Individual Bonds or Bond Funds?

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: Should you invest in individual bonds or a bond fund? With interest rates at higher levels than they’ve been in many years, some folks (including yours truly) wonder … Read more

Do Bonds Still Belong in a Retiree’s Portfolio?

An important preliminary note: Given what took place in both the stock and bond markets in 2022, I’m starting the new year with a short series of articles about “safe” retirement income and the roles that bonds and other instruments may play in providing it. But from the outset, I want to reiterate some important … Read more

How Sequence Of Returns Affects Your Retirement

I have written about the significant changes in the U.S. and the world economies and how they might impact our retirement portfolios. These changes are not all bad (for example, many people think it’s good that the Fed wants to take a more passive role in controlling the U.S. economy—after a round of quantitative tightening, … Read more

Responding to ”Epochal Change”

If you believe, as I do, that we’re likely in a period of “epochal change” (which I defined as the next few decades not being like they were for the last few), we’re left with the question I posed at the conclusion of my previous article: What to do? The most important thing Before I … Read more

A Challenging Time for Retirement Investors

(Note: We all have our eyes, hearts, and prayers directed toward what is going on in Ukraine. But with everything happening in the world—globally and domestically—I think part of good retirement stewardship is acquiring understanding so that we can make wise decisions about how to manage God’s money during difficult times (Prov. 1:5). If you … Read more