LOOKING TO GET MORE happiness from your dollars? Here are nine super-simple strategies that you can put into practice today:
1. Buy a gift for somebody else. Research says we get more pleasure from spending on others than spending on ourselves. Want extra credit? Give a gift when it isn’t expected. The recipient will be especially happy—which means you’ll be, too.
2. Start planning next year’s vacation. That’ll give you a long period of pleasurable anticipation,

MANY OF US ENGAGE in mental accounting, thinking of our mortgage as separate from our savings account and our job as unrelated to our portfolio. But these are all pieces of our sprawling financial life—and it’s important to understand how everything fits together. Here are 12 examples:
1. If you have plenty of cash in the bank, you can probably raise the deductibles on your auto and homeowner’s insurance.
2. If you’re inclined to buy bonds,

DO YOU HAVE THE correct mix of stocks, bonds and other investments? Here are 11 signs you’re on the right track:
1. You’re so well diversified that you always own at least one disappointing investment.
2. Your livelihood isn’t riding on both your paycheck and your employer’s stock.
3. If the stock market’s performance over the next five years was miserable, you wouldn’t be.
4. You can remember the last time you rebalanced.
5.

LOOKING TO IMPROVE your money management? Here are 31 rules for the financial road ahead:
1.  Check your retirement progress by taking your nest egg and applying a 4% annual portfolio withdrawal rate, equal to $4,000 a year for every $100,000 saved. Will you have enough retirement income—or should you be saving more?
2. Don’t automatically claim Social Security at age 62. It often makes sense to delay benefits so you get a larger monthly check,

RISING LIFE expectancies, coupled with slower population growth, have a huge impact on how we should manage our money. Here are seven key financial implications of today’s momentous demographic shift:
1. Economic growth will be slower. Over the past 50 years, half of the economy’s 2.9% annual growth has come from increasing the number of workers and half from increasing the productivity of all workers. But with the labor force projected to grow at 0.5% a year,

IN ADDITION TO MUTUAL funds, closed-end funds and ETFs, you might hear about a fourth type of fund: unit investment trusts, or UITs. These are unmanaged baskets of securities sold by brokers during a onetime public offering period, with investors paying perhaps a 4% sales commission. Each UIT has a maturity date, though some sponsors of UITs will redeem the funds from investors before maturity.
Are UITs a good investment? Investors don’t appear wildly excited about them.

WHEN YOU BUY A BOND, the best guide to your likely return is the yield—but it isn’t always. Why not? There are two potential issues. First, a high yield is often a sign that the bond’s issuer is in shaky financial condition and could default on its interest payments. This is the big concern with high-yield junk bonds, discussed later in this chapter.
But even if the issuer is in fine financial shape, the yield you’re quoted may be deceptive.

TOWARD THE END of the year, financial advisors often advocate tax-loss harvesting. The notion: You sell losing investments—usually stocks and stock funds—in your taxable account, and then use the realized capital losses to offset realized capital gains and up to $3,000 in ordinary income, thus trimming your tax bill.
Sound like a smart strategy? If you trade individual stocks actively—or you’re a really bad investor—you should be on the lookout for tax losses, and not just at the end of the year.

REBALANCING IS THE strategy of setting target percentages for your various portfolio holdings. Thereafter, you would occasionally do some buying and selling, to bring your investment mix back into line with your targets. That can potentially allow you to take advantage of market declines. Elsewhere, we discuss rebalancing at greater length.
How does rebalancing look mathematically? Suppose you have your money divided equally between two investments, A and B. Investment A loses 20% this year,

YOUR PORTFOLIO’S growth might be dented by taxes, a market downturn or your own need for spending money. But there’s another potentially large subtraction: investment costs.
To be sure, investment costs often don’t appear that significant. But their impact is magnified over time, as the small annual subtraction slows the process of compounding. Let’s say you are choosing between two stock mutual funds, one charging 0.5% and the other charging 1%.
If both funds match the market’s 6% annual return before costs,

A CHARITABLE remainder trust is similar to a charitable gift annuity, but you retain greater control over how the money is invested, who the trustee is and which charity ultimately benefits. The downside: A charitable remainder trust is more involved, and you’ll likely need legal help to set it up.
How does a charitable remainder trust work? You transfer assets to an irrevocable trust, which then pays you income for a fixed time period or until you die.

A CHARITABLE GIFT annuity is similar to a plain-vanilla, immediate fixed annuity purchased from an insurance company. You hand over a chunk of money to a charity, which then pays you income for the rest of your life. But there are five key differences from an insurance company’s annuity:

A charitable gift annuity can give you an immediate tax deduction, which is based on how much the charity estimates it will have left upon your death.

CHARITABLE GIFTS should principally be motivated by generosity. Still, don’t overlook the tax advantages.
If you give cash, you can deduct the entire contribution. For instance, if you’re in the 24% federal income tax bracket, a $1 contribution will save you 24 cents in taxes. Usually, you only get this tax benefit if you itemize your deductions, rather than taking the standard deduction. If you typically take the standard deduction—which will become more common,

BEFORE GIVING TO a charity, you want to be confident the money will end up helping your favorite cause, rather than being lavished on handsome salaries for the charity’s staff and other administrative costs.
Doing an online search may turn up any complaints about the charity. Your state government or the Better Business Bureau might also have complaints on file. Check out the BBB website for charities and donors at Give.org. In addition, you might review the charity’s Form 990,

MANY FOLKS ARE uncomfortable discussing their finances. Still, you should seriously consider talking to your children and other affected family members about your financial situation and especially your estate plan.
Why? For starters, it’ll give your family an idea of what they can expect to inherit, and they can then factor that into their own financial decisions. It can also give you a chance to explain your bequests, especially if you plan to give more to some family members than others.