This article is part of the Retirement Financial Life Equation (RFLE) series. It was initially published in July 2023 and updated in December 2025. In a recent article, I discussed retirement spending and whether our costs go down as we age. In this article and the next, we’ll look at the other side of the … Read more
Many books and articles have been written about Christians and money, and some about retirement. This blog is about Christians and retirement, and I often write about money and stewardship. There’s much to say about these topics, but the Bible tells us what is most essential for us to know—not every practical detail about personal … Read more
This article is part of the Retirement Financial Life Equation (RFLE). It was initially published on February 8, 2023, and updated in February 2026. As I update this in early 2026, I’m nine years into retirement and increasingly focused on ensuring my portfolio can maintain purchasing power over a 25-30-year retirement horizon. The inflation spike … Read more
This article is part of the Retirement Financial Life Equation (RFLE) series. It was initially published on February 1, 2023, and updated in February 2026. The previous articles in this series discussed why retirees might want to own bonds and whether individual bonds might be preferable to bond funds. This article examines a unique category … Read more
This article is part of the Retirement Financial Lifestyle Equation (RFLE) series. It was initially published on January 25, 2023, and updated in January 2026. In the last two articles, I discussed how retirees (and others) use bonds as part of a diversified portfolio because of their stabilizing effect during stock market volatility. Bonds can … Read more
This article is part of the Retirement Financial Life Equation (RFLE) series. It was initially published on January 18, 2023, and updated in January 2026. Suppose you’ve decided to keep a portion of your portfolio in bonds, perhaps with a higher allocation percentage than stocks. In that case, you have another decision: whether to invest … Read more
The Secure Act 2.0 was finally passed as just one part of a massive funding package by the outgoing congress just before Christmas on December 23, 2022, and signed into law by the president as the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, an omnibus spending bill authorizing roughly $1.7 trillion in new Federal spending (yikes!). You’re … Read more
This article is part of the Retirement Financial Life Equation (RFLE) series. It was initially published on January 4, 2023, and updated in February 2026. An important preliminary note: Given the significant losses sustained by both the stock and bond markets in 2022, I started 2023 with a series of articles about “safe” retirement income … Read more
I recently read an interesting study on retirement from A.G. Edwards and AgeWave. It was published earlier this year. The study covered a lot of ground and was only partially focused on the financial aspects. You may want to read the study in its entirety, but in this article, I’ll touch on its most significant … Read more
