I’M NOT BIG ON MAKING New Year’s resolutions. Still, January is a good time to conduct some financial housekeeping. Below are 10 ideas to consider as the calendar turns over.
1. Portfolio cleanup. I sometimes feel like a broken record when I talk about the disadvantages of actively managed mutual funds. Among other issues, they tend to underperform and are tax-inefficient. But here’s the challenge: Even after factoring in 2022’s decline, the S&P 500 has risen more than 600% since 2009’s market bottom.

MOST OF US ARE forever striving to be better versions of ourselves—usually with mixed success. Still, the changing of the calendar often prompts renewed efforts. But what should we focus on? Let me offer 10 words that I try to live by.
1. Pause. Throughout the day, we make snap decisions, and they usually work out just fine—except when it comes to spending and investment choices. Got an overwhelming urge to buy an expensive bauble or make a portfolio change?

IN THE INVESTMENT world, every year is unique. This year certainly has been.
But in some ways, every year is also the same. The specific events change, but many of the underlying themes and challenges don’t change a whole lot. As 2022 winds down, it’s a good time to take a closer look at six of those themes, as well as the steps investors might take to navigate them when, invariably, they present themselves again in 2023.

WANT TO BE A PERSONAL finance columnist? I can’t claim expertise on many topics, but this is one where I draw on a lifetime of experience.
And it isn’t just as a writer. At HumbleDollar, I have a hand in editing every piece that appears, plus I get to see the numbers on which articles catch readers’ attention—and which get the cold shoulder.
To be sure, popularity isn’t necessarily the best way to gauge an article’s quality.

JUST IN TIME FOR Christmas, a sweeping new retirement law has passed both houses of Congress, and should be signed into law this weekend. Dubbed the SECURE Act 2.0, it makes dozens of significant changes to the employer-based savings systems that millions of workers depend on for retirement.
Under the new law, some workers will be able to save far larger catch-up contributions during the home stretch of their working years. Meanwhile, retirees can delay taking required minimum distributions until age 73 starting in 2023.

‘TIS THE SEASON WHEN many of us open our wallets and spend with reckless abandon. Along the way, we often end up buying a gift or two for that special person in our life—ourselves.
I don’t put too much stock in the accuracy of quick consumer surveys, but it seems the percentage of folks who self-gift might be 22% or 57% or even 77%. Whatever the right number is, I’m not inclined to be too judgmental,

DO YOU THINK differently about money today compared to a year ago?
Cast your mind back 12 months. Interest rates were near record lows, cryptocurrencies were surging and stocks were hitting new highs day after day. Checking your investment account balance was an instant dopamine hit. Ditto for homeowners, who could get a sense for their home’s skyrocketing value by perusing the local listings.
Last year was also a time when many Americans called it quits from the nine-to-five grind.

PERSONAL FINANCE books don’t exactly rank as the most sought-after holiday gifts. Still, if there’s a money nerd in your life—or someone who aspires to be one—below are 10 personal finance book recommendations.
Why Does the Stock Market Go Up? by Brian Feroldi. This book seeks to answer 60 of the most commonly asked questions in personal finance. In so doing, it demystifies many of the concepts, terms and acronyms that we often ​hear but may not fully understand.

WHEN ROSS PEROT RAN for president in 1992, a pillar of his campaign was tax reform. Federal tax rules, he pointed out, had grown to more than 80,000 pages. His proposal: Start over and replace everything with a simple flat tax.

Perot’s campaign for tax reform didn’t make much progress, but many can sympathize with his frustration. Because of the complexity of tax rules, financial planning often ends up feeling like the children’s game Operation—with penalties for even the slightest misstep and confusion around every corner.

WHEN I MET ARON FOR dinner, the occasion marked a milestone for both of us. Aron had earned his bachelor’s degree in audio production in 2020—during the thick of the pandemic—and finding his place in the industry had been more difficult than he’d hoped.
Now that things were finally falling into place, Aron approached me for help with his finances. In particular, he wanted to understand his tax situation, which had grown into a mixture of self-employed contract work and part-time employment.

THE COLUMN I WROTE for The Wall Street Journal for more than 13 years was popular with readers—which was just as well, because it wasn’t always popular with Journal editors.
As best I could tell, top management appreciated the column, as did most of the editors I reported to directly. But others were critical. One editor, during his annual review of my performance, even demanded that I change my approach to writing the column.

WHEN I WAS AGE 10, we moved from Ohio to California. My father got a job by answering a help wanted ad in a local newspaper. When we first arrived in 1961, we lived in a 36-unit apartment building in Inglewood. It’s located about two miles from the Forum, where the Los Angeles Lakers and Kings sports teams used to play their home games.
One of our neighbors in the building was an older gentleman called Jack Tarentino.

WHEN I WAS A KID, I remember being puzzled by all the newspaper stories devoted to a recession. First, the articles said that one might be ahead. Then they said it had arrived. Immediately afterward, the stories shifted to, “Is the recession lifting?”
The same loop is starting in my newsfeed now, with daily stories asking if a recession is ahead. It’s a definite maybe, according to the experts, but it hasn’t arrived yet.

I DECIDED TO TAKE a peek at our investment portfolio. I try not to look too often. But I was curious to see how our assets were holding up in this bear market.
What did I learn? Our retirement savings were down more than $500,000 this year, thanks to a combination of investment losses and our spending. Most of our shrinking balance is the result of falling stock and bond prices.
Still, our spending this year on travel has increased sharply.

FOR ELON MUSK, IT HAS—to use his own words—been a “very intense seven days.” Just over a week ago, Tesla demonstrated a new prototype product, a robot called Optimus. A week ago, it announced that it had delivered a record number of new vehicles in the third quarter. And, on Wednesday, a rocket built by SpaceX, one of Musk’s other companies, completed a successful launch from Cape Canaveral, carrying astronauts to the International Space Station.