Jonathan Clements's Blog, page 391

Start Small

THE NEW YEAR brings the opportunity for fresh beginnings. You may be motivated to set a big goal, create a business plan or start a new diet. While I encourage you to always push yourself forward, I���d offer one piece of advice: Start small.

Do you look at your goals and feel overwhelmed? I have this feeling when looking at the total amount I need saved for my eventual financial independence. To help, I reverse engineer the process and focus on the amount I need to save this month. As the Sketch Guy, Carl Richards, so eloquently puts it, ���What is the next smallest action? Do that thing.���

Your natural inclination may be to reach for the stars and set a big goal. Yet many of the greatest success stories had humble beginnings. Here are three favorites:

Richard Sears was working as a railroad freight agent in 1886 when he was given an unwanted shipment of pocket watches by a local jeweler. He sold the watches, and then used the proceeds to buy and resell more watches. This side hustle of buying, repairing and selling watches led Sears to quit his job and start R.W. Sears Watch Co. in Minneapolis. A few years later, the first Sears catalog was sent out���and the rest is history.
Brian Scudamore needed a way to pay for college. After seeing a truck advertising a junk removal service, he used $700 of his savings to buy a pickup truck. His small business quickly took off and he used the profits to reinvest in the business. Scudamore continued to buy more trucks and hire employees, which led him to drop out of college. The junk removal service was the beginning of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? The company now services over 150 locations and three countries.
Greg Glassman opened a gym in 1995 to train individuals in his unique way of combining weightlifting and aerobic exercises. As his schedule became full, he shifted from training individuals one-on-one to introducing group classes. In 2000, he founded CrossFit and began opening affiliate gyms. Although the growth was slow at first, there are now more than 13,000 affiliates across the world.

Regardless of your goals or ambitions for the year ahead, I encourage you to start small. These three steps will help you:

Only take on one goal at a time. Don���t spread yourself too thin by trying to accomplish too much at once. As you start to check small steps off your list, the momentum will build.
Make detailed plans for each goal. Spell out the when, where and how of the task. That���ll increase your odds of doing what needs to be done.
Stay focused with frequent reminders. Do you want to buy a home this year? Contact a realtor and ask to be set up for MLS (multiple listing service) alerts. That way, you���ll receive an email whenever a home becomes available that meets your specific guidelines. A small step like this will keep your attention focused on your goal.

Ross Menke is a certified financial planner and the founder of Lyndale Financial, a fee-only financial planning firm in Nashville, Tennessee. He strives to provide clear and concise advice, so his clients can achieve their life goals. Ross���s previous blogs include Never Retire,��Starting Young,��That Extra Step and Keeping It Going. Follow Ross on Twitter @RossVMenke.

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Newsletter No. 40

ACTIVE MANAGERS��still oversee far more money than index funds. Nonetheless, the index vs. active battle has arguably been won:��Index funds will almost certainly continue to gain assets, because active managers can never collectively deliver on their promise of market outperformance.

My contention: If the goal is to improve how America manages its money, it’s time to move on to three new battles, which I describe in HumbleDollar’s latest newsletter.��The newsletter also includes our usual listing of recent blog posts.

While you’re here at HumbleDollar, spend some time perusing our��money guide. It’s been almost entirely updated in recent weeks. Among other items, you’ll find the new tax thresholds and the latest data on the economy, markets and family finances.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter�� @ClementsMoney ��and on Facebook . His most recent articles include What Now,��Strings Attached��and Seven Ideas. Jonathan’s ��latest book:��From Here to��Financial��Happiness.

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Beyond Cheap

WHEN I STARTED writing my column for The Wall Street Journal��in 1994, active money managers dominated the investment scene and index funds were struggling to get noticed. A quarter century later, most money remains actively managed, rather than indexed. The triumph of indexing is not yet complete.

Still, everybody knows which way the wind is blowing. Over the decade through 2017, index funds focused on U.S. stocks���both the mutual-fund and the exchange-traded varieties���attracted $1.6 trillion in new money, while actively managed funds saw $1.3 trillion in redemptions, according to the Investment Company Institute. By voting with their feet, investors have brought relative predictability to their investment performance, while also sharply reducing their investment costs.

It is, I admit, premature to declare victory in the battle between indexing and active management. Nonetheless, I think it���s time to move on to three new fights. The battle lines for these other fights are a little blurrier. But I think they���re just as important.

1. Holistic advice. We are obsessed with the financial markets. Throughout the trading day, we watch CNBC, check stock quotes on our phones and hang on the utterances of clueless pontificators who promise to explain all. The markets���with their erratic, unfathomable gyrations���are like electric shocks to our brains, bringing elation one moment and terror the next.

But what about the rest of our financial lives? We have careers, homes, insurance policies, debts, Social Security benefits, pension plans, tax bills and estate plans, all of which also deserve our attention. How do these financial pieces fit together���and how do we decide what we���re shortchanging and where we can afford to skimp?

As I���ve argued elsewhere, I believe the core organizing notion should be our paycheck or lack thereof. To be sure, thinking through this stuff is less exciting than trying to pick the next hot stock, but it���s likely to be far more rewarding. We���ll do more good for our finances by ditching unnecessary insurance coverage than by trying to guess which way stocks are headed next.

It isn���t just everyday investors who are obsessed with the markets. Ditto for financial professionals. Partly, it���s the same unhealthy emotional trap. But it���s also about financial incentives. Whether it���s money managers or financial advisors, they get paid when we invest���and not when we save on taxes, plan our estate, buy the right size home or pay down debt. My not-so-bold prediction: To maintain their 1%-of-assets annual fee, or something close to it, financial advisors will need to offer clients a whole lot more than a portfolio of mutual funds.

2. Behavior change. We all have a pretty good idea of what we should be doing with our money���and, if we don���t, we can quickly find out using this thing called the internet.

Instead, the real struggle is getting ourselves to do what we know is right. There���s a reason those New Year���s resolutions rarely survive the month of January. Just as we struggle to quit smoking, eat less and exercise more, we find it difficult to control our spending, hang tough at times of market turmoil, and overcome our own inertia and get the estate-planning documents and insurance policies we need. Knowledge, by itself, is not enough. Instead, the real battle is to change our behavior.

To that end, we can employ a host of strategies, including automating our savings programs, sharing our financial commitments with others and visualizing our goals, so we���re more willing to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. But there���s no silver bullet here: Changing behavior���and thinking longer-term���is hard work.

Again, this is a potential opportunity for thoughtful financial advisors. If they can help clients to reorient their thinking and coach them toward better financial behavior, they���re far more likely to survive in an era when investors are increasingly focused on lowering their investment costs.

3. Meaning. We know we ought to improve our financial behavior. But why should we improve? I don���t think it���s enough to say ���so you can retire��� or ���so the kids can go to college.��� Those may be functional descriptions of our financial goals. But they aren���t sufficiently inspiring to spur most folks to change their behavior���because they don���t convey the meaning we all seek from our lives.

What���s important to me will be different from what���s important to you. But all of us have people we care deeply about, financial worries we���d like to erase and work we���re passionate about. If we can identify what���s truly important to us, we���ll have not only the incentive to change, but also a much better idea of what we should aim for���and potentially we could get far more happiness from our dollars.

Some of us can figure this stuff out on our own. Others might need to talk it through with their spouse, friends or a financial advisor. But however we get it done, it���s a crucial first step���because it���s the key to making the connection between our money and the rest of our lives. Once we do that, our finances will no longer be some onerous task reserved for 30 minutes each weekend, but rather the tool that can make our lives so much richer.

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At times of market turmoil, it’s tempting to guess which way stocks are headed. But Adam Grossman argues we’re better off surrendering to the alternative���accepting that we just don’t know.
“An easy life may sound appealing,” says Ross Menke.��“But it���ll get boring quickly. I have found that the happiest individuals are the ones who always seem to be challenging themselves.”
How much harder is it for women to get ahead? “Before I landed my final position as a vice president of credit risk management, I had applied internally for 83 positions,” writes Jiab Wasserman.
Great stock-market buying opportunities feel like you’re shoveling dollar bills into an incinerator. The current decline doesn’t yet feel that way.
“Spending with a credit card isn���t just easier,” notes Dennis Friedman. “It���s also less painful. That’s why I carry a roll of bills in my pocket. It���s my way of reminding myself that these are real dollars I’m spending.”
Last month, when folks weren’t busy spending money, what financial articles were they reading? Check out the seven most popular blog posts published by HumbleDollar in December.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter�� @ClementsMoney ��and on Facebook . His most recent articles include What Now,��Strings Attached��and Seven Ideas. Jonathan’s ��latest book:��From Here to��Financial��Happiness.

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Odds Against

THE TOP COUNTRIES for gender-equal pay are Iceland, Norway and Finland, according to the World Economic Forum. As it happens, those three countries also rank among the top four countries for Gross National Happiness. The U.S. didn���t crack the top 10 on either list.

The gender wage gap is a major problem in the U.S.���and it affects all of us. Over half of American families are dual income. That means women not receiving their financial due impoverishes American families. That, in turn, puts pressure on men to earn more.

Yet it seems many folks are reluctant to admit we even have a problem. Ellevest’s��2018 Money Census found that, while 83% of women recognize that there���s a gender wage gap and fully acknowledge the financial and career inequalities women encounter on the job, only 61% of men agree.

Things clearly need to change at a faster pace. We need more aggressive investigation of wage discrepancy. We need corporations to create genuine opportunities for women and minorities to advance. We need more transparency in wages. Americans are simply too reluctant to share salary information, even as they broadcast every other detail of their lives. When I was working in Thailand as a foreign exchange dealer, all employees��� salary and bonuses were publicly disclosed at all levels.

But change, unfortunately, will take time. Until then, women need survival strategies, so they can succeed in the corporate world. For me, I was forced to find ways to advance, inch by inch, during my career, and keep a positive attitude and not lose faith along the way.

Most of all, I focused on what was best for my family and what we needed, rather than what we didn���t have. Quitting and having no pay���while it might have briefly felt good���paid no bills and would have left me in a worse position to advocate for change.

So I worked hard and was always willing to take on new projects. I kept myself open to learning new skills. If the company wouldn���t train me, I looked to learn on my own. That way, if an opportunity to advance came along, I was ready.

I kept in mind that, however fairly or unfairly I was paid, my career and salary would one day cease. I planned for this by saving diligently. Knowing that I got paid less than my male colleagues, I compensated by living frugally and saving as much as I could.

I also tried not to let the dings and setbacks get me down. I kept in mind my father���s advice when he coached me in tennis: “When you lose a point, focus on the next point. The last point is not relevant anymore.”

He also always encouraged me to “keep fighting. No matter how far behind you are, as long as the game is still being played, you still have a chance.” When I was declined a promotion, I quickly moved on. I focused on my next move or my next opportunity. I can���t claim it was easy. Before I landed my final position as a vice president of credit risk management, I had applied internally for 83 positions.

Jiab Wasserman recently retired at age 53 from her job as a financial analyst at a large bank.�� She and her husband, a retired high school teacher, currently live in Granada, Spain, and blog about financial and other aspects of retirement���as well as about relocating to another country���at YourThirdLife.com . This is the final article in a three-part series about the obstacles women face in the workplace. The previous installments were��Mind the Gap��and��Not So Fast.

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Never Retire

IF YOU���VE EVER asked for career advice, you were probably told to ���follow your passion.��� This seems like great advice. Who wouldn���t want to do what they���re passionate about every day?

The reality: What you���re passionate about may not be a viable career. I���m passionate about the game of golf. But I fell short of making it my career, despite playing collegiately.

There have been plenty of times when I���ve thought I needed to change direction. I thought I needed to find a new ���passion��� and do that for my work every day. Fortunately, through a few minor changes in my work environment and business structure, I���ve been able to create the ideal work setup for myself.

Looking to make a change yourself? Here, inspired by the Japanese notion of Ikigai, are five ways to enjoy your work so much that you���ll never want to retire:

1. Do what you love.��When searching for your next career, or simply a new work environment to thrive in, make sure you���re doing what you love. There are all sorts of things you probably love to do. Start making a list, regardless of how silly each item may seem in terms of a career. As you go through each day, when an idea strikes you, write it down. This could be an endless list that continues to evolve over the course of your life���and helps you find the right direction.

2. Do what you���re good at.��Now that you know a few of the things you love, ask yourself: What am I good at? You may love a lot of different things. I know I sure do. But that doesn���t mean you���re good at them or good enough to turn them into a career. We all have special talents that we may not think twice about, but���in the eyes of others���can seem quite amazing. Are there things you regularly get complimented on? You might also ask your friends and family to tell you what they think your talents are. You���ll probably be surprised by their answers.

3. Do what the world needs.��After listing things you love and filtering it down to what you���re also good at, you need to make sure the globe actually needs what you���re offering. There are inventors across the world who come up with the most amazing new tools and gadgets���which then go unnoticed. If the world doesn���t need what you are offering, your service or product will likely fall short of your goals. It���s good to be ahead of the times by innovating. But innovating too much too soon is often a killer for even the best of ideas. Companies large and small face this problem on a daily basis.

4. Do what you can be paid for.��You���ve determined what you love, what you���re good at and what the world needs. But can you also be paid for the service you���re offering? This is the most difficult step. Determining what you can be paid for often requires the most trial and error. You have to put yourself out there and fail a few times before you can bring it all together. If you can get at least three strangers to buy your product or service before you launch, you might be onto something.

5. Do what challenges you. To thrive, step outside your comfort zone. An easy life may sound appealing. But it���ll get boring quickly. I have found that the happiest individuals are the ones who always seem to be challenging themselves. If you listen to world-class athletes and other top performers, you���ll hear them talk about the process. They enjoy the preparation and the struggle just as much as they enjoy accomplishing their goals.

Ross Menke is a certified financial planner and the founder of Lyndale Financial, a fee-only financial planning firm in Nashville, Tennessee. He strives to provide clear and concise advice, so his clients can achieve their life goals. Ross���s previous blogs include Starting Young,��That Extra Step and Keeping It Going. Follow Ross on Twitter @RossVMenke.

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December’s Hits

LAST MONTH wasn’t great for traffic to this site, with page views down 9% from November. My suspicion: Folks were too busy spending money���and didn’t want to dent their holiday cheer with awkward thoughts of their financial future.

Still, I consider it a good month for HumbleDollar. Why? Five of the seven most popular blog posts were written by folks other than me���and I love it when contributors to the site get the recognition they deserve:

Just in Case
Taking Us for Fools
Grab the Roadmap
First Impressions
Be Like Neil Young
Keeping It Going
What Matters Most

Readers also flocked to our list of the most popular articles published by HumbleDollar since its year-end 2016 launch. In addition, December saw big traffic for the online version of the two newsletters we put out last month, Seven Ideas and No Kidding.

In recent weeks, I’ve almost completely updated HumbleDollar’s money guide, including the chapters on taxes and estate planning, and the stats on market performance and valuations. Check it out.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter�� @ClementsMoney ��and on Facebook . His most recent articles include What Now and��Strings Attached. Jonathan’s ��latest book:��From Here to��Financial��Happiness.

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Time to Reflect

FOR CHRISTMAS, I bought Rachel a saucepan and a universal travel charger for her smartphone. The previous year, I bought her a pair of gloves and socks. She likes gifts that are practical and good value. During December, we prefer to spend our Christmas money on weekend trips. We live in Los Angeles county and this year we went to La Jolla and Las Vegas.

We like to collect pictures of our adventures. We not only store them on the cloud, but also keep some of them in a scrapbook and on a flash drive. We frequently look at our pictures, because it makes us feel more alive than any item we could purchase. For Christmas, Rachel gave my mother a 2019 calendar with pictures from our 2018 adventures. My mother was thrilled. Pictures seem to bring out the joy in people.

Travel doesn���t just offer enriching experiences and great memories. It���s also a chance to see what���s wonderful about the world���but also what���s wrong. While we were in Las Vegas, we went to a buffet. I noticed a young man devouring one plate of food after another. While watching him eat, I realized we live in a society where it’s too easy to overindulge.

Food is everywhere. While filling your car with gas, you can purchase fast food.�� While standing in the checkout line at a grocery or drug store, you���re tempted with candy. All of this can’t be good for our health.

It���s also too easy to spend money in other ways. With a credit card, you can make a purchase on the spur of the moment���which means people take less time to evaluate their spending. Credit card companies encourage you to spend by enticing you with cash back, airline miles and points toward hotel accommodation.

Spending with a credit card isn���t just easier. It���s also less painful. You aren���t physically relinquishing an asset during the transaction. That’s why I carry a roll of bills in my pocket. It���s my way of reminding myself that these are real dollars I’m spending.

Travel also offers the chance to interact with others���something we don���t do enough of. You now can converse with your friends by texting and using social media, such as Facebook and Snapchat. There���s a big difference between talking with your fingers and speaking with your voice on the telephone or in person. You really don’t have that same close connection���which is what you need to get through the rough times.

It also takes more nerve to be disparaging to someone���s face than it is through Facebook or Twitter. It seems like some people think social media gives them the license to fudge the truth and attack the character of others. What if you get out and meet those with differing views? Maybe you���d be more sympathetic to their point of view.

Dennis Friedman retired at age 58 from Boeing Aerospace Company. He enjoys reading and writing about personal finance. His previous blogs include Be Like Neil��Young,�� First Impressions ,�� Family Inc. ��and�� Creative Destruction . Follow Dennis on Twitter��@dmfrie.

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Intuitively Wrong

ROBERT SOROS, son of billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, has a surprising explanation for his father’s success: ���You know the reason he changes his position on the market or whatever is because his back starts killing him.���

You read that right: The younger Soros attributes his father’s success to a sort of sixth sense���as if he can feel the market in his bones. He goes on: ���My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that.��� But, Robert says, ���It has nothing to do with reason. He literally goes into a spasm, and it’s this early warning sign.���

In Soros’s case, if you believe his son, intuition has helped make him one of the world’s wealthiest people. Does this mean that you, too, should trust your gut when making financial decisions?

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has been studying this question for decades. His conclusion: Yes, intuition can be effective���but only when you meet three conditions:

First, there must be regularity in whatever you���re trying to predict.��An example is a chess board, where the set of outcomes is finite. Even if that finite set is large, there���s still enough regularity that a master can develop reliable intuition. Kahneman also points to medicine, where experienced physicians can indeed develop accurate intuition. In short, Kahneman says, ���you have to ask… if it’s a good domain, one in which there are regularities that can be picked up by the limited human learning machine.���

Second, you need a lot of practice.��If you���re fortunate to work in a field that does have the necessary regularity, the next requirement is that you need frequent and numerous opportunities to hone your expertise. If you’ve played chess, or you work as a physician or in another scientific field, you can probably attest to that. After five or 10 or 20 years of practice, you can probably recognize patterns a mile away that, earlier on, you might have missed.

Kahneman’s final requirement is immediate feedback.��In addition to regular practice, you need to know whether you’re actually succeeding. If feedback is indirect or delayed, it’s that much harder to develop intuition.

What does Kahneman say about the world of finance? Is it possible to develop intuition about the economy or the stock market? In a word, no. That’s because it fails the first criterion: regularity. Unlike a physical or scientific process, or even a game of chess, the economy is driven by a nearly infinite number of factors, many of which interrelate in unpredictable ways. There are too many variables and they never present themselves in exactly the same way.

I have seen this firsthand. In 2008, shortly after the release of the first iPhone, I remember meeting an investment manager who remained a staunch supporter of Research in Motion (RIM), the company that made the BlackBerry. To him, the iPhone didn’t represent a threat, for this reason: ���I play tons of golf with Jim Balsillie [then the CEO of RIM]. These guys didn’t just suddenly become dumb.��� In other words, he was relying on intuition. Since that time, RIM’s share price has lost nearly all its value.

But what about George Soros and his back spasms? Clearly, his success speaks for itself and, according to his son, intuition accounted for a large part of it. I see a few possible explanations: It could be that, when Robert made those comments, he didn’t fully understand his father’s process. In other words, maybe it looked more subjective than it was. While it makes for a colorful story, I doubt Soros’s back pain was his primary source of data.

Another possible explanation: Perhaps Soros limited his bets to narrow areas within finance that��do��meet Kahneman’s three criteria. A final explanation may be ���all of the above.��� It may be that Soros brought a unique combination of skill, luck and intuition to specific areas where it gave him an extraordinary edge.

Whatever the explanation, I think it’s clear that the number of George Soroses in the world is very limited. However he does what he does, I don’t believe it’s a useful model for the rest of us.

At a time like this, with so much financial uncertainty, it’s tempting to turn to intuition. It’s much more comforting to��try��to guess where things are going than to surrender to the alternative���accepting that we just don’t know. But here’s my advice: If you think your back is telling you something, it’s probably better to visit the orthopedist than your stockbroker.

Adam M. Grossman���s previous blogs��include Paper Tigers,��What Matters Most,��Happy Compromises��and��Pushing Prices . Adam is the founder of�� Mayport Wealth Management , a fixed-fee financial planning firm in Boston. He���s an advocate of evidence-based investing and is on a mission to lower the cost of investment advice for consumers. Follow Adam on Twitter�� @AdamMGrossman .

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What Now?

LIKE THE COBBLER whose children have no shoes, I get so busy with this website and other projects that I tend to neglect my own portfolio. I think of it as benign neglect: If you���re invested in a globally diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds, there isn���t much reason to look or much need to trade.

But for the past week or so, I���ve been doing plenty of looking���and a little trading.

By the market close on Dec. 24, the S&P 500 stocks were down 20% from their September high, putting them at 18 times trailing 12-month reported earnings. For anyone with a contrarian bent and cash to invest, it seemed the market was presenting a wonderful holiday gift. But that gift was quickly snatched away: Three trading days later, the S&P 500 had bounced back 6% and valuations are a tad less appealing.

What to do? We all have different financial situations and are at different stages in our lives, and that will drive how we react. Here���s what I���ve been doing���and plan to do.

Thanks to the market slump, my stock allocation got down to 62%, with the remaining money split between inflation-indexed bonds and short-term corporate bonds. If I count the private mortgage I wrote for my daughter in 2015, which I consider part of my bond holdings, my asset allocation would be even more conservative.

The drop to 62% prompted me to move 2% of my portfolio from bonds to stocks. That, combined with the rally of recent days, has boosted my stock allocation to 66%. Should I raise my stock allocation further? As I wrestle with that question, four notions run through my head.

First, I believe markets are efficient���most of the time. Every so often, however, investors seem to lose their collective moorings. Think about purchasers of tech stocks in the late 1990s, home buyers in 2005 and early 2006, and bitcoin speculators in 2017. Think also about the panic selling by stock investors in 2002, and again in late 2008 and early 2009.��Periods of frenzied buying are moments of grave danger���and periods of frenzied selling are moments of great opportunity.

That brings me to a second, related notion: Great opportunities are becoming harder to spot. Even at the depth of the bear market in early 2009, stock market valuations didn���t seem that compelling. Indeed, because valuations over the past three decades have been so much higher than the historical averages, it���s hard to know what normal is. On top of that, this is a market dominated by professional traders and money managers. If stocks resume their decline, the market will bottom not when your neighbors panic���which you may hear about���but when the professionals do, which likely won���t be visible to you and me.

Third, the financial freedom I have today was bought, in part, by shifting my portfolio to 94% or 95% stocks in early 2009, while also pouring any extra money I could find into the stock market. It felt like shoveling dollar bills into an incinerator���which is how great buying opportunities feel. Today doesn���t feel that way and, I suspect, we won���t get there. While we have ample political turmoil, the underlying economic problems seem far less worrisome than those of 2008 and 2009.

Fourth, I already have enough set aside for retirement and hence I don���t need to take a lot of risk with my portfolio. In my current semi-retired state, I���m no longer adding fresh savings to my portfolio. But I���m also not drawing much from my nest egg. I figure I probably won���t regularly tap my portfolio for income until I���m age 60, which is five years away. The upshot: I calculate that I could take my bond holdings down to 20% and stocks up to 80%, and still go 10 years without being compelled to sell shares.

Should I get that aggressive���and arguably take risk I don���t need to take? When the market falls, folks tend to view stocks as increasingly treacherous. I see just the opposite. As shares slide and valuations subside, owning stocks strikes me as less and less risky. I���m a lot more comfortable buying stocks today than three months ago.

My current plan: If the stock market continues to trade at current levels, I���d gradually rebalance my portfolio to a 70% stock allocation, which I deem to be a neutral position. If the S&P 500 drops more than 30% from its Sept. 20 closing high of 2930.75, I may go even higher���perhaps as high as 80%.

This, I readily acknowledge, is suspiciously like market timing. But I���d argue the portfolio changes I���m talking about are incremental, not the big all-or-nothing bets that market timers make. More important, I���d only end up at 80% stocks if the market presented a truly stunning buying opportunity���one of those rare moments, like late 2008 and early 2009, when investors collectively freak out. It would be great if it happened. I fear I won���t get so lucky.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter�� @ClementsMoney ��and on Facebook . His most recent articles include Hits 2017-18,��Strings Attached, Seven Ideas and��Just in Case. Jonathan’s ��latest book:��From Here to��Financial��Happiness.

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Hits 2017-18

AS THIS SITE heads toward its second birthday, I was curious to see which articles had resonated most with readers. Below are the top 20 blog posts and newsletter articles published by HumbleDollar since its launch at year-end 2016:

Unanswered
The $121,500 Guestroom
Ten Commandments
The Tipping Point
Enough Already
Retiring: 10 Questions
Making a Difference
Second Childhood
ObliviousInvestor.com
Best Investment 2018
Ten Commandments
Fooled You
Yes, It’ll Happen
How About Later?
Bad News
Courtside Seat
When I’m 64
Next to Nothing
The Morning After
Old Story

No, that isn’t a mistake: We have indeed run two blogs headlined “Ten Commandments.” Clearly, there are limits to the creativity of your esteemed editor.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter�� @ClementsMoney ��and on Facebook . His most recent articles include Strings Attached, Seven Ideas and��Just in Case. Jonathan’s ��latest book:��From Here to��Financial��Happiness.

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