Lists

LAST WEEK, I TALKED about Carveth Read, the English philosopher who’s famous for saying, “It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.” This, in my view, is one of the most important ideas in personal finance.
My focus last week was on the “vaguely right” part of Read’s statement. But what about the second part—the importance of not being “exactly wrong”? Below are seven situations in which trying to be exactly right might,

I’M AN 81-YEAR-OLD retired radiologist. Early in my medical career, I realized my stock broker was managing my account for his benefit, not mine. I fired him and took charge of managing my own investments.
Today, I have four granddaughters who are starting to invest. Over the years, as I learned more about personal finance, I put together a 130-page financial notebook. My granddaughters probably don’t want to read my lengthy notes, so I decided to put together a one-page summary.

I GOT AN EMAIL last month that also went to half-a-dozen other HumbleDollar writers—those of us who have been the site’s most prolific contributors. It came from HumbleDollar’s editor. His request: Please come up with a list of your 10 favorite articles that you’ve written for the site.
I immediately knew what type of article I’d select—ones that weren’t just about personal finance, but rather were about more than money.

ONE OF THE MOST important ideas in personal finance comes not from a financial expert but from a 20th century English philosopher named Carveth Read. “It is better to be vaguely right,” he wrote, “than exactly wrong.”
Why is this idea important? It gets to the heart of why financial planning can be so tricky. For starters, few people—if any—can claim to be perfectly rational when it comes to money decisions. But more to the point,

RETIREMENT PLANNING videos and books can be frustrating because of the conflicting advice from so-called experts. Often, these experts are outside the mainstream. They retired in their 30s, or saved 50% of their income, or claim to be living so frugally in retirement that they need to replace just half of their old salary.

I prefer to think more about average Americans facing the reality and challenges of planning for retirement in the real world.

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?

READERS HAVE PERUSED almost 18 million HumbleDollar pages over the past six years. 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? Below are the 30 best-read pieces since the site’s launch on Dec. 31, 2016.
If the list seems a little eclectic, there’s a good reason: Many of the articles that have enjoyed big traffic over the past six years have been those that got promoted by far larger sites.

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.

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.

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.

PESSIMISTS SEEM LIKE they’re clever and sophisticated, but—if you want to make money—take my advice: Invest like an optimist.
I’m not talking wild-eyed optimists who are over-enthused about meme stocks and nonfungible tokens. Instead, I’m talking about a fundamental belief that economic setbacks are temporary and the future will be better than the past. Struggling to stay cheery amid 2022’s rotten financial markets? Here are five reasons for optimism.
1. The news is terrible.

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.