The BLS issued a number of measures of inflation for December Thursday. A few articles said that inflation in December was high. December inflation was a little higher than October or November, but the charts in this post would not show that it was very

I like arranging the most recent calendar year returns in the 3 by 3 matrix of the Investment Style Box. I get a snapshot of what outperformed and what underperformed the US stock market as a whole. This post shows 2023 results: the return

I found my portfolio needed some mechanical repair. I don’t have our bonds in the right location in our portfolio: I have far too little in our taxable Investment account and too much in our Retirement accounts. I scheduled tasks throughout 2024 such that by

The Federal Reserve signaled about ten days ago that they would not be raising interest rates in the battle to lower inflation. Most pundits conclude that the Fed will cut rates at least twice in 2024. The stock market loved this news and it’s up

I went to a talk Wednesday by Stu Hoffman, past Chief Economist at PNC. He included comments on the Magnificent Seven. I had not been following that term that’s applied to seven high-flying stocks. The story he told that bolstered the rationale as to

None of us could Recalculate to a real increase in our Safe Spending Amount (SSA) for the upcoming calendar year (see Chapters 2 and 9, Nest Egg Care [NEC]). Last week I displayed a detailed spreadsheet that showed the history of ten withdrawals

Yesterday I withdrew from our Investment Portfolio the amount we would safely spend throughout 2024: the same amount as last year adjusted for 3.2% inflation. This post describes my actions and the status of our portfolio right before our withdrawal for our spending. In summary,

I have been an Executor and Patti was an Executor and I was her helper. Both were VERY time consuming and somewhat painful processes. This site, EstateExec.com, looks to be a very useful organizational tool and says the average Executor spends over 500 hours

For much of 2023 it’s felt like we are climbing back from the market decline in 2022. We’ve fallen back a bit from August and can measure how far we are from what I judge as the market peak on November 8, 2021 –  exactly

I did my initial plan for our Safe Spending Amount for calendar 2024 the first week of August. I finalize the plan this month, and I can do that now. I have the two items of new information since August: 1) the 3.2% COLA