I JUST REACHED my full Social Security retirement age of 66 and four months. Funny, I don’t feel a bit older. Still, I am now entitled to 100% of the benefit that I’ve earned since I started working.
Conventional wisdom says to delay filing. Each month that I wait will add 2/3rds of 1% to my eventual benefit. That adds up to a risk-free 8% a year. If I were to wait until I turn 70,

I CONTINUE TO LOOK for ways to simplify my life. At age 71, I want fewer things to deal with and to worry about. To that end, here are five steps that my wife and I are taking:
1. Consolidating finances. I mentioned in an article last year that my wife and I have consolidated our investments at Vanguard Group, while our savings and checking accounts are at a local credit union.

BEING MECHANICAL and unemotional is a poor way to live life. But when investing, it just might make you richer.
Through this year’s stock market turbulence, I’ve been even keeled. My reaction to the plunging bond market has been more agitated, as I wrote about here and here. The fact is, while I’m convinced the stock market will rebound, I don’t have the same belief in bonds.
Armed with my faith in stocks, I’ve adopted a mechanical approach to investing,

IN THE WEEKS BEFORE my annual physical, I made a concerted effort to lose a few pounds, drink more water, skip my evening glass of wine, eat more fiber, and avoid red meat, French fries and cheese. The happy result: My blood pressure was low. My weight was down slightly from my previous checkup. My cholesterol count was good. My A1C level suggests my prediabetic condition hasn’t got any worse. All in all, last month’s physical found that I had little reason to worry.

I HAD SOME GOOD bosses and some bad ones over my 35-year career. The worst was Joe. He tried to intimidate you. I once overheard him tell another manager that he likes to ride his employees and dig his spurs into them.
What was so terrible about Joe? It wasn’t that he was tough on employees. It was that he was unfair. You incurred his wrath whether you deserved it or not.
I remember the first time I attended a meeting held by Joe.

I CAN’T CALL THE BOOKS I buy “beach reads” because, honestly, they can get dense. Still, if—like me—you enjoy learning about investing, economics or even the religious overtones of capitalism, here are five books that might make for insightful summer reading or, perhaps, induce napping in the hammock.
The Physics of Wall Street by James Owen Weatherall. This book begins with the assertion that “Warren Buffett isn’t the best money manager in the world” and then spends the next 224 pages introducing us to genius PhDs who’ve whipped the S&P 500 by anticipating the prices of securities.

I’M SPENDING MONEY like water, even though I’m a tightwad, or so says my wife.

We’re on vacation—well, sort of. Since we’re retirees, “vacation” has less meaning. Still, we are away from our principal residence in New Jersey, instead spending the summer at our house on Cape Cod.

At various points, some of our four children and 13 grandchildren arrive—but, fortunately, not all at once. The house goes from quiet to pandemonium. Even so,

BOSTON COLLEGE’S Center for Retirement Research just published a study that explores what Americans think are the biggest risks to their retirement—as opposed to what they objectively are. The center found “a big disconnect between how actual and perceived risks are ranked.” That disconnect could be hurting people’s retirement planning.
The study says the biggest risk to retirement is longevity—living so long that we run out of money. But the survey found that the biggest perceived threat is a market drop that cuts into savings,

RECESSION FEARS are fading. Second-quarter corporate profits have been better than expected. Some recent economic data show key barometers in growth mode, even as the latest GDP report confirmed a second consecutive quarter of economic contraction. Indeed, this past Friday’s hot employment report cooled the debate over whether we’re in a recession.
The pandemic upended so many facets of life and business, and we’re still feeling the effects today, as evidenced by odd swings in what are often stable economic numbers.

AT THE MUTUAL FUND company where I once worked, the stock and bond teams liked to poke fun at one another. Bond managers viewed the stock-pickers as overpaid storytellers. Meanwhile, the stock-pickers saw the world of bonds as stultifying. “Playing for nickels and dimes” is how one of them put it.
For better or worse, bonds do indeed represent the slow lane. But this year, with bond prices depressed by rising interest rates, investors are wanting to learn more.

THE FEDERAL RESERVE has been the biggest buyer of Treasury and mortgage-backed bonds for the past decade. In that time, it expanded its balance sheet from about $800 million to more than $8 trillion.
As long as inflation remained low, its bond purchases helped produce a slowly growing economy by keeping interest rates and unemployment low. Now that inflation is at its highest level in 40 years, the Federal Reserve is starting to raise interest rates in response.

MEET THE LATEST feature added to HumbleDollar—as well as the website’s first calculator: the Two-Minute Checkup.
How does it work? All you need to do is input up to nine pieces of information, the sort of stuff most of us know off the top of our head. There’s no need to create an account or link to your brokerage firm or bank, and none of your information is saved on HumbleDollar or anywhere else. 

HAVE YOU GOT children or grandchildren with summer jobs? That means you could put them on the path to financial success—by helping them open a Roth IRA.
My brothers and I always had jobs, including delivering newspapers, bussing tables, mowing lawns and valet parking. My sons also had jobs at an early age, including shucking thousands of ears of corn at our local swim club. Later on, they were lifeguards, along with many of their friends from the swim team.

I RECENTLY VISITED Eastern Europe, where I volunteered to teach English in Poland through an organization called Angloville. I received free room and board at a resort in exchange for conversing from breakfast through dinner with Polish adults who wanted to improve their English.
In addition to meeting Poles and being immersed in Polish culture, I used my free time to explore nearby countries. Planning a vacation abroad? Based on my recent trips to Poland,

AM I ALLOWED another rant?

I have a tip for anyone under age 50. Someday—if you’re lucky—you’ll stop working and still need income to live. Most of us call that retirement.

How in the world do people reach their 50s and suddenly have a revelation that retirement is somewhere in their future?

I get it. If you’re in your 20s or even early 30s, it’s time to have fun. But there’s the trap. Fun for too long,