LIKE MOST READERS of this site, I’m committed to index fund investing. Still, even though I know I’d have little chance of beating the market as a stock-picker, I’m periodically tempted to buy individual stocks. When a former mentor who’s a brilliant strategist joined Moderna in May 2020, I strongly considered buying shares. Given where the economy was at the time, I passed on buying the company’s shares (symbol: MRNA) and stuck to my standard S&P 500-index fund investing.

FINANCE NERD THAT I am, I gleefully dug into the 2021 Capital Markets Fact Book that was just published by SIFMA. I was particularly humbled by a chart showing the breakdown of the global stock and bond markets. Why humbled? The data show just how great we U.S. investors have had it in the past decade.
The Fact Book first displays the $58 trillion global stock market’s composition in 2010.

AS AN INVESTOR, I’d describe myself as a small-cap-value-aholic with a worldly outlook. Right now, I’m betting that one of world’s least loved overseas markets will finally return to favor after decades of disappointment. You can laugh out loud now.
Last year, my investment in U.S. small-cap value stocks was a great play from the March 2020 market bottom through about mid-May of this year. I didn’t catch the market bottom perfectly, but—luckily—I was close.

I’VE LONG STRUGGLED with the fact that, despite living in one of the world’s richest nations and having the best medical care in the world, Americans have a shorter average life expectancy than the citizens of 30 other developed nations.
I believe it all comes down to the high level of stress that Americans carry, much of it caused by economic hardship. Far too many Americans, both young and old, live paycheck to paycheck.

THIS PAST FATHER’S Day, I was listening to a financial talk show. The host asked listeners to phone in and describe how their father influenced their thinking about money.

Callers related that their fathers told them to save early, to not waste money, to avoid debt and a few other basic ideas like “don’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses.”

I told my wife I couldn’t recall my father ever talking to me about money.

WHEN I WAS A KID in the late 1950s, if a toy was stamped “Made in Japan,” it meant it was cheap and poorly made. A decade or so later, that label began to mean something entirely different: If you wanted a top-notch TV, you were considering a Sony. If you were shopping for the most reliable car, Toyota, Datsun (later renamed Nissan) and Honda were on your list.
There’s a parallel today with China,

EARNINGS SEASON is wrapping up on Wall Street. Analysts’ predictions and companies’ profit guidance is a bit of a dog-and-pony show, as HumbleDollar contributor Kyle Mcintosh recently described. Still, there’s some useful information to be gleaned from second-quarter results and from executives’ comments.
In particular, I look forward to the FactSet weekly earnings season update to see which pockets of the stock market have the best and worst figures. According to last Friday’s report,

THE 19TH CENTURY feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys doesn’t hold a candle to the debate between supporters of index funds and supporters of active management.
Those in the index fund camp cite decades of data—going back to the 1930s—to support their view that active management is a fool’s errand. In fact, Standard & Poor’s regularly publishes a study it calls SPIVA, short for S&P Index Versus Active. Each time, analysts there reach the same conclusion—that it’s exceedingly difficult for an actively managed fund to beat its benchmark.

I SUGGESTED a thought experiment in my last blog post—one in which the stock market shut down for six months at the start of the pandemic. I believe it helps explain why financial markets recovered with such a vengeance.
Today, I take a different tack, one based on financial theory. It’s easy to forget that stocks are not pieces of paper (remember stock certificates?) or ticker symbols on a computer screen. Rather, they represent a claim on company profits,

THE SOCIAL SECURITY Administration began rolling out a new, smaller annual statement on May 1. As reported in Think Advisor and other publications, a small percentage of online “my Social Security” account users, who aren’t currently receiving benefits, will get the new printed statement.
The new statement is two pages instead of four. One significant improvement is a graphic that shows what your estimated monthly benefit could be if you started taking benefits in any of the nine years between ages 62 and 70.

I’M NOT SURE HOW anyone can achieve financial peace and prosperity without addressing the “b” word—budgeting.

I got my first credit card in my late teens. I bragged that—in my wallet—I had whatever my credit limit was and could do anything I wanted with it. By my early 20s, I was in credit-card debt. But as long as I could pay the monthly minimum, I didn’t think I had a problem. Of course, the interest rate was astronomically high—sadly,

MY SON AND I recently completed a cross-country road-trip with Poppy, our two-year-old goldendoodle. We got Poppy just before the pandemic and she’s our first dog, so we learned a lot on this adventure. If you’re a first-time dog owner planning a trip that involves hotels, here are three money-saving recommendations:

Call ahead. I booked rooms many months before our trip and ensured all hotels were “pet friendly.” As I was new to traveling with a dog,

I HAD PLANNED a trip to Vietnam for 2020—which coincided with the start of the pandemic and got scratched. I naively rescheduled the trip for this summer. Unfortunately, countries that lack vaccines have been forced to lock down and keep out even vaccinated tourists like me, so that trip also got nixed.
Ever the optimist, I rescheduled for Europe in July. This time, it was the delta variant and changing travel restrictions that ended my third international trip before it even began.

MY BROTHER AND sister-in-law are approaching retirement age and will likely relocate so they can be nearer their children. The last time they sold a house, it took more than a year to find a buyer. But they’ve spent time and money fixing up their current home, and it’d likely sell quickly, especially in today’s hot real estate market. Their thought: Why not sell now, and then rent for a few years until they retire and move?

DO YOU HAVE A LOT of stuff—all those things that fill your basement, attic and garage? Dealing with these accumulated possessions is hard. But there are folks who have figured it out: They sell everything, even their house and car.

I regularly read blogs written by people who “retired” in their 30s and 40s, all of them living in stressless financial bliss. These folks live frugally off their dividends, other passive income and, of course,