Category Archives: General Investing

I am not into budgeting as much, not because it does not help but because it is a chore. No one likes chores. And hence the many budgeting tools we find around us that help us seamlessly categorize our expenses to help find the problem areas. But even that is an overkill, and I canContinue reading “The 50/30/20 Budgeting Framework”

The money that you have been contributing to your 401(k) plans has not been taxed yet. You have deferred the taxes that were due for years but at some point, the government wants its share. And that tax applies to all the money that is in the plan but not all at once. The earliestContinue reading “Required Minimum Distributions”

During the Californian Gold Rush, folks who sold picks and shovels to the gold miners made more money than the miners themselves. We have all heard of AI, that incessant talk about artificial intelligence and how it is going to change our lives. Well, AI has entered the world of stock picking. There is aContinue reading “Why Stock Trading Systems Don’t Work”

Most 401(k) plans allow you to borrow up to half your vested balance or $50,000, whichever is lower for up to five years without triggering any taxes or penalties. But here are reasons you should not contemplate that option: There is also this argument that you are paying taxes twice but that is a weakContinue reading “Try Not To Borrow From Your 401(k)”

There is no clear definition of a bull market except when the stock market seems to be uninterruptedly going up year in and year out and you sense a feeling of euphoria all around, that can be called a bull market. But that is a bad deal for you because what is the point ofContinue reading “You Don’t Want A Bull Market Early In Your Career”

Benjamin Graham is considered the father of value investing. In his seminal book the The Intelligent Investor, he lays out approaches on how to pick stocks that are selling for less than their stated value. Graham‘s most famous student, Warren Buffett took some of the learnings and applied it to a style called Cigar-Butt investingContinue reading “Investing Metrics That Don’t Matter”

The short answer is no but before that, a bit about why everyone should have an estate plan in place. Imagine you have little kids and something bad happens to both of you and you don’t have an estate plan, the state gets to decide who raises your kids and who gets your money. EstateContinue reading “Do You Need A Revocable Living Trust?”

Let us use saving for retirement as an example. The first thing you would want to know is the amount you would spend in the first year of your retirement. You’d then want to inflation-adjust that amount each year through retirement. You’d then want to know how long retirement will last. A 100-year life expectancyContinue reading “If You Don’t Know How Much To Save, You Won’t Save Enough”

I am a worrier by design which means I try to protect what I need to protect through liberal use of insurance – life insurance for life, health insurance for health and auto insurance for my car. For my car? I don’t buy auto insurance to protect the value of my car because at someContinue reading “Umbrella Insurance”

Warren Buffett run Berkshire Hathaway paid a 10 cent dividend once in that one fateful year in 1967. Buffett, unarguably one of the best capital allocators ever, later joked that he must have been in the bathroom when that decision was made. Because of all the ways a business returns the harvested profits back to its owners,Continue reading “Dividends Are Not Free Money”