I DESCRIBED A SET of ideas last year that I called truisms of financial planning. They’re concepts I’ve found helpful in navigating the world of personal finance. Below are seven more.

1. Jeff Bezos is a bad role model. So are Bill Gates, Elon Musk and pretty much every other billionaire. Of course, they’re all great geniuses, so why would I say that? The problem is how they made their money. In each case,

LOOKING BACK OVER the past two years, one word comes to mind: extreme. It’s been a period of extremes in the market and the economy. Many have benefitted, but we’ve also seen excesses that aren’t necessarily healthy—from the rise in NFTs to the craze in SPACs to the boom in day trading. That’s why, as you look ahead to the coming year, the theme I recommend is moderation.

LET’S NOT CALL THEM resolutions because that imposes a sense of obligation. Rather, think of these as adjustments that could give you—and maybe your kids—a smoother ride in 2022:

Check the beneficiaries on your employer’s retirement plan, IRAs and life insurance policies. Sometimes money winds up with an ex-spouse or maybe a younger child gets left off the list. This is an easy fix—while you’re alive. After that, it’s a mess.
How much do you pay for your investments—in dollars,

I WAS AN AIRLINE pilot for 42 years before retiring about a year ago. Traveling was the job and, of course, the opportunity to fly free on days off was a big deal. That meant more traveling. Now retired with kids and grandkids scattered around the country, my lovely bride and I continue to fly regularly.
Planning your next trip? Here are nine tips to make the inevitably stressful experience a little better:

Never book a trip with connecting flights unless it’s absolutely necessary.

READERS HAVE CAST an eye on more than 13 million HumbleDollar pages over the past five years. Not surprisingly, many of those pageviews were garnered by the homepage, the latest articles page and the main money guide page. But what about the site’s articles? Here are the 30 best-read pieces since the site’s launch on Dec. 31, 2016:

Terms of the Trade (2019) by Jim Wasserman
Nobody Told Me (2020) by Jonathan Clements
Farewell Money (2019) by Richard Quinn
He Gets,

WHAT SEEMS OBVIOUS isn’t always true. Here are seven examples from the financial world:

Just because an investment has performed well doesn’t mean that’s a good guide to the future. This is usually mentioned with regard to stocks. But today, my bigger concern is folks who are extrapolating past bond fund returns. Their strong past performance was driven by a huge drop in interest rates over the past four decades—something that can’t be repeated starting from 2021’s tiny yields.

A FEW WEEKS BACK, I talked about the good-is-better-than-perfect principle. A close corollary: Approach financial decisions incrementally. What do I mean by that? An example is dollar-cost averaging, where you invest a sum of money in regular increments, rather than all at once.

Does dollar-cost averaging guarantee a better outcome? No. But it takes what would be one big decision and breaks it into several smaller ones. The benefit: Each of those smaller decisions ends up carrying lower stakes.

BACK IN THE 1950s, economists Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller developed a theory that, even today, is taught in virtually every finance class.

To understand the theory, suppose you’re running a company and want to build a new factory. To raise money for the project, you generally have two options: You can sell shares to investors or you can borrow money. No one disputes that basic framework, but Modigliani and Miller added a twist: They argued that,

I RECENTLY STARTED reading Think Again, the new book by Adam Grant. Subtitled The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, Grant’s book got me thinking about all the ways that, over the years, conversations with clients have led me to look at things through different lenses. Below are eight such topics:

1. There’s one important financial question that stumps most everyone—for good reason. In building a financial plan,

AS A CHILD GROWING up in India, I was taught about the six seasons of Bengal: summer, monsoons, autumn, late autumn, winter and spring. From my recollection, some seasons felt distinct, while others were subtle and transitory. Still, each season had unique characteristics, making it different from the others.
A HumbleDollar Voices question—if you could live your financial life again, what would you do differently?—reminded me of the six seasons. How so?

I’M NOT A RULE BREAKER. In the nearly 40 years I’ve had a driver’s license, I’ve received just one traffic citation. I follow all the laboratory safety rules when I’m at work. When I fly, I’m the person who removes the card from the seatback pocket and follows along with the flight attendants as they do their safety briefing.
But when it comes to finances, I don’t always follow the rules laid down by accountants,

WHEN WE CHOOSE TO do one thing with our time and money, we’re also choosing not to do countless other things. The purchases made and the possibilities forgone sometimes turn into lasting regrets.
That is, to a degree, unavoidable. We often misjudge not only what we want today, but also the wants of our future self. Still, I firmly believe we can all do better—if we avoid impulsive decisions and instead spend time thinking through life’s key tradeoffs.

I RECENTLY LISTENED to a podcast featuring Richard Thaler, the Nobel prize-winning economist. To say I’m a huge fan of his work is an understatement. Thaler has that rare ability to communicate a complex topic—behavioral economics—to a lay audience in a way that’s both accessible and enjoyable. His book Misbehaving offers a fascinating historical account of behavioral economics, a field he played a major role in developing.
But it was a casual comment that Thaler made toward the end of the interview that really caught my attention.

DEAR 18-YEAR-OLD: You may be better educated and more intelligent than me. You may have more potential. But for sure you don’t have more experience. I have 60 years on you, so—as hard as it may be—take my advice:

There are no guarantees in life. You have to make of it what you will. Never give up.
You will have obstacles placed before you. You will be treated unfairly. You will have to deal with less-than-honorable individuals.

A WHILE BACK, I assembled two personal finance reading lists—what I called 101 and 201 level titles. But time doesn’t stand still. Below is a list of newer books, along with a few classics that didn’t fit on the earlier lists. They’re organized into three categories: retirement planning, investing and behavioral finance.
Retirement Planning

Can I Retire? by Mike Piper. There’s no shortage of retirement books. But if you want a straightforward guide that covers the most critical topics in an easy-to-read format,