Before we begin, just a heads up that I’ll be missing next week’s post but will be back at it the following week. Staying with the retirement theme from last week, let’s review the annual update to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s Retirement Confidence Survey. Many of the sponsors of this survey are insurance companies or those engaged in selling annuities so there’s that bent to the research if you dig into it, but the report is still a good temperature check on how Americans are planning for and living in retirement. I’m providing a link to the EBRI site below and to another industr ..read more

Deciding when to retire is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make. And it’s hard! Understandably, most people first look to their finances: Can I afford to retire? What’s my target number and am I there yet, as if it were a destination. Don’t get me wrong, your financial situation is a huge part of the answer about retirement readiness but perhaps more important is the personal side of the question. Are you actually ready to retire? This is a moving-target sort of question because our assumptions about what retirement means are often based on a past that no longer exists. For example and acc ..read more

In recent weeks we’ve talked about how investor expectations around the Fed and interest rates have helped disturb markets this quarter. Just last week the “Magnificent Seven”, large and popular tech stocks including Nvidia and Microsoft, collectively dropped almost a trillion dollars in market value, a record dollar amount for that timeframe. The dollar decline is that high because those companies have grown so much lately and even a relatively benign percentage drop comes off a larger number, but it’s still a noteworthy chunk of money. Beyond news like that, consternation has been growing fo ..read more

Are you getting a little tired of me mentioning how interest rates and the Fed have been influencing the stock and bond markets? Well, I sometimes tire of it because it’s been on the radar for years now and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. Of course I’m kidding around a bit because I do love this stuff – it just sometimes feels like a feedback loop. What does change, however, are the assumptions made by investors about the path of rates. Are they headed higher? That’s usually bad for stocks and bonds, depending on the context. Are they headed lower, which could be good for market ..read more

Good morning and Happy Tuesday. We’re less than a week out from Tax Day so here’s a grab bag of things to remember if you’re like me and your completed return has been ready and waiting for signature and mailing longer than I care to admit. Funding an IRA for last year – You can fund an IRA up until close of business this coming Monday, the 15th. The practical deadline for electronic funding from an outside bank is this Thursday but midday Friday, the 12th would be the last day since an overnight transfer is required. If you have to wait until the 15th to fund your IRA, a good option is to wal ..read more

You may have heard recently that the US is less happy than it used to be. I saw this news about an annual update from Gallup and others last week to their World Happiness Report. I won’t repeat it all here. Instead, I’ll provide some links and notes to scan through and you can read more when you have the time. First, here’s a link to a brief article on the update. I like this format because Axios presents us with the news item, gives a quick summary and a suggestion of why it matters, followed by some additional detail. It’s a news appetizer and we can consume the rest later if we want to. The ..read more

So which is it, is inflation getting better or worse? You get different answers depending on who you ask. The impact of inflation can be intensely personal and people have stories to share, but investors and the markets care more about inflation at the “headline” level then about individual anecdotes. Metrics like the Consumer Price Index and variations on this theme that come from the government may seem less relevant when compared to your personal finances, but they do move markets. As we’re all aware, official CPI numbers spiked a couple of summers ago following the pandemic before falling ..read more

A few years ago during Covid I decided to say “Yes” more. “No” is negative and exclusionary while “maybe” can be so unfulfilling. But yes is exciting and freeing while also sometimes being a little terrifying. Life is short, as they say, and I wanted to put myself out there and reset my definition of possible. So both in my personal and business life I was determined to move forward instead of getting stuck in analysis paralysis mode, as was my habit. Call it an occupational hazard. This led to some exciting ramifications but I won’t bore you with all that here. Instead, let me briefly share s ..read more

Before we delve into today’s post, just a heads up that I won’t be posting next Monday as I’ll be out of the office. On to this week’s post… We’re getting deeper into tax season and that’s stressful for just about everybody. Yet another, perhaps larger stressor for some families right now is that we’re also entering college acceptance season. Some high school seniors have already received acceptance letters but most traditionally learn their fate from about mid-March to mid-April. Also traditionally students and their families are expected to choose a school by May 1st. It’s an exciting time t ..read more

Contrasting narratives about our strong economy post-Covid continue to mystify just about everyone. From the Federal Reserve on down it’s been interesting to watch how forecasts and opinions evolved over the past few years. The economy was going to crash. We were supposed to be in a lengthy recession by now. High inflation was expected to be part of the new normal. And the government, overburdened by debt and intent on raising interest rates to fight inflation, was supposed to be the culprit. Or… high government spending would be absorbed by the economy. There would be imbalances, but these wo ..read more