"So, I see Southwest is changing to assigned seats," many relatives and friends of my inlaws' family prompted me during our Thanksgiving visit ( Read more... )

There was good news in finance this week, at least for those fortunate enough to have a lot of it. Across 2023 more have a lot of it. Fidelity reported that the number of its customers who have retirement account balances of $1 million or more increased by 40% from a year earlier. Here's a chart of numbers published in this article in Yahoo! ( Read more... )

Over the past several years I've made a habit of using New Year's as a time to reflect on, and take stock of, the year just finished. Ideally I would've shared my reflections on 2023 three weeks ago, at the turn of the new year. I've left this idling because it's been a challenge figuring out how to frame it. The challenge has been that my gut ( Read more... )

I don't know if it's just my newsfeed, but investment self-help author Robert Kiyosaki has been in the news a lot lately. It seems like every week recently I've seen another article or two about him. Kiyosaki is author of the classic financial literacy book, Rich Dad, Poor DadI picked up a copy of the book in the 2010s and devoured it. I kinda wish ( Read more... )

I saw an interesting article about saving money the other day. "A couple who retired early with $4.3 million says the FIRE lifestyle is wearing thin: ‘We don't want to just keep throwing money on the pile and keep being cheap.’" The story has been picked up by a number of news outlets. Here's a Yahoo! article link (25 Jun 2023) because it's the ( Read more... )

After Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and was seized by regulators on Friday, the government has taken steps to prevent further runs on the bank. First, on Sunday the FDIC announced that it would make all depositors whole. It extended its typical insurance limit of $250,000 per account to cover the full amount on deposit. This is not a "bank bailout ( Read more... )

Silicon Valley Bank has collapsed. "So what?" you might think, "Isn't that just some community bank for liberal techies who care more about whether the lollipops in the lobby are cruelty free and LGBTQIA+ positive than what the interest rate is?First, SVB is not a community bank but a commercial bank. That means instead of offering personal ( Read more... )

A few days ago I saw an article that caught my eye, "America's 401(k) millionaires have plunged by a third" (CBS MoneyWatch 24 Feb 2023). It's interesting because (a) I watch news about investing and retirement; and (b) it's another article in a line of junk statistics about 401(k) accounts I've seen covered in the news ( Read more... )

2022 was a tough year for investors. After the broad market rose 25% in 2021 investors were looking forward to a continuation in 2022. Indeed the market rose on the first two trading days of the year... but then it started falling. It never regained its highs. As the chart below shows, the S&P 500 Index finished the year 19.2% below its start (3849 ( Read more... )

Last week I wrote Coming Out Ahead with a 401(k) providing a simple example of how investing through a tax deferred account such as a 401(k) nets you more money than investing through a taxable account. Two things about that....

• One, it was frankly too simple as it showed an investment that grew only through capital appreciation. Fewer than 20% of ( Read more... )