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…
Over the past 30 years, the investing landscape for retirees has changed radically. The fundamental bases for portfolio allocation have required revision. While those allocation ratios have shifted considerably, the ETF boom…
John Seetoo The most uncomfortable fact in professional money management arrived courtesy of S&P Dow Jones Indices: 90% of active fund managers underperformed the S&P 500 over the last 15 years. These are people…
Cody Berman went on The Personal Finance Podcast and described hitting financial independence right before his 26th birthday. He held about $500,000 in a Total Stock Market Index Fund, plus 11 rental…
The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Institutional Plus Shares (VSMPX) is one of the largest pooled equity vehicles in the world, but most readers searching for it cannot actually buy it.…
If your equity sleeve has more than two or three funds, Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (NASDAQ:VTSAX) is the case for simplifying. VTSAX owns essentially the entire investable U.S.…
Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (NYSEARCA:VTI) and iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (NYSEARCA:ITOT) both promise the entire investable US equity market in a single ticker. Yet the index each…
State Street’s 2026 Global ETF Outlook calls for $2.1 trillion of US ETF inflows this year, with the lion’s share flowing into three core funds: Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:VOO), iShares Core…
If you opened your brokerage statement this year and noticed your portfolio looked suspiciously like the S&P 500 with a few extra tech names sprinkled in, you are not alone. American investors…
The image of the retail day trader hunched over four monitors, scalping options between Slack messages, has dominated financial media since the meme stock era. The reality inside the average 401(k) plan…
David Beren 
