By Joel Dresang
I quit my first job after college in the throes of a recession. While many of my classmates were struggling to find work, I impetuously left a perfectly decent professional position to study abroad. I went from earning money to spending it.
Beyond individual benefits, jobs help economies. The work we do contributes to the prosperity of our employers, which benefits our coworkers and other stakeholders, including business partners and investors. […]
By Kyle Tetting
Economists at Yale University’s decades-long confidence surveys ask investors what they believe the probability is of a “catastrophic stock market crash in the U.S. in the next six months.” Individual investors were as pessimistic as ever in August, according to survey data. The most recent report shows little improvement. […]
By Joel Dresang
A study published in the Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences found “clear and alarming” evidence of declines in cognitive functioning among baby boomers. Findings could mean a reversal in recent trends of less dementia among older Americans. The financial fallout from a drop-off in cognitive skills is that it tends to coincide with the time in life when wealth is near its peak. [..]
By Joel Dresang
My age defines me as a digital immigrant, but I have learned to embrace technology that makes my life easier, especially when I think of retirement and beyond. Regardless of age, technology is playing an increasing role in keeping track of and communicating about our investments. […]
Because of the pandemic, more people have become familiar with videoconferencing and interacting virtually with financial professionals, which might make them more curious about ways technology can enrich them. Jason Scuglik has tips for how to learn more about devices and applications. […]
For years, Americans have harbored outsized fears of inflation. Not that concerns are unfounded. Like most variables that investors weigh, inflation cannot reliably be forecast. But it can be accounted for. “The best inflation protector is going to be stocks,” Steve Giles said in a recent Money Talk Podcast discussion with Brian Kilb and Kyle Tetting. […]
By Joel Dresang
Economists from San Diego State University and the University of Kansas have studied the political partisan bias of mutual fund managers. What they found suggests investors are best served by separating their wallets from their ballots. […]
By Joel Dresang
Spare change, it turns out, is another unintended casualty of the coronavirus. With businesses closed and spenders keeping their hands in their pockets, a coin shortage has emerged. It goes to show how profoundly COVID-19 has upended commerce—especially the 70% of the economy driven by consumer spending. […]
By Joel Dresang
Except for rare coins, lesser bits of money tend to get shortchanged not only in our finances but also in our language. Consider such expressions as penny ante, for instance, the lowest of stakes, and bad penny, something you can’t get rid of. Even nickels and dimes have become clumped together as derogatory references. […]
By Joel Dresang
In our 30 years as homeowners, my wife and I have had occasional conversations about the urgency of retiring our mortgage. Math always settles it: At a fixed rate below 4%, our home loan is costing us less than the average 6%-7% a year that balanced investments have returned historically. […]
By Joel Dresang
We associate the clause “till death do us part” with a marriage vow. Etymologically, though, it should be part of a mortgage. […]
As part of the $2 trillion initiative to stimulate the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress has suspended required minimum distributions for calendar year 2020. That means retirees in their 70s who were supposed to withdraw money from tax-advantaged retirement accounts such as IRAs can skip a year, thus avoiding the income tax they’d have to pay on such withdrawals. […]