It’s January 2023, and you know what that means! Net worth post time! Every year I take the time to do one of these “net worth” blog posts for the previous year. I add-up all our different stock and retirement accounts, and then calculate my net worth. I do this just once per year.
I have no clue what my net worth is the other 364.25 days of the year…
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There’s a urban legend in investing that goes something like this: “Stocks keep moving up and to the right forever! Just keep putting money into the market and it will make you rich.”
That may have been true over the past decade, but 2022 has been a very difficult year for investors. Stock prices don’t always keep climbing…
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Are you “happy as a clam” with your stock returns in 2022? If you have money invested in the U.S. stock market, it’s probably hard to be happy at the moment. Instead of the positive returns that we’ve come to expect in recent years, the stock market has been falling into negative territory this year…
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To say that I’m always on the lookout for new investing ideas, is something of an understatement. It’s a constant process of discovery, education, and investigation. Every time I pick up a new product in the store, or encounter a new service online, I’m always checking to see if it’s a public company. It’s practically a habit these days to check and see if it’s public…
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Compounding. In a word, it’s the “secret sauce” that makes wonderful things like retirement possible. If you want to have enough money to retire someday, you really WANT to compound your money. And there’s no better investment to compound money than common stocks.
Sure, you could stash your savings in a bank account, but at today’s interest rates you won’t be compounding more than a few pennies per month…
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Every once in awhile a new investing book (or personal finance book) comes along that gets an incredible amount of attention. It’s on all the best seller lists. Everyone on your Twitter feed is talking about it. Amazon reviewers give it glowing 5-star reviews, and many people you respect and follow are recommending it.
It seems like the book is the best thing since sliced bread.
Any time I see this much positive buzz, I get skeptical. Maybe it’s the contrarian in me, but all that marketing looks like a giant flashing-red warning sign…
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If there’s one unsung hero of the personal financial world that needs a medal, I think it should be Hendrik Bessembinder. “Hendrik who?” you’re probably wondering…
Hendrik Bessembinder, is a professor from Arizona State University that researches and studies long-term wealth creation of the stock market. He studies the how part of how the stock market creates wealth…
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If you ever meet someone that says “I’ve never made a mistake”, I will happily point out to you a complete liar. Nobody goes through life without making at least a few mistakes.
The trick however, is to not make too many of them. Keep the numbers low (if you can). Do that and you’ll sail through life with relative ease…
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If you’re like most people, your annual household spending was down significantly in 2020 because of the pandemic. Saving money must have been on everyone’s mind, because the U.S. savings rate saw massive increases in 2020. By January of 2021, the U.S. savings rate had increased to 20.5%.
That’s certainly a lot of cash being saved! Bank deposits are now at record highs…
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