My challenge to you: List your top financial mistakes. Not sure you want to invite the ridicule of others? To make everybody a little more comfortable, I’ll go first. Here are my top six: When I started investing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I bought individual stocks and actively managed mutual funds. Admittedly, I went this route because it allowed this cash-strapped investor to get started in the financial markets with a few hundred dollars,| HumbleDollar
ON SUNDAY MORNING, May 19, I was enjoying croissants and coffee with Elaine at the kitchen table, while watching the neighborhood sparrows, finches, cardinals and squirrels have their way with the bird feeder. All was right in our little world, except I was a little wobbly when walking—the result, I suspected, of balance issues caused by an ear infection. It was going to be a busy week, and I figured that it would be smart to get some antibiotics inside me,| HumbleDollar
TODAY’S FINANCIAL lesson: We can manage risk—but terrible stuff can still happen. This thought, of course, was prompted by my recent cancer diagnosis. But the notion is also all too relevant to money management. But let’s start with health matters. In 1995, I began training for my first marathon, which I ran in May 1996 in Pittsburgh and finished in just under three hours. Ever since, I’ve been a bit of an exercise nut.| HumbleDollar
WHO HAS TIME TO die? I never realized death would be so busy. I thought I had my financial affairs in good order. But in the two months since my cancer diagnosis, I’ve made countless financial tweaks, mostly with a view to making things easier after my death for my wife Elaine and my two children. Here are just some of the steps I’ve taken: I took my two checking accounts—my personal account and the business account for HumbleDollar—and made Elaine the joint account holder with rights...| HumbleDollar
I’VE ALWAYS ASSUMED my financial life wasn’t so different from that of others—and that made writing personal-finance articles a whole lot easier. I, too, wanted to own a home, buy the right insurance, pay for the kids’ college, and amass enough for a long and comfortable retirement. On top of that, I wasn’t some financial minority—a highly paid executive, or a successful business owner, or the recipient of a hefty inheritance. Instead, I was like most everybody else,| HumbleDollar
WHEN WE RETIRE, we win back control over our daily life. Gone is the boss, the expectation that we’ll be at work at a certain hour, the worry about what the next office email will bring. We have a degree of freedom that, in many cases, we last knew when we were students contemplating a long summer vacation. But even as we gain that freedom, there’s also much that we lose. If we’re to be happy retirees,| HumbleDollar
