OVER THE PAST decade, my wife and I have hired others to handle most home improvement projects. It all came down to a lack of time: We had two young children and demanding jobs in the corporate world. But thanks to my recent switch to teaching, I have more free time, so I decided to tackle a few projects this summer. Here are three things I learned:

Painting is possible. For more than a year,

I’VE NEVER BEEN a fan of financial planning rules of thumb. To understand why, consider a common shortcut for choosing an asset allocation: The allocation to bonds in a portfolio, according to this rule of thumb, should equal an investor’s age.

For example, if an investor is 65 years old, his or her allocation to bonds should be 65%. That sounds reasonable—until you realize that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is 65. Should he have the same asset allocation as everyone else his age?

IN CASE YOU’RE wondering, that means, “Where is my blog?”

In retirement, it’s important to keep busy doing things you enjoy. For me, that’s blogging. It’s fun and I learn from readers’ comments.

On Aug. 17, I received an email addressed to “Karen” saying my site’s domain was expiring. Who’s Karen? It must be a scam, so I ignored it. The next day, my blog couldn’t be found.

I logged on to the domain seller and paid the fee.

I FELL IN LOVE with baseball in 1965. My parents were in the midst of divorcing. I found sanctuary listening to San Francisco Giants’ games on the radio. I put on my batting helmet and pretended I was Willie Mays swinging at every pitch or diving on my bed catching imaginary lines drives. Willie had a magical year and, although the hated Dodgers nosed us out in the end, a lifelong passion was born.

ON THE NEWS the other day, they were discussing technological change. “It happens gradually and then suddenly,” said the guest commentator.
The commentator was borrowing a memorable phrase from a book written almost a century earlier, Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
Although this fictional conversation refers to financial ruin, “gradually and then suddenly” is also how most financially successful people accumulate wealth.

AT THE START OF THE pandemic, we picked up a nice chunk of capital losses. I say “nice” because these were intentional. When the market dropped significantly, we realized losses and immediately reinvested the proceeds in other fallen stocks.
What about capital gains? In 2020, some of our mutual funds distributed capital gains, but we didn’t intentionally realize any other gains. Some of our realized losses offset the distributed fund gains. Another $3,000 was applied against ordinary income.

ON AUG. 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon made the weighty decision to end the convertibility of the U.S. dollar into gold. By doing so, he drove a stake through the heart of the gold standard, a monetary system which fixed the worth of a unit of money to a specific amount of physical gold. Before that day, foreign central banks were able to exchange $35 for one ounce of gold from the vaults of the U.S.

HEARD OF DIRECT indexing? It’s supposed to be the next big thing in investing. Let me tell you why that isn’t likely.
Direct indexing arose from a shortcoming in the way exchange-traded funds (ETFs) work. Most ETFs mimic a market benchmark such as the S&P 500 or the Russell 2000, and are bought and sold on an exchange like stocks. Their main selling point is that there are no active portfolio managers selecting the securities,

THERE’S A LOT of handwringing right now about U.S. stock market valuations. Prof. Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio, or CAPE, has rarely been more famous—or perhaps infamous. It’s currently perched near 39, meaning buyers of the S&P 500 are paying almost 39 times average inflation-adjusted corporate earnings for the past 10 years. That number might mean little to many without proper context. It was around five at the worst of the Great Depression,

BANK OF AMERICA’S monthly fund manager survey takes the pulse of portfolio managers around the world. The latest survey was released last week—and some of the results weren’t so rosy.
Despite a record-breaking quarter for corporate profits, which blew past analysts’ predictions, money managers have turned more bearish. Perhaps recent market volatility, especially among foreign stocks, has caused jitters. Also casting an ominous cloud is the Delta variant’s global spread. On top of that,

I GOT STUCK IN a conversation at a dinner party recently with a name dropper. It was painful. Wanting to impress me, I suppose, I learned that, “Yes, Janet Yellen and I are good friends. I’ll be traveling to D.C. soon and I’m looking forward to connecting.”
But it didn’t end there. I also heard about this person’s exotic travels and homes around the world. And the fabulous career that supported this lavish lifestyle.

AT THE END OF EACH month, my pension arrives in my bank account. I can count on the same amount every month. It’s comforting.

In the old days, nearly 50% of working Americans had pension benefits. But it was never more than that. For most workers, the three-legged stool really only had two legs, Social Security and personal savings. Today, 76% of state and local government workers have a pension plan, versus just 12% of private sector workers.

WHEN I TOLD MY WIFE a few years ago that I wanted to retire by age 50, she was supportive from the get-go. The memories of her dad passing away soon after his 52nd birthday played a role in her snap approval. But it took us a while to sort through the full financial implications.
I figured that our lifestyle, including our foreign travels and occasional splurges, would be the same even if my paychecks stopped prematurely.

TODAY’S STOCK MARKET reminds me of Charles Dickens’s famous line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….”
It’s the best of times, of course, because the market continues to hit new highs. From a low of 2,237 in March 2020, the S&P 500 has doubled. Over the 10 years through July, the S&P has delivered an average annual return of 15.4%, including dividends, far above the historical average of 10%.

WHEN DESIGNING a portfolio, a critical decision is how to allocate your money across stocks, bonds and other investments. Within stocks, you’ll need to make an additional choice: How to split money between U.S. and international. A quick survey of finance-related websites turns up recommendations of 25% to 40% for an investor’s foreign stock allocation.
While I agree that investors should have a meaningful percentage of their portfolio in overseas stocks, I don’t think investors should lose sleep over whether they’re at the high or low end of this range.