I WAS SELECTED IN 2015 for the “leadership pipeline program” at the major bank where I worked. It was a 10-month-long program for minority employees just below executive level. We were selected to learn all about corporate culture and what it took to advance to the next level. I felt honored to be among such talented and promising employees.
Participants were from various departments from across the U.S.—technology, risk management, operations, compliance, human resources,

BABY BOOMERS ARE retiring every day and Generation X is right on their heels. With this, an increasingly large amount of wealth is making its way into IRAs and Roth IRAs, thanks to rollovers from employer retirement plans.
I’ve found that many folks don’t quite grasp the complexities of such accounts. On the surface, they seem pretty simple: You contribute to an IRA or Roth IRA, receive tax-deferred growth and then gradually withdraw the funds during retirement.

AS THE OLD SAYING goes, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. And then there’s investment performance, which may deserve a category all its own.
This topic came to mind recently when I saw a press release heralding the accomplishments of a retired nonprofit executive. Among the claims: that he had doubled the organization’s endowment. This struck me as impressive—until I considered it more critically. What did it mean that he had doubled the endowment?

YOU COULD ARGUE that U.S. stocks are reasonably priced, with the S&P 500 companies trading at 22 times their reported earnings for the past 12 months. That’s not much above the 50-year average of 19.3—and hardly outrageous, given today’s modest bond yields.
But you could also argue that U.S. shares are horribly overpriced. The S&P 500 stocks today offer a dividend yield of just 1.9%, versus a 50-year average of 2.9%. Shares also seem pricey compared to both the value of corporate assets and average company profits for the past 10 years.

I OFTEN TALK WITH estate planning attorneys—and they tell me that individuals typically complete an estate plan just twice in their lives: upon marriage and upon retirement.
On the one hand, this is good. Major life changes warrant a review of your estate plan and an update to key documents. On the other hand, this is not so good. Much like other areas of your financial life, your estate plan needs to be reviewed on a regular basis.

I’M A DEADBEAT. That’s what companies call people who pay off their credit cards in full every month and hence don’t incur interest. But I’m more than that. I’m a leverager. I leverage points and stars and credits everywhere I go.
Let me count the ways.
When I go to the gas station, I use my American Express card and my Exxon rewards card. I get credits from Exxon for buying the gas, which I apply to future gas purchases,

IN MARCH, I DROVE off the Tesla lot in a new Model 3 with Ben Franklin’s quote in my head: “So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”
Elon Musk had just announced availability of lower cost versions of the Model 3. After eight years of waiting for a Tesla that would cost less than my first home,

I WAS LISTENING recently to the Beatles’ song, “She’s Leaving Home,” and I wondered what I would tell a young person starting life on his or her own. If I had a few minutes before he or she walked out the door, here’s what I would try to say:
Relationships. Your personal relationships will matter most in your life. Choose your significant other and friends carefully. They will be your moral compass,

EVERY GENERATION faces its own unique financial challenges—and my generation has, so far, had a particularly rough time. Consider a 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which looked at the connection between birth year and financial well-being.
Some 48,000 families were divided into six groups based on their birth decade—from the 1930s to the 1980s. I was born in 1987 and hence belong to the 1980s cohort. The Great Recession affected all generations,

I RECENTLY HAD the opportunity to attend a panel discussion that included the prominent investment manager Seth Klarman.
Not familiar with Klarman? The simplistic version of his biography has him as a hedge fund billionaire. While that’s true, it doesn’t do him justice. Klarman is more like a cult hero, at least in the investment world. Some call him the “Oracle of Boston.”
Google his name, and you’ll see him described as “the next Warren Buffett.” Search YouTube,

WE GET MORE PAIN from losses than pleasure from gains—which might explain why I often think back on the five major market crashes that have occurred during my investing lifetime. There’s something about the massive hemorrhaging of money that has a way of focusing the mind and sticking in the memory.
Here are those five crashes, and what I learned from each:
Black Monday. I was age 24—with no money invested in stocks—when the S&P 500 plunged 20.5% on Oct.

SOCIALISM. IT’S A WORD that can make people on the far left swoon, as they imagine an egalitarian utopia, even while inciting those on the far right to mumble protective oaths like a medieval citizen seeing a sign of the devil. It’s also a word that Google Trends reports has had a surge in search-related interest since last December.
As competing visions of how to protect and enhance the American economic system vie for political popularity,

I DON’T WANT TO PAY for things that aren’t useful—and I’m not interested in wasting money. Nobody is.
For instance, over the past 15 years, 89% of actively managed U.S. stock funds failed to outperform the broad U.S. stock market, according to S&P Global. Why would people waste their money and continue to pay for something that isn’t useful? Turns out, people aren’t. We’ve seen money flooding into lower cost, passively managed index funds.

MANY AMERICANS SEEM to think of themselves as poor—even though they don’t come close to meeting the official definition.
Let’s start with some objective measures. One standard official measure says that, for 2019, a two-person household is in poverty with annual income of $16,910 or less. According to an MIT calculator, a two-adult household in Calhoun County, Alabama, needs to earn at least $8.54 per hour each—with both working fulltime—to support themselves. In Bergen County,

FOR AS LONG AS I CAN recall, I’ve received unsolicited advice on what I should study in school, when I should get married, when I should pop out kid No. 1—and how I should spend my money. Regarding this last item, it seems there’s a lot of financial advice out there from people who enjoy a level of financial security I’ll likely never experience, unless I strike it lucky with the Powerball.
Many advice columnists just haven’t caught up with the soaring cost of living and student debt crisis that confront young people.