I’VE DISCUSSED THE election in my recent articles and cautioned against timing the market. But if market timing isn’t recommended, what can you do to keep your finances on track through this potentially turbulent period?
Last week, I suggested reviewing your finances through the lenses of leverage, liquidity and cash flow. This week, I’d like to share another framework—and this is one you could employ at any time and not just in times of worry.

MINDFUL. INTENTIONAL. Purposeful. These are the buzzwords of our time—and they make me slightly queasy, with their whiff of self-centered, self-satisfied self-indulgence.
Yet it seems those are my goals.
On Monday, a moving van will arrive to take my worldly possessions to a house in Philadelphia that, I hope, will be my last. All this has made me ponder what I want from the years that remain. Three items top my wish list:
Do good work.

YOU NO DOUBT remember Peter Lynch, the celebrated manager of Fidelity Magellan Fund. He quit Magellan’s helm when he was just 46 years old. His comment at the time: “You remind yourself that nobody on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office’.”
Nothing brings more clarity to money’s limitations than consideration of our mortality. A few weeks ago, I thought about this truth as I lay awake all night,

DO ELECTIONS AFFECT the stock market? Last week, I cited an analysis by Vanguard Group that attempted to answer this question. The study’s verdict: “It’s understandable to have concerns about the election. But as far as your portfolio and the markets are concerned, history suggests it will be a nonissue.” Specifically, Vanguard’s analysis cited evidence that investment returns are no different in election years than in non-election years.
I agree with Vanguard’s overall recommendation—to stay the course with your financial plan.

TO MANAGE OUR MONEY better, often we don’t need to know more. Instead, we need to unlearn what we think we already know.
Here are just some of the things that, at various points in my 35-year investing career, I’ve thought I’ve known:

Which fund managers will outperform.
Which way the economy is headed.
What’s next for interest rates and share prices.
Whether the overall stock market is overvalued or not.
Which individual stocks will beat the market.

WHEN ROSE O’DONNELL was five years old, her mother passed away from the 1918 flu epidemic. This was shortly after her four-year-old brother died. Rose, and her remaining brothers and sisters, were raised by their father, Edward O’Donnell, in San Francisco. Edward had left school after the ninth grade.
What Edward lacked in formal education, he made up for with grit—a special blend of passion and perseverance. Edward became a self-taught expert in copper,

TODAY, I SING THE praises of spending—on the little things in life.
We fiercely resist the suggestion that money doesn’t buy happiness. Commentators will often trot out the quote—which has been attributed to all kinds of folks—that, “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich. Rich is better!”
I think that’s true. But it isn’t proportionally true. If you went from earning $100,000 a year to earning $200,000, or your portfolio grew from $500,000 to $1 million,

MICHAEL PHELPS and South Africa’s Chad le Clos had an intense rivalry. In 2012, le Clos took home the gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly. In 2016, they met again in the finals of the same event. A photographer captured the moment when Phelps was intent on winning gold, while le Clos seemed intent on watching Phelps.
How many times in life have we been more focused on what others were doing and how they’re doing it?

INVESTING IS JUST one ingredient for financial success. In fact, one of the best routes to financial security is also one of the most obvious: Increase your income.
In the middle of a pandemic, this might seem like a tall order. After all, most people’s work and home life have been turned upside down this year. But it’s for precisely that reason that I wanted to pull together the following time-tested strategies for increasing work productivity.

FOR THOSE WHO KNOW their A.A. Milne, they’ll recall Eeyore as Winnie the Pooh’s perennially gloomy donkey friend. Which brings me to my inner Eeyore—and a thought provoked by the stock market’s astonishing recovery.
Now that the S&P 500 is once again hitting new highs, it’s time to prepare for the next bear market. No, I haven’t reduced my stock holdings as share prices have bounced back and, no, I’m not predicting that another crash is imminent.

THE SPEAKER WAS passionate. “You bankers need to understand our culture is not like your culture. In our community, we don’t expect bills to be paid on time. If you’re really interested in serving our community, you need to adjust your expectations and not be asking us to change our culture in order to qualify for your loans.”
Wow, did I get an education some years ago, when my bank attempted to reach out to the town’s minority community.

LAST SUNDAY, I discussed six strategies that could help you avoid decisions you’ll regret. But what if it’s too late—and you’ve already made a financial choice that’s left you unhappy? Now what?
Below are six notions to help you manage, and hopefully minimize, your regret over past decisions:
1. Your imagined happy ending likely wouldn’t have happened. Back in 2004, I recall seeing an iPod for the first time. A co-worker had received one for Christmas.

WHEN A FAMILY OPTS to purchase a Mercedes rather than a Subaru, the rest of us might think they’re being extravagant. But you likely won’t find many people saying, “How stupid is that? They could’ve got around town for half the price.” We accept that a car isn’t a strictly utilitarian purchase.
But we aren’t nearly so forgiving when it comes to “suboptimal” investment and personal finance decisions. Today’s contention: We shouldn’t be too quick to deride the money choices made by others—and,

MOST OF US DON’T attempt to make a living trading stocks. Instead, investing is a long-term effort. We’re accumulating wealth to sustain us in retirement. Well, at least some of us try.
To that end, we need to save regularly over many decades, reinvest interest and dividends, and keep our eye on the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow.
How come we find this so hard? We get distracted. We start thinking short term.

WE GO THROUGH phases in our financial life, just as we do in our biological life. There seem to be a least five financial phases that adults pass through, each with their own priorities, risks, opportunities and tradeoffs.
Here’s how I would think about those five phases:
1. Party Time (ages 25 to 30)
Yes, you’re starting a career, and you want to get ahead and make money. But in all likelihood,