours. Before work on Thursday, March 3, the price was $4.89 per gallon. By the end of that same day, the price was up to $5.09. When I left work on Friday, March 4, the price had been jacked up again,

HERE’S A SOBERING statistic: It’s estimated that 50% to 60% of 65-year-olds will require long-term care at some point in their lives. This is defined as assistance with activities of daily living—things like taking a bath, dressing oneself, and maintaining bowel and bladder continence. How’s that for something to look forward to?
Such care isn’t cheap. By some estimates, the average 65-year-old can expect to incur $138,000 in long-term-care (LTC) expenses, with half of that cost borne by families.

AFTER 78 YEARS, my plumbing has gone awry, and I’m not talking about the kitchen sink. My doctor said something about my prostate having its own zip code. I’m waiting to have surgery and, because of fear of COVID, I’ve been quarantined for the past month.

We were supposed to be in Florida. For several years, we had rented a house using VRBO. Luckily, I was able to cancel within a week of our reservation date with no hassle.

I LEARNED A LOT about finance and life from my uncle. He was an early investment advisor and published a book on wealth management. Even though he was not a registered investment advisor or a Certified Financial Planner, our family proudly extolled his ideas when I was growing up.
My family first introduced me to my uncle’s doctrines when I was a child of five or six. I had been given a small piggybank to store my life’s savings.