Invest
Joe Biden Wants to Change 401(k) Plans
- Joe Biden Wants to Change 401(k) Plans - November 23, 2020
- Let’s Go Exploring! Boston - November 20, 2020
- How Does a Joe Biden Presidency Affect the FIRE Community? - November 8, 2020
A little over two weeks ago, Joe Biden was projected by every major media outlet to become the 46th president of the United States. Predictably, the current occupant of the White House and his supporters took it super well, taking to the airwaves to claim he won the election and challenging the results in court, alleging massive voter fraud. All of that sound and fury, however, has so far resulted in nothing. Over thirty lawsuits filed by the Trump administration have been thrown out because they have not shown any evidence of voter fraud affecting enough votes to sway the […]
What is a K Shaped Recovery?
- Joe Biden Wants to Change 401(k) Plans - November 23, 2020
- Let’s Go Exploring! Boston - November 20, 2020
- How Does a Joe Biden Presidency Affect the FIRE Community? - November 8, 2020
As a planet, we have been going through quite the shit year, to say the least. What started off as a strange-sounding disease being reported out of Asia has spun into a worldwide pandemic, a stock market plunge, and a worldwide recession. Through it all, economists and politicians (and one in particular) have been predicting an economic recovery, but the nature and “shape” of that recovery has been up for endless debate. Will it be a miraculous rapid V shaped recovery, as the President keeps crowing? Will it be a protacted U shape? Or maybe the math-nerdy Reverse Radical shape, […]
Why is the Stock Market Up While Employment Is Down?
- Joe Biden Wants to Change 401(k) Plans - November 23, 2020
- Let’s Go Exploring! Boston - November 20, 2020
- How Does a Joe Biden Presidency Affect the FIRE Community? - November 8, 2020
This has been a weird year to say the least. Back in January, if anyone mentioned Wuhan, most people would have said “Where’s that?” I miss thse days. It was a simpler time. Now we’ve been hit with a global pandemic, a sputtering economy, closed borders, and rampant unemployment. By any commonly accepted metric, whether it’s GDP, unemployment, or whatever, the economy is still nowhere close to normal. And yet stock markets are actually higher than where we started the year. How can this be possible? How can Wall Street be looking so rosy and optimistic when Main Street is […]
How Does the Zero-Interest Rate Environment Affect You?
- Joe Biden Wants to Change 401(k) Plans - November 23, 2020
- Let’s Go Exploring! Boston - November 20, 2020
- How Does a Joe Biden Presidency Affect the FIRE Community? - November 8, 2020
The other day a reader emailed me to ask “I’ve read your advice in the Investment Workshop about owning a mix of stocks and bonds, but that was back when bonds actually paid something. With interest rates in the gutter, does that advice still hold?” Great question. Let’s dig into this a bit, shall we? During the last economic downturn in 2008, one of the key decisions that helped save the economy (or rather, prevented it from falling off a cliff even more) was that central banks around the world chose to drop their key lending rate to near-zero. This […]
Find Out the Commuted Value of Your Pension
- Joe Biden Wants to Change 401(k) Plans - November 23, 2020
- Let’s Go Exploring! Boston - November 20, 2020
- How Does a Joe Biden Presidency Affect the FIRE Community? - November 8, 2020
“OMG, You have no idea what just happened!” a friend recently texted us. “What? What?” I texted back. “I did what you suggested, and I just heard back from my HR department. All I can say is: WOW!” Let me back up a bit. Defined Benefit vs. Defined Contribution Pension Over the years pensions in the private sector have largely gone the way of the dodo. Most companies these days, when they offer retirement benefits at all to their full-time employees, do it in the form of a defined contribution, or DC pension. How these work is that basically they […]
