If I were retired today and had to put all my money into a single fund, I’d probably pick the Vanguard Wellesley Income Fund Investor Shares (VWINX). This is one of Vanguard’s longest-running actively…
A lot of income investors get tripped up on something basic: the difference between a dividend and a distribution. People use the terms interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. A dividend is…
I’m a total return guy. All I really care about is after-tax performance with distributions reinvested. I couldn’t care less about how much yield an ETF throws off. Even in retirement, I’d be perfectly…
While High-Yield Savings Accounts (HYSAs) remain a staple for principal preservation due to FDIC and NCUA insurance, the Federal Reserve held its target range at 3.5% to 3.75% at its June 2026 meeting, keeping…
Call it habit. Call it decades of conventional wisdom pushed by financial advisors and DIY investors. Either way, a lot of retirees default to aggregate bond funds. It doesn't really matter whether it's from…
The 4% rule has taken its fair share of criticism from financial planners and academic researchers, but it still has its place. For the unfamiliar, the rule suggests that retirees can withdraw 4% of…
I don’t know about you, but I’m really not the biggest fan of TreasuryDirect. Sure, you can build a T-bill ladder on there, but you have to be willing to wade through a pretty…
Covered calls can be hit or miss. Personally, I tend to prefer actively managed strategies that write calls on individual holdings. That approach can leave more upside on the table, take advantage of spikes…
For a while after COVID, the playbook felt simple. If you wanted to beat the S&P 500, you just leaned harder into what was already working. That meant piling into the Magnificent Seven and…
The first ETF ever created was technically Canadian. That distinction goes to the iShares S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF (TSX: XIU), which traces its roots back to the Toronto 35 Index Participation Units in 1990.…
There’s an old saying in investing that your portfolio is like a bar of soap. The more you handle it, the smaller it gets. Between bid-ask spreads, commissions, and taxes on realized capital gains,…
U.S. investors tend to have a strong home country bias. On average, portfolios are heavily tilted toward domestic stocks, often well above the U.S.’s roughly 60% share of global market capitalization. Some of that…
The debasement trade have produced quite a few winners. One of the most obvious is the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (NYSEMKT: GLD). In mid-March 2026, the fund crossed a massive $180 billion in…
It’s hard to argue with the results of the S&P Indices Versus Active (SPIVA) study. For those unfamiliar, it compares active fund managers against their benchmark indices, and more often than not, the…
If you look at plain vanilla dividend ETFs that simply hold stocks and avoid complex derivatives strategies, the yield ceiling tends to be fairly modest. Even if you screen aggressively for high-yield sectors such…
There are many things the Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (NYSEARCA:SCHD) does very well. For starters, it is extremely affordable with a 0.06% expense ratio. Its distributions are also relatively tax efficient because the…
If you have spent any time on social media, you have probably seen someone pitching the dream of effortless real estate wealth. The pitch is always the same: buy a few properties, collect rent…
The traditional 60/40 portfolio still has plenty of defenders. Many advisors continue to recommend it as a simple, balanced approach for long-term investors. But 2022 exposed a major weakness in that strategy. If you…
Municipal bonds are often marketed as the safe, tax efficient corner of fixed income. In many cases, that reputation is deserved. Most municipal bonds are investment grade and backed by relatively stable sources of…
Retail investors have a few ways to reduce risk in a stock portfolio. If you want to hedge an equity position, you could add bonds, buy put options, or simply hold part of your…
