By Harlan Storey​

Have you ever wondered what happens to your unpaid bills after you die?  You might be surprised to know that it depends on what kind of debt is still outstanding.

As the impeachment process gets underway in the House of Representatives, President Trump has famously tweeted that the U.S. stock market will experience a severe decline if the process goes much further.  This has led many money managers and financial planners to take a hard look at history.

You probably know that index funds and index ETFs are no longer just popular with financial planners and other insiders.  Word has gotten out to the investment public about how difficult it is to beat the market, and how many index funds beat the majority of actively-managed funds—especially the expensive ones.

By Harlan Storey​

Bonds are boring, right?  Stocks jump up and down and all over the place, and over several years they might even jump 100% in value.  Meanwhile, the bonds in your portfolio crank out predictable coupon yields quarter after quarter after quarter.

How should you invest in a down market?  If you want a guidepost, let’s look back to the terrible, traumatic down market of 2008-2009.  You’re going through relentless, daily and weekly losses (remember that?), and the feeling at the time was that the global economy had suffered a mortal blow.  So you get to the bottom in March of 2009, and what do you have to look fo

Whenever you talk about recessions, it’s important not to be alarmist.  Because it is very hard to time a recession (that is, know precisely when it will begin and end), and because it is even harder to know when the stock market will decline and rise again in association with a recession, it is generally best to simply ride out these periodic downturns with a consistent asset alloca

Pundits like to point out that the current price/earnings (PE) ratio of the U.S. stock market is higher than historical averages, and well above their global counterparts.  It’s true that stocks cost more, relative to earnings, today than at times in the past.  But the real question is: is there cause for alarm?

Chances are that you know that the Social Security trust fund is due to run out of money—or “deplete its reserves” as economists put it—by the year 2035.  The actual time frame depends on some forecasts, including economic growth, number of workers who remain in the workforce and the number who retire—but the clear point is that Congress is going to have to ta