I’ve often said that my one big stock tip is don’t invest in stocks. There’s too much volatility, too much risk, and not enough gain. We often say that if we had only invested in Apple in 1995, or Amazon … Read More … Read More
investing
If you don’t understand it, don’t invest in it
Are you investing or just speculating?
The economics of the household aren’t great. Not only do you need to keep a reasonably good-paying job for at least four decades, but also you need to plan for a period of your life, say the last third of it, … Read More … Read More
What if you can’t contribute to a 401(k)?
In my previous post, I talked about what to do if you’re ineligible for contributing to a Roth IRA. This most commonly is due to having an income over the limit set for those contributions. But just like you could … Read More … Read More
What if you can’t contribute to a Roth IRA?
Roth IRAs are awesome. There’s just no other way that I can see that regular folks can invest in a way that lets money grow tax-free, without any Required Minimum Distributions or anything like that. Plus, a retirement account where … Read More … Read More
What about gold?
I love talking about investing. A slow and steady plan that can enable almost anyone to ensure a comfortable future for themselves and their loved ones? Yes please, sign me up. When I talk about investing, I speak exclusively of mutual … Read More … Read More
Past performance is no guarantee of future results, or is it?
Any time you read any financial prospectus or ad, or watch a commercial about any investment opportunity, or really, ingest any financial media at all, one phrase will always show up in one form or another: “Past performance is no … Read More … Read More
Do you want to invest in a target date fund?
In 2006, Congress passed the Pension Protection Act. It’s a scintillating read. Among much else, it provided statutory authority for employers to enroll workers in retirement plans automatically, and also established criteria of “safe harbor investments” to protect employers from … Read More … Read More
Am I making a mistake by not rebalancing my portfolio?
I believe that investing is a crucial step in your plan to become financially secure. So I recommend putting as much as you can into an investment portfolio like a 401(k) at work, or (especially) a Roth IRA that you … Read More … Read More
More lying with numbers: What it really means to be half-wrong about interest rates
It is possible to lie with numbers, or at least mislead. We’ve seen this before when talking about how many hours you have available to work in a given week. It’s not the numbers that are doing the lying, of … Read More … Read More