A haunting childhood moment defined how John Kakuk would think about investing his own money when the time came. During the 2008 financial crisis, his mother asked him if he would be willing to contribute the meager savings in his piggy bank to his family’s grocery fund should his father, a lawyer, lose his job.
It’s kind of a lot to live with a personal finance reporter like me. Everything is diversification and risk, prudent investing and delayed gratification. So it was not a surprise a few years ago when my wife started asking open-ended questions about what constitutes smart real estate decision-making as the planet warms and the weather
After the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, Lars Staack decided to play it safe and invest his retirement savings in S&P 500 index funds, which are diversified and carry lower risk than owning individual stocks. It was a strategy that brought him peace of mind for more than two decades — until President