Remember your college days? Football games, late nights studying, parties and fun — the American college experience is unique and, for many, a transformative period. You get to play at adult responsibilities like showing up and caring for yourself, but with a safety net. No wonder some folks stay for more than four years! Increasingly,… Continue reading →

Who’s to blame for the obvious and ultimately fixable gender gap in pay? “Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran lays at some of it at the feed of women themselves. “Women should pretend they’re a man, because men do negotiate better,” Corcoran recently said. It’s tempting to take her point. She offers a shortcut to a goal,… Continue reading →

For most people, investing can feel like a long drive down the highway. The sun is out, the road is flat, the music soothing. Even at 70 miles per hour the ride is uneventful. Until, of course, you hit a pothole or enter a rough stretch of pavement. Your trip can go from a snooze… Continue reading →

Think for a minute about all the things you spend money on day to day: Food, housing, a car, clothes, utilities, entertainment, and so on. You probably think of all of these things as essentials and mostly that’s right. Everyone needs a roof over their head, clothes on their back, and food to eat. You… Continue reading →

Recently, I sat down with Ed Melick at Grace in 30, a radio broadcast out on WERA-LP Arlington, to discuss the life-changing event that motivated me to cultivate a business centered on better investing. Grace in 30 summarizes my experience thusly: About 19 years ago, Mitch Tuchman was sitting in a McDonalds when he saw a… Continue reading →

Charley Ellis, one of the members of our esteemed Investment Committee here at Rebalance, once explained that beating the market used to be easy — so easy that anybody paying attention could probably do it. It truly was a “stock picker’s market.” He told Rebalance Managing Director Scott Puritz that, back in the 1960s, only… Continue reading →

Ask 100 people what they want from a financial advisor and nearly all would say, “Um, advice?” Too bad that’s not what most financial advisors do. In fact, most are not even qualified to give advice. Sure, they take exams to be licensed as advisors. But those exams are not designed to test knowledge of… Continue reading →

You’ve probably read a lot recently about 401k millionaires. Ordinary people who saved money over decades now are ready to retire with ease. Smart investing? Usually, no. In fact, most of the people who are now rich thanks to 401k plans did so with hardlly any investing at all. Sure, they owned investments. Typically they… Continue reading →

The fund being offered to Vanguard employees in their 401(k) plans is not a global fund. It focuses on U.S. stocks. But the point remains the same. As Malkiel has long argued, diversification is the only free lunch in finance. Diversification is an incredibly simple idea, yet so many investors miss out. Here it is… Continue reading →