I hope you DO HAVE what would seem to others as a cookie-cutter portfolio. Patti and I have been watching more TV in the evenings and less Netflix or Prime Video. I’m seeing many more ads than usual. Almost every night I see an ad

No, you should not trust Retirement Withdrawal Calculators (RWCs) that use the Monte Carlo method. DON’T EVEN LOOK AT THEM. Two basic types of RWC differ in the way they build and test sequences of returns. For the exact same planning decisions, they give very

Two types of Retirement Withdrawal Calculators (RWCs) build sequences of future financial returns we test to make the key decisions for our financial retirement plan. I used to think that the two types were about the same for planning purposes. I no longer trust one

What can each of us do to fight this damn virus? How will you live your life to be sure you don’t get infected and possibly die? The purpose of this post is to describe how Patti and I are thinking about how we will

Let’s assume you followed last week’s post and found you have a couple of stock funds – or even stocks– in your taxable account that just aren’t performing. How do you decide to pull the trigger to sell and take the net proceeds and buy

I’d guess that many retirees – and clearly many investors – have a lingering legacy of actively managed funds in their taxable account. The market has declined, and this a good time to consider selling an underperforming actively managed fund. You’d sell and invest the

The market has declined. It’s a good time to decide if you should sell actively managed funds you may hold in your taxable account. You’d sell and take the net proceeds and buy peer index funds for a better long-term return. You have a number

Surprise – or at least it’s a surprise to me – the CARES Act gives us older retirees the option to skip RMD this year. This post addresses whether or not you should do that. My conclusion: most retirees have to take more than

You don’t HAVE to sell ANYTHING – stocks or bonds – in your Traditional retirement accounts when you take your RMD or any other withdrawal from your Traditional retirement accounts. These two decisions are separate: 1) How to take your RMD and 2) What securities

This has been another stressful week. I can’t break the habit of looking at my portfolio, but I think I’ve been able to narrow what I look at. There’s a big part of my portfolio I don’t want to look at very often: we all