Essential vs. Discretionary Spending: Planning Your Retirement Budget
Not all of your spending is created equal. And it would help if you didn’t pretend like it is. But it’s distressingly common for people to simply decide they want a certain amount of income each year in retirement and leave it at that. Even leaving aside how our spending changes throughout retirement, it’s essential […]
Transitions in Retirement: A Whirlwind of Change
Retirement is sometimes portrayed as a relatively uneventful, static chapter in life. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth! For most, retirement will be filled with significant life changes and transitions. Some of these changes we pursue, some we must learn to accept, some transitions can happen concurrently while others may require our […]
What to Do in Retirement: Finding Purpose Beyond the Numbers
There’s a lot of focus on the “numbers” in retirement planning. And there’s a lot of focus on the specific tools and techniques that you can use. But there’s not much focus on actually being retired. But that’s what all of the spreadsheets, and research, and calculations are there to support. And all of the […]
How Useful is Historical Data in Predicting Future Returns?
Effectively all of our understanding of finance and investing is based, at least to some degree, on historical returns. But how good of a guide is the past? Is it actually different this time? We’ve already talked about the limitations of models in how we understand investing, and how we use statistics to analyze what’s […]
2024 – Q1 Quarterly Market Review
2023- Q3 Quarterly Market Review
What is the Role of Bonds in Your Portfolio?
A lot of the time, investors view each of their investments in isolation. They focus on how this fund or that fund did. But this is a fundamentally wrong headed approach. Just like your investment portfolio only really matters – and can only be evaluated – in the context of your overall retirement plan, you […]
What is the Efficient Market Hypothesis? And What Does it Mean for You?
Navigating the financial markets can often feel like you’re in a labyrinth, with news outlets, analysts, and every ‘guru’ on the internet vying for your attention, each one painting a picture of the market landscape teeming with endless opportunities for extraordinary gains (or horrific losses). But there’s an easy way for investors (whether you’re focused […]
Choosing Between Individual Bonds and Bond Funds in Your Investment Portfolio
When investors are looking at their bonds, one of the most common questions is whether they should use individual bonds or bond funds (either in the form of mutual funds or ETFs) in their investment portfolio. Interest rates have come up over the past few years, so the yields on bonds have also come up. […]
Home Sweet Home Bias: Overweighting US Stocks in Your Portfolio
Investing is deceptively simple. Until it’s not. As investors, we want to start with the market portfolio—that is, by definition, the most efficient portfolio. But we’ll also want to customize our investments to address our specific situation. For instance, the global bond market is substantially bigger than the global stock market, but most retirement-focused investors’ […]
2023 – Q4 Quarterly Market Review
2023- Q3 Quarterly Market Review
