RETIREMENT IS SAID to be a time for reviewing and reminiscing. We try to understand who we were and how we came to be who we are. But the health trials of the retirement years can also project us into the future. When couples enter their twilight years, they begin to contemplate how they’d cope if the other died first. I believe “survivor rehearsal” is one way our biology helps us to contain the fear of having to cope on our own.

EXCEPT FOR A SCALLION or cucumber—feel free to add other items—finding something green in your refrigerator is generally not good. This morning, I reached for the butter and caught a glimpse of dark green. It was a wedge of never-opened goat cheese, $5.60 worth. Or, to view it another way, $253 in lost retirement savings over the next 40 years.

Before we left for Florida this winter, we removed from the fridge all items that would not survive six weeks.

IN THE WEEKS SINCE Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) disintegrated, there’s been a fair amount of post-mortem analysis. In the end, two factors drove the bank’s demise.
First, SVB’s customer base was concentrated among venture capital-backed technology companies. Because of that, nearly 90% of deposits topped the FDIC threshold and were thus uninsured.
Second, owing to 2022’s rise in interest rates, SVB’s bond portfolio took a hit. That sparked concern about the bank’s solvency, prompting depositors to overwhelm the bank with withdrawal requests.

THE BEAR MARKET HAS now dragged on for 15 months—and no doubt plenty of anguished investors are second-guessing their allocation to stocks. But as for me, I grow more enthusiastic with every drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In fact, I’d be happy to see the bear market last a few months longer, so I can finish fully funding various tax-advantaged accounts for 2023.
Not only are stocks better value than they were 15 months ago,

THREE YEARS AGO this month, in the middle of the pandemic-driven market meltdown, I went on a dividend-stock buying spree.
I had just turned 60 and was looking to step away from the corporate world in 18 months’ time to take up a second-act career as an author. As part of my retirement plan, I had a sizable money-market account that I planned to live on for a few years before I started taking Social Security and pulling from my retirement accounts.

MY UNCLE GAVE ME one share of Chevron for my 20th birthday. It was 1995, and he was the stock transfer agent for the company, overseeing its dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP). The share was a modest $48 gift, but the accompanying advice became the foundation of my investing career for the 27 years since.
As a young kid, I would comb through the business section of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, monitoring the performance of my dad’s two mutual funds.

IF YOU’RE LIKE MANY readers of this site, you’ll reach your 60s and discover one of those nice problems to have—that you’ve over-saved for retirement.
What now? For answers, check out a new book, More Than Enough: A Brief Guide to the Questions That Arise After Realizing You Have More than You Need. Author Mike Piper is the driving force behind both the Oblivious Investor website and the free Open Social Security calculator.

GETTING TO RETIREMENT is lazy work for an indexing aficionado. What could be easier than stuffing money every paycheck into an all-in-one target-date index fund? Even building a two- or three-index-fund portfolio takes minimal effort.
Actually retiring, on the other hand, feels like a fulltime job. Who knew that spending money takes more thought than earning, saving and investing it? At age 61, I’m faced with important decisions that I want to get right,

“ARNIE, YOU JUST HAVE to watch this video,” offers the wife. “Jessie is so adorable.”
“Honey, I’ve been thinking,” hubby responds. “I know mortgage rates are high right now, but we really should get a place near the kids.”
If you can remember I Love Lucy, you’re old enough to have had this sort of conversation. The mortgage is paid off, the Roth has done well and you’ve got the cash for a down payment.

I STEPPED TO THE podium for the first time in more than three years. My presentation skills were perhaps a bit rusty, but I jumped at the opportunity earlier this month to speak at my former employer’s annual symposium. It felt great to see so many familiar and friendly faces, including old teammates, workplace acquaintances and former clients. It was also no big secret that I was curious about an open position at the company.

PUBLISHED IN 1958, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher was the first investment book to make The New York Times bestseller list.
Never heard of Fisher? Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett points to two key influences on his investment thinking: legendary value investor Benjamin Graham—and growth-stock proponent Phil Fisher. Indeed, I’d argue that Fisher’s words of advice on bonds, dividends and war scares are as relevant now as they were in 1958.

I’M A 70-YEAR-OLD retiree with a conservative fund portfolio. I have 65% in short- and intermediate-term bonds, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and cash, with the other 35% in stocks.
Last year was a rough one for retirees. Rising interest rates and unexpectedly high inflation resulted in a losing year for stocks and bonds. My bond funds lost some 10%. It was one of the worst annual losses for bonds ever. Bonds have only lost value in five of the past 45 years,

I SPOKE RECENTLY with a fellow who had climbed Mount Everest. The first question I asked: What was it like at the top?
What I expected him to say was that the view was dramatic. Instead, he said, his time at the summit turned out to be less than he’d expected. For starters, it was 4:45 a.m., so there wasn’t a lot of visibility. In addition, it was minus 45 degrees. Because of that,

MANY COMMENTATORS worry about the stock market in October, a month associated with the crashes of 1929 and 1987. But I now pay more attention to March—especially March 10.
As an observer of the stock market since 1980, I stumbled upon an odd coincidence. Major financial events this century, like stock market peaks and troughs, have centered on the month of March. Here are four examples:
March 10, 2000: The Nasdaq peaked at 5048.

MONEY BUYS HAPPINESS—but it may not buy us very much. Indeed, no matter how much we earn and no matter what other steps we take to boost happiness, we may discover the impact is modest and fleeting.
That brings me to a recent academic debate. In 2010, Princeton University’s Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman noted that happiness, on average, didn’t appear to increase beyond an annual income of $75,000 or so—a finding that’s since been widely reported in the mainstream media.