Holding an international ETF in a taxable account costs more than most investors realize, and the culprit is a tax quirk buried in how foreign dividends get classified. The case for moving…
July is shaping up as a pivotal month for index investors. The S&P 500 has cooled a bit, with Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:VOO) down 1.36% since its year-to-date high on June…
The launch of federally seeded child investment accounts, informally dubbed “Trump Accounts,” has parents scrambling to pick a single ultra-low-cost equity ETF to hold for 18 years. Two names dominate the shortlist:…
The choice between Vanguard Total World Stock (NYSEARCA:VT) and Vanguard Total Stock Market (NYSEARCA:VTI) looks like a choice between two flavors of Vanguard indexing. It is really a bet on whether U.S.…
You pull in $200,000 a year, your checking account looks healthy, and yet your "investments" consist of a 401(k) you barely glance at and a savings account quietly losing ground to inflation.…
Warren Buffett is the most celebrated investor alive, but a fresh analysis from the Rational Reminder Podcast delivers an uncomfortable finding: across roughly the last 24 years, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B | BRK-B…
You check your portfolio and it looks like every other portfolio in America. Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and a heaping side of S&P 500 index fund that is, when you…
The choice between Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:VOO) and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (NYSEARCA:VTI) is the most common allocation decision in U.S. equity investing, and it looks like a coin flip…
The pitch for Vanguard Growth ETF (NYSEARCA:VUG) sits at the cheap end of a long-running debate about whether active stock pickers can beat an index dominated by mega-cap growth names. VUG charges…
A 73-year-old single retiree has a $1.6 million portfolio invested 80% in bonds and 20% in stocks, spends $64,000 annually, and receives $34,000 per year from Social Security. At first glance, the…
Brad Barrett, co-host of the ChooseFI podcast, recently laid out one of the most uncomfortable numbers in personal finance. During the show’s “FI 101: Teaching Financial Independence to Your Community” episode, Barrett…
Thomas Richmond Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an ambitious case for the Trump Savings Account program during a May 29, 2026 appearance on Kudlow on Fox Business. In his view, the initiative could bring…
Thomas Richmond The pitch for Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF (NYSEARCA:VTI) has always been embarrassingly simple: own every public US stock that matters, charge almost nothing, and wait. That is it. The…
Hindsight is 20/20, but in 1995, going long fixed-income duration really was the correct move. Duration is essentially a measure of a bond portfolio’s sensitivity to changes in interest rates. The longer…
The retiree was 66, single, living in Pennsylvania, and relying on a $1.1 million brokerage account to supplement her Social Security income. Her goal was straightforward: generate about $55,000 a year from…
