Hats off if you’re maximizing your 401k deferrals and reaching the federal employee contribution limit each calendar year: $19,000 in 2019 if you’re age 49 or younger or $25,000 in 2019 if you’re age 50 or over. Note: these limits have increased to $19,500 and $26,000 respectively for the tax year 2021. Additional congratulations if you’re [...]
The House of Representatives passed a bill on May 23rd known as the SECURE Act (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019) which would initiate the biggest changes to retirement accounts in over a decade. The bill had bipartisan support, passing with a vote of 417-3. It now heads to the Senate [...]
I got a flu shot in the fall of 1999. It is a seemingly trivial detail of life that should be long-forgotten but was, instead, memorialized by what followed. A few weeks after receiving this influenza vaccine, I suffered through the historic changing of the calendar from 1999 to 2000 with a debilitating flu. That [...]
The Greek philosopher, Socrates, left no known writings. Only secondary sources exist for historians to piece together a recount of his work and teachings. The Platonic dialogues - roughly 30 dialogues written by Socrates' student, Plato - provide the source for much of what we know about Socrates. The dialogues generally involve Socrates as the [...]
Last week’s Astute Angle post explained some fallacies related to mortgage borrowing and how the free pass treatment of home mortgages as "good debt" leads to poor financial decision-making. In response to that post, I received a few questions related to the "good debt" label of student loans that prompted another debt-centric post. Three of [...]
Baseball, apple pie, mom, Chevrolet, hot dogs, and home ownership. Americana. To question any of these things is un-American. And so it becomes a largely unquestioned truth that borrowing money to buy a home is "good debt." Home ownership, after all, is just living the American dream. But as a result of accepting this good debt [...]
You may have heard the news. Between October 1st and December 31st, the stock market delivered its worst quarter since 2008 to culminate its worst year since 2008. It was the stock market's worst December since 1931. What caused the stock market selloff? As we say often, there is rarely ever a definitive answer [...]
26 days into my professional career, something that had never happened before, happened. And it was not an unprecedented event that largely went unnoticed – like the time, early in my career, when I inadvertently wore different dress shoes on my left and right feet. While that remains memorable to at least one person, the [...]
Investing in the stock market probably does not feel boring in December 2018. Scary, volatile, unsettling, and capricious are terms that might be used to describe investing over the past few weeks. But not boring. Yet successful investing is boring. Beautifully boring. Famous hedge fund investor George Soros summed it up well: "If investing is [...]
Let's have an honest conversation about things that are rare. 1) A perfect game in baseball In over 210,000 Major League Baseball games spanning 140 years, there have been just 23 perfect games. 2) A full moon solstice According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, there have been 10 full moon winter solstices and 8 full [...]
