IF YOU THINK STOCKS have fallen fast this year, check out the collapse in the National Association of Realtors’ housing affordability index. The index tracks how financially easy it is for the typical family to buy a house with a conventional 30-year mortgage.
May’s reading of 102.5 is down sharply from the 154.4 recorded in December 2021 and it’s just a whisker away from the lowest levels seen in the past four decades. For those of us in the southern U.S.,

U.S. STOCKS ARE DOWN almost 19% so far this year. The broad bond market, surprisingly, has also lost money, sliding almost 11%.

At times like this—when the headlines are almost all negative—the standard advice is to avoid panicking and stay focused on the long term. I agree with that, and indeed the data are clear: Investors who attempt to time the market with “tactical” trades often suffer whipsaw. But that doesn’t mean we should bury our heads in the sand.

AS WE WATCH OUR portfolios get pummeled by 2022’s imploding financial markets, this might not seem like the time for self-congratulation. After all, Vanguard Total Stock Market Index ETF (symbol: VTI) is down 19% in 2022, while Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND) has lost almost 11%.
But ponder this: If you’d been less sensible with your money, your results could have been far, far worse. In particular, take a bow if you:

Didn’t buy cryptocurrencies.

IN EARLY JANUARY, I wrote an article describing my New Year’s resolution. My No. 1 goal was, and still is, to improve my health and fitness. It’s now six months later. Here’s a review of the results so far—the good, the bad and the ugly. Let’s start with the good:

Weight loss. I’ve shed more than 70 pounds since the beginning of the year. This has improved my life in so many ways.

IF I SAID YOU COULD corral a yield of almost 12% by holding most of the stocks in the Nasdaq 100 index through an exchange-traded fund (ETF), would you think I’ve been smoking something? Well, you’d be wrong.
Global X Nasdaq 100 Covered Call ETF (symbol: QYLD) has pumped out a humongous dividend for more than 100 consecutive months, ever since its 2013 inception. But first a caveat that many will view as a tragic flaw: QYLD is a pure income investment,

I’M IN THE SOUP—again. Italian wedding soup, to be precise.

On special occasions, my wife and I enjoy going to a fine-dining restaurant. By this, I mean a calm, quiet atmosphere with ambiance, white tablecloths, no need to ask for the water glass to be refilled, more than one server for your table, an extensive wine list and good, creative food. Generally, such a place will attract people with similar objectives for the night.

I’M A FAN OF SLANG and newly coined words. Think of all the names for money we’ve had over the years, like cheese, clams and cabbage. New words catch on not only because they allow a new generation to put their stamp on the world, but also the words reflect changing attitudes.
That brings me to “stonks,” the name many millennials use for stocks—and one that reflects a different view of investing. No one’s sure where the word originated.

WHEN I WAS WORKING fulltime, my goal was to have enough retirement savings to replace 100% of my income. I knew I could live comfortably on that amount, while still having enough left over to do the things I didn’t have time for when I had a fulltime job. I figured that was the key to a happy retirement.
But after retiring, my thinking changed, as I began focusing on how I could live longer and better.

THE LONGER WE LIVE, the more perspective we have—and the more foolish many of our earlier beliefs seem. We start our adult journey confident that we’ll make our mark on the world and that the financial rewards we collect will greatly enhance our life. By the time we reach retirement, things look quite different. Here are five things I’ve learned along the way:
1. Fame is fleeting. How many entertainers, sports stars and politicians have each of us forgotten?

WE’VE ALL HEARD of the three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, which compile our all-important credit reports. But have you heard of ChexSystems?
ChexSystems generates reports on bank customers, typically using banking history from the past five years to assess the risk that customers pose to their banks. Those risks are reflected in blemishes on a consumer’s banking history, such as overdrafts and unpaid fees. In some instances, ChexSystems warns banks about potential fraud.

THE FINANCIAL NEWS these days is all about inflation—what caused it, what it means for American families and how we should address it. Little wonder: The annual U.S. inflation rate hit a 40-year high of 8.6% in May.
How can we track a slow-moving force like inflation to figure out when it’s starting to cool? I’d watch four areas: energy costs, housing demand, employment rates and retail spending. When I examine the latest trends from these four bellwethers,

JUST A HANDFUL of weeks ago, I posted about achieving a $1 million net worth. Now my status as a millionaire is already in jeopardy. While the value of some of my financial assets have held steady—and some have seen gains—the portion of my retirement account invested in the stock market has suffered significant losses.
My retirement account balance peaked on Jan. 4 at $478,000. Today, it hovers around $430,000. Since I retired in late May,

OUR LAST SUMMER road trip didn’t exactly go as planned. That ordeal changed my mind about an annual expense I’d been paying without much thought. I gained a new perspective—even if I did learn my lesson the hard way.
On a Saturday morning last summer, Sarah and I woke our kids at 4 a.m. for a predawn drive through the mountains of East Tennessee and across the Carolinas. We were on our way to enjoy the beaches of Hilton Head Island,

THE LATEST ESTIMATE for first-quarter GDP growth was issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Wednesday morning. While not market-moving news, it revealed that the economy shrank at an annualized rate of 1.6%, a tad worse than market expectations. The most surprising part of the revised estimate was the downward adjustment in personal consumption. Along with recent credit- and debit-card spending data, as well as comments from a few consumer goods companies,

A FEW WEEKS BACK, I mentioned Robert Shiller’s book Narrative Economics. His contention: Stories—to a surprising degree—often drive markets.
Similarly, the investment world is driven by a good number of sayings and aphorisms. Many of these are entertaining. Some are even useful. But they can also be tricky. Any time advice is delivered in a pithy phrase, it seems to carry extra credibility—as if it were a truth handed down from above.