Investing

A WHILE BACK, I was speaking with a fellow who had recently retired. He shared this observation, only half-jokingly: “Working was easy,” he said. What he meant was that financial management during our working years is more straightforward than it is in retirement. We earn and save and hope that our savings grow. But when we get to retirement, it becomes more complicated to know exactly how to manage those savings.
In the 1950s,

Judging by all the buzz on social media—and the emails from the youngsters in my family—the SpaceX IPO appears to be the first investment in history with no downside.
The case seems straightforward:

Near-monopoly space launch provider.
Starlink.
Defense contracts in a tense world where every military is arming itself to the hilt.
AI somehow.
Mars.

Like flag pins and patriotic hats, accepting SpaceX’s invitation to participate in the IPO appears to be an American civic duty.

JONATHAN CLEMENTS’S final book was released this week. Titled Money and Me, it traces the arc of Jonathan’s nearly four-decade career as a personal finance columnist.
Money and Me starts with the story of a man named George Cope, who was a nineteenth century tobacco baron. At the time of his death in 1888, Cope was one of Britain’s richest men. But within just two generations, his fortune was gone.

Back in mid-January I decided I owned too much of too few things. The big American tech names had crept up to take an uncomfortable slice of everything I held, and with being recently retired, that started to feel less like a strong portfolio and more like a bit of a risk. So I trimmed some of it back.
A portion of what came off went into an Asia Pacific fund, ex-Japan. The valuations looked decent,

Our own long-time contributor Adam Grossman was this week’s guest on one of my favorite podcasts Morningstar’s The Long View.  You can listen anywhere you hear podcasts or at this link:
Adam Grossman: Asset Allocation Is an Investor’s Best Defense | Morningstar
Congratulations, Adam!

ECONOMICS IS KNOWN as “the dismal science,” and perhaps for good reason. Oftentimes it can be abstract and overly academic. There are, however, certain economic concepts that can be helpful to individual investors. Below are two that I see as especially important.
When it comes to the government’s ability to control—or least influence—the economy, there are two main levers. The first is fiscal policy, which refers to Congress’s (as well as state and local governments’) ability to levy taxes and to spend money. 

Upon graduating in the early 1990s with a degree in English, folks would routinely ask: “Are you gonna teach?” That wasn’t in my plan, though. Instead, I landed an office job as a writer at a major magazine. The pay wasn’t great, but I could say I was a professional writer.
While there, I became eligible for my very first 401(k), administered through Vanguard.
Lucky for me, around that same time, Human Resources brought in a financial advisor to meet with my department,

I WAS SCROLLING through social media recently and saw somebody dismiss retirement accounts as “paper wealth.” The argument was familiar: Your money is locked away and you’re waiting for permission to access it.

There’s a grain of truth here. Retirement accounts do come with rules. But much of the discussion online ignores how flexible these accounts actually are. More important, it ignores the enormous tax advantages.
Most people today will likely live well beyond age 59½.

BACK IN 2010, at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, a shareholder challenged Warren Buffett. Noting that shares of motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson had nearly tripled over the prior year, he asked Buffett why he had chosen to buy the company’s bonds rather than its stock. Buffett’s reply was a two-minute masterclass in how to think about investments. It’s worth walking through it point by point.
To start, Buffett acknowledged that hindsight can be cruel.

Do any HumbleDollar readers use direct indexing? (If you have to ask what that is, you are not likely using this.) If you are either using this relatively new financial tool, or if you seriously considered it and made a reasoned decision not to use it, I’d appreciate hearing from you.
My personal situation is an overallocation to cash (55%) caused primarily by selling out of a low-basis ETF that created an overconcentration in tech stocks.

RETIREMENT IS LIFE’S most expensive purchase. During our working years, we deprive our present selves of immediate pleasure by refusing to spend money for nicer cars, a bigger house or a vacation to boast about. Instead, we squirrel away those saved dollars with an eye toward keeping the future us fed, clothed and living indoors. 
At age 64, after decades of choosing to save and invest a large chunk of each paycheck, rather than spend it,

AN UNUSUAL STORY hit the news this week. GameStop, the struggling video game retailer, announced a bid to buy eBay. The offer was unexpected, but what surprised investors more was the economics of the proposed deal. eBay is many times larger than GameStop, making it difficult to understand how GameStop would be able to finance the acquisition.
GameStop has offered $56 billion for eBay, comprised of cash and stock. For the cash portion, according to its May 3 press release,

OUR FIRST GRANDCHILD recently arrived, which naturally has us thinking about the smartest ways to build a strong financial foundation for her future. In 2019, I wrote Take a Break, which outlined saving strategies on behalf of children. Since then, the landscape has changed with the introduction of Trump accounts and Roth-conversion pathways for 529 accounts. 
Families have four tax-advantaged savings approaches on behalf of young children plus the Roth IRA option once the child has earned income – 529 education savings account,

IN THE INVESTMENT world, May 1st is a notable day. It was on May 1, 1975 that the Securities and Exchange Commission deregulated the brokerage industry. For the 183 years prior to that, trading commissions on the New York Stock Exchange had been fixed at uniformly high rates. But when deregulation arrived, competition got going. That’s when discount brokers like Charles Schwab got rolling, and over time, May Day, as it’s now referred to,

On April 28, 1989, my wife Suzie and I said “I do.” As we walked out of the church, the S&P 500 was sitting at a modest 309 points. Unfortunately, nobody thought to gift us a pre-funded index fund that day. What we actually received was three toasters, a bread maker, and enough crystal glassware to open a small shop.
But here’s a question worth asking as our anniversaries have stacked up: what if someone had slipped a $10,000 index fund certificate into one of those cards?