Ben Carlson

How Americans Spend Their Money

Last week in my 20 Rules of Personal Finance post I talked about the importance of getting the big purchases right: 8. Get the big purchases right. I know I shouldn’t be so judgmental but whenever I see $50-$70k SUVs on the road or enormous McMansions the first thing that pops into my head is, “I…

Overcoming a Late Start to Saving for Retirement

A reader asks: Have you ever written anything about getting a late start to saving for retirement? My wife and I are in our early 50s and have very little saved. What do we do? This reader is definitely not alone in this situation. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, around half of all…

The Best Books I Read in 2016

These were my favorite books I read in 2016: NON-FICTION Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business Duhigg discusses the science behind motivation and the systems that can actually help people change their behavior which goes far beyond the typical lifehacks and shortcuts. He shows why motivation is a skill…

20 Rules of Personal Finance

Meb Faber asked a bunch of us bloggers to give him our top 3-5 most read blog posts of the year. I looked back at my trusty Google Analytics for the first time in a while and discovered that two of my top three in terms of readership were personal finance-related posts. I’ve always said…

Expected Risk

“The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.” -Benjamin Graham Investors spend a lot of time trying to figure out what returns the markets will give them in the future. It feels like a weekly occurrence that I see another fund firm or well-known investor trot out their forecasts…

The Personal Success Equation

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” – Jim Carrey Tim Ferriss always asks his podcast guests who the first person is that comes to mind when they hear the word ‘success.’ Derek Sivers gave a deeper answer than most….

Mindless Eating & Finance

“The best diet is the one you don’t know you’re on.” – Brian Wansink Of all the analogies that get thrown around on a regular basis about investing and finance — sports, gambling, Seinfeld, piloting a plane, movies, etc. — by far the most accurate for my money is dieting and weight loss. The equations…

Diversification Is No Fun

The Wall Street Journal had a story yesterday that highlights the dominance of U.S. stocks over the rest of the world in the past few years: Since 2012 alone, the U.S. share of global stock market capitalization has risen from roughly 35% to just over 40% of the total. I tweeted out the following this morning, which…

Know Your Audience

AQR is arguably one of the top fund firms in the world right now. They manage over $170 billion in a wide variety of quantitative investment strategies. They are able to marry financial research with real-world investible strategies as good as anyone in the marketplace. While they began as a hedge fund firm that catered…