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.

I WROTE MY FIRST article for HumbleDollar in 2017. I’d been retired for nine years and I had plenty of material. I’d made a lot of mistakes with my money over the years.
I was truly a humble writer then, and I still am. My early articles weren’t my best. It was a learning experience. I wrote them using the notes app on my old iPhone 5—an app that was designed for jotting down quick thoughts,

I’M IN EXCELLENT health. I avoid overindulging on sugar and carbohydrates. I exercise every day. I hope to live well into my 90s, if not longer.
What if I don’t live nearly that long? From a financial perspective, it makes little difference if I pass away before I tap my retirement funds. The value of most of my accounts wouldn’t be affected by my premature demise. My husband would simply inherit my 403(b) and Roth IRA accounts.

WHAT SHOULD I DO with the required minimum distributions from my rollover IRAs?
I’m age 65, which means that—under last year’s tax law—I must begin taking taxable distributions in 2030, the year I turn 73. I’ve been looking at my retirement cash flow, and it appears that my wife and I won’t need the money for our living expenses.
I’m investigating using the money to help fund my grandkids’ college education. I built a spreadsheet that maps my age against the age of each grandchild and determined the years they’re expected to attend college.

IN AN EFFORT TO identify the simplest, most resilient lifetime investment portfolio, author and investment analyst Chris Pedersen concluded that a minimum of two funds is required. His recent book, 2 Funds for Life, summarizes his back-testing study to find a simple yet effective portfolio. The book is available free at PaulMerriman.com.
Pedersen found that a 90% allocation to a Vanguard Group target-date fund coupled with a 10% allocation to a small-cap value fund provides meaningful diversification across stocks and bonds,

I TURNED AGE 62 LAST summer and, as with most birthdays at this stage of life, I had a pretty good, but non-spectacular day. On my birthdays, I tend to focus on enjoying the day itself as it stands before me and, for that one day, I don’t worry too much about the future, or all the adult stuff I have to do, or problems I might have to solve tomorrow, or the problems I think up in my head that would probably go away if I just stopped thinking about them.

WHEN SOME FOLKS MAKE the all-important Social Security claiming decision, one worry outweighs all others. Their big fear: The program’s funding will “run out” in a few years and therefore they “can’t depend on Social Security being around,” so the smart strategy is to claim benefits at 62, the youngest possible age.
This is not a big worry of mine—largely because Social Security won’t “go broke.” What’s happening to the program’s funding is that,

I RETIRED FROM MY other job in 2022, so I could return to our family farm. Upon leaving, one of the first decisions I had to make was whether to take my pension as a lump sum or as monthly annuity payments.
The pension plan based the lump sum on length of service, salary and age, plus the interest rate as of the prior December. The lower the interest rate at the time of retirement,

WHEN I STARTED winding down my psychology practice two years ago, I anticipated freeing up oodles of time for reflection and for hobbies long cast aside, such as collecting oldies albums and the coveted rookie cards of sports legends. But my patient hours were merely replaced by my own spiraling doctor visits.
I was disappointed and concerned about my declining medical status. Still, I was reassured by the reputation of my health insurance company and the comprehensiveness of my policy.

WHEN I WAS FORCED out of my banking job of 36 years, I was age 59 and had enough money to retire comfortably. But I still felt the need to work—because that’s how I’m wired. Working gives me a sense of purpose and makes me happy, but it has to be the right kind of work.
I need work that’s fulfilling and which allows me to help others. I knew myself well enough to realize that,

AS A TEENAGER, I wanted to be an architect. I took six years of mechanical drawing during junior and senior high school, and I was good at it, earning nearly all As.

At another time, in my 30s, I thought about becoming a lawyer. People told me I’d make a good one. A lawyer’s opinion seemed to carry more weight, even when the subject was unrelated to legal matters.

I also wanted to play a musical instrument.

IN THE WEEK SINCE Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed, a debate has raged: Did the government do the right thing when it decided to guarantee all of SVB’s depositors, including those that exceeded FDIC limits?
On one side of this debate are those who view the government’s action as an inappropriate and undeserved bailout. In an article titled “You Should Be Outraged About Silicon Valley Bank,” The Atlantic argued that the bank’s failure was the predictable result of incompetent risk management.

RETIREMENT IS LIFE’S most daunting financial puzzle, not least because many of the decisions we make are difficult or impossible to reverse. To make matters worse, we’re often making decisions we’ve never made before, so we have no real expertise.
What sort of decisions am I talking about? Here are 10 examples.
1. When should I quit work? Needless to say, this is the most important retirement decision. Once you quit the workforce,

A FEW MONTHS BACK, this site’s editor suggested I write an article about the “10 things I learned about money from four years traveling the globe.” I thought, hey, if someone wants to pay me $60 to write about travel, I’m in. I’m hoping he’ll next suggest I write an article about drinking bourbon.
Starting in September 2017, my wife and I traveled the world for four straight years. Travel can be wondrous. Filled with new tastes,