investing

Cryptic Crossword

If you don’t understand it, don’t invest in it

I took a new job last month, as I mentioned previously. While it is not in the finance industry, it’s in a space such that people often talk about financial transactions, venture capital, and especially about future developments in tech. … Read MoreRead More

Gold lights

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 MoreRead More

Pool water

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 MoreRead More

Sand

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 MoreRead More

Gold bricks

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 MoreRead More

Glass Globes

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 MoreRead More

Crosshairs

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 MoreRead More

Balanced rocks

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 MoreRead More

Half car

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 MoreRead More

Pinwheels

Here’s when we really want to be celebrating National Save For Retirement Week

I logged in to my Vanguard account earlier this week, and found this admonition: I must confess, I didn’t know about this celebration week. For this I can only apologize, although to be fair there are plenty of celebration days, … Read MoreRead More