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
A character in the story of the birth and early days of Jesus we often overlook is a man named Simeon. Simeon was a devout Jew who regularly worshiped in the Temple at Jerusalem and was there when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus in. Luke tells the story in Chapter 2, verses 22 thru 35: … Read more
An increasing number of boomer-aged families are receiving inheritances; it’s all part of a trillion-dollar transfer of wealth that will happen over the next several decades. Gen. Xers are next in line. Many families near or in retirement have aging parents, so an inheritance may be in their future. They can come in different forms—possessions, … 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
I recently re-read Tim Challies’ article titled ”Rule #5: Ponder the Brevity of Life (8 Rules for Growing in Godliness), in which he wrote the following: Aware of death’s inevitability, we must discipline ourselves to ponder just how short our lives will be. Though our hearts are set on immortality, we are heading toward certain … Read more
This article is part of the Retirement Financial Life Equation (RFLE) series. It was initially published in October 2022 and updated in December 2025. If you read much about retirement finance, you’ll see a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric about “Required Minimum Distributions,” or “RMDs.” You’d think RMDs are going to sneak up on you and … Read more
The mid-term elections are nearing, and the next presidential election is only two years away. There’s already a significant uptick in the super-charged rhetoric from both sides of the increasingly polarized political spectrum. I’ve never directly written about politics or the culture wars; I’ve preferred to instead think about how they impact economics and personal … Read more
