A reader asks: On this week’s show you discussed lifestyle creep and that one way to mitigate it is by maintaining or increasing your savings rate. Are you aware of any frameworks on how to determine a ballpark target savings rate? Every year my wife and I create an annual budget that outlines the actual cash we receive from our paychecks and annual bonus (after 401k, taxes etc.), we set a target savings rate and th ..read more

Today’s Animal Spirits is brought to you by YCharts: See here for the YCharts report builder and proposal capabilities to save time and add value to client relationships! On today’s show, we discuss: 30 years of financial market returns Cathie Wood’s popular ARK funds are sinking fast  Young Americans are getting left behind by rising home prices, higher stocks Vanguard: How America Saves  Five thing ..read more

It feels like we’re in a weird place from the perspective of the economy and financial assets. Housing prices seem too high. Consumer prices seem too high. Stock prices seem too high. Government debt seems too high. I understand why people are worried. These things are cyclical and the lines can’t go up and to the right forever. Bear markets, financial crises, recessions, etc. are features we cannot do away wi ..read more

Today’s Talk Your Book is sponsored by SpiderRock Advisors: On today’s show, we spoke with Eric Metz, President and Chief Investment Officer of SpiderRock Advisors to discuss option-overlay strategies for advisors and investors. On today’s show, we discuss: The pending BlackRock acquisition of SpiderRock The SpiderRock origin story Utilizing covered-call strategies in a bull market The most frequent us ..read more

A colleague recently asked me to run the 30 year annual returns for U.S. stocks, bonds and cash. He just wanted the returns. I couldn’t help but slice and dice the numbers and overanalyze the data because that’s what we do here. Let’s dig in. First the annual return numbers for the S&P 500, 10 year treasuries and 3 month T-bills over the 30 years ending in 2023: Some thoughts about these numbers: St ..read more

Here’s the lede from a Bloomberg article about rich people trying to avoid taxes in New York City: At New Jersey’s Teterboro and Long Island’s Islip airports, dozens of private jets destined for Florida take off at times such as 11:42 p.m. or 11:54 p.m. Over at JFK, a regular flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, arrives at a seemingly purposeful time: about 15 minutes after midnight. Meanwhile, tax attorne ..read more

Bill Artzerounian joined me again this week to tackle questions about automating your finances, the tax implications of a company sale, how to offset RWM taxes and the pros and cons of a Roth 401k. Further Reading: Inflation Matters More For the Stock Market Than Interest Rates 1It’s also worth pointing out that interest rates under 2% have been rare historically. Rates have been at those levels less than 7% of the ..read more

Today’s Animal Spirits is brought to you by Franklin Templeton: See here for more information on the Franklin High Yield Corporate ETF (FLHY) On today’s show, we discuss: Wall Street traders keep underestimating America’s economic strength  Generation Z is unprecedentedly rich Where are growth, inflation and interest rates headed? We asked the economists Home renovations are booming thanks to high rat ..read more

There was a recent poll about my home state of Michigan where they asked people for their thoughts on the state of the nation’s economy today. Just 35% of people described the economy as excellent (6%) or good (29%) while 65% described it as either not so good (28%) or poor (37%). But when asked how they would describe their own personal financial situation these days, a majority of people (61%) described their circ ..read more

Today’s Talk Your Book is brought to you by Simplify Asset Management:   On today’s show, we spoke with Anupam Ghose, Managing Partner at System Two Advisors to discuss active equity exposure in India On today’s show, we discuss: Why India is different than China Growth opportunities within India How GDP growth translates to higher stock prices Why it’s important to have local staff in India ..read more