Our dispute with VRBO continues.  We’ve been told 3 times now that our money has been returned and that we’ll see it reflected in our credit card account soon.  We haven’t seen anything.  These promises have alternated with claims that their “system is down” and that we should be patient.  We’ve now got the credit card company involved, which will hopefully fix things.  One thing is certain at this point: we will not be doing business with VRBO or their sub-entity, a property management company, again. Here are my posts for the past two weeks: Balance: How to Invest and Spend for Happiness, Health, and Wealth Annually Recalculated Variable Annuity Now is a Good Time to Decide Whether Your Portfolio is Too Risky My Investment Return for 2021 Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Sohale Andrus Mortazavi explains why cryptocurrency is a giant Ponzi scheme.  No doubt there are differing opinions on this matter, but Mortazavi shows his work, so co...

My portfolio’s return for 2021 was 16.7%, which is the same as my benchmark’s return.  Even with higher inflation, markets delivered a double-digit inflation-adjusted return for my overall portfolio.  For a few years now I’ve been thinking that the probability of a correction in stocks has been rising, but that correction has never come.  Instead, the opposite has happened; stocks keep rising.  It’s a good thing I don’t act on my specific guesses about the future of markets.  I try to make sure I’m well positioned for a wide range of possibilities. As stock prices grew to nosebleed levels, I thought about if and how I should respond.  However, I had no interest in making emotional portfolio decisions.  In the end I decided to use the blended Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings (CAPE) ratio of my stocks to make small adjustments to both my bond allocation and my expectations about future stocks returns .  These adjustments are simple formulas that a...

Back in March 2020 after stock markets had crashed, I expressed my disgust with the chorus of voices saying that this was the time to re-evaluate your risk tolerance.  That advice was essentially telling people to sell stocks while they were low, which makes little sense.  After the crash it was too late to re-evaluate your risk tolerance . I suggested “we should record videos of ourselves saying how we feel after stocks crashed” and watch this video after the stock market recovers.  Well, the stock market has long since recovered.  Now is a great time to recall how you felt back in March 2020.  Did you have any sleepless nights? Now that markets are near record levels, it’s time to consider whether permanently lowering your allocation to stocks would be best for you in anticipation of future stock market crashes.  Unfortunately, this isn’t how people tend to think.  It’s while stock prices are low that they want to end the pain and sell, and it’s whil...

A very low risk way to handle your portfolio in retirement is to invest the whole thing in inflation-protected government bonds and choose a spending level that will have your money last for a very long life.  A related idea is the Annually Recalculated Virtual Annuity (ARVA) where you invest as you see fit and choose your retirement spending level as though your portfolio were invested in inflation-protected government bonds.  Then each year you recalculate your spending level based on your new portfolio size, your new age, and prevailing bond interest rates. The ARVA idea was introduced by Waring and Siegel in their well written and accessible paper The Only Spending Rule Article You Will Ever Need .  Investors who use the ARVA idea will have annual retirement spending “that fluctuates with asset values, but they can never run out of money.” The ARVA idea is broadly similar to my own retirement spending plan that is designed to adapt my retirement spending as my portfol...

Andrew Hallam’s new personal finance book Balance is unlike any other financial book I’ve read.  He uses research to show us how to spend and invest in ways that create a happy and fulfilling life.  He uses vivid stories to illustrate his points that make the book a pleasure to read.  There’s a lot more to life satisfaction than just amassing personal wealth and owning fancy toys. The book opens with the “four quadrants to a successful life”: “Having enough money,” “Maintaining strong relationships,” “Maximizing your physical and mental health,” and “Living with a sense of purpose.”  “I’ve met plenty of conventionally successful people (measured by money and career) who appeared less satisfied than, say, a family of Argentinians traveling through Mexico in a motorhome.”  I’ve had a similar experience seeing many executives with highly successful careers who are divorced and work so much that they do little at home other than eat, slump in front of a television, ...

Before the pandemic, my wife and I used to travel south with a group of friends to somewhere warm during part of the Canadian winter.  In 2020, the pandemic cut this trip short a little, and we didn’t go in 2021 at all.  We were hopeful for 2022 and booked a place through VRBO under the terms that we could cancel for a full refund any time before Jan. 2.  When Omicron emerged we waited for a while to be sure, but most of our group decided against traveling, so we cancelled our booking on Dec. 29.   Since then, VRBO and some sub-entity of theirs has put us through the wringer as we try to get our money back.  We’ve heard all the excuses: the woman who handles this is sick, she’s not in right now, we’ll have her call you back later.  They appeared to be screening our calls, so we started calling from different phones.  When we did get to speak to the woman who could help us, we got other excuses: the app I do this on isn’t working, our server is down, it...