I get an e-newsletter by a smart financial advisor named Jay Mooreland. His focus is not on beating the markets or beating our clients into submission about saving enough. It’s about recognizing how our brains work, often contrary to our best interests, to sabotage our progress in personal finance. Jay recently addressed a Wall Street…
It’s October, and like candy corns, witch hats, and tacky people putting up their Christmas trees already, you have come to expect the annual review on the best and worst performing sectors of the economy so far this year. As ever, I put the parental advisory warning that this is informational only – kind of…
Super-fast blog today! If you are looking to generate regular payments out of your portfolio and find yourself in a quandary of what securities to sell, try this: Turn off the dividend/interest reinvestment feature in your mutual funds. Those distributions will go to cash and can build up your liquid position without selling shares. Caution: …
Retirement in America is not for wimps. For most people, gone are the days when you hang up your tools one day and then go home to a steady pension for the rest of your life. Nowadays, we must consider Social Security claiming strategies, required minimum distributions rules, ever shifting tax brackets, and changing…
Yep, your investments are down and so are your spirits. Those looking for a silver lining may be talking about tax loss harvesting. What does that even mean? Warning, if your money is all in retirement accounts (IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, this concept doesn’t apply. Tax loss harvesting is only for accounts where capital…
Maybe inflation isn’t all bad. Social Security checks are going up 8.7%, you can buy a 1-year CD earning 4.5% interest, and (for those who aren’t spending every last time on more expensive groceries) we are seeing a big jump in retirement contribution limits for 2023. To summarize: 401(k), 403(b), 457 plans: Under age…
Let’s start off with a direct quote for how the October 2021 version of this blog started: “I guess it’s a good year in the stock market when the worst performing sectors (so far, as of writing this blog on September 13th) aren’t negative, just not up as high as the best performers. My sage…
Ugh, September is one of those months with FIVE Thursdays. That’s a lot of blogs to write so I’m taking a breather this week and re-running a Blog from July 2022 about risk tolerance and stock market drops. The financial services industry has for years been collectively handwringing about how to measure clients’ real…
I bonds are getting a lot of interest because inflation is finally up. Over the past 10 years, the return has been around 2%-3% average over the long term. Consider these things about I Bonds: You can only put $10,000/year per Social Security number in them per year. You must hold them for 1…
Do you feel like the financial services industry is plotting to sell you yet a new way to invest your money? Do you wonder if investment companies are constantly looking for a way to make themselves seem smarter than you and justify charging you fees? You are right! Enter the idea of Direct Indexing. …
