Wednesday Reading List

Early Retirement: Strategies to Make Your Wealth Last by Investopedia

Regardless of whether it’s your goal to retire early or not, this is an important article as studies show that more than 50% of Americans retire sooner than anticipated. You need to have an accurate retirement budget, and if you’re retiring early you should target a lower withdrawal rate than 4%. You also need a plan for expensive pre-Medicare health care costs and to optimize Social Security to see if there’s a benefit to delaying claiming.

Cash is king: Higher mortgage rates have translated into a bigger market share for all-cash buyers by ResiClub

All-cash home buying is up even though sales overall are down. It varies widely by region, and some of this is people cashing out equity from homes that appreciated a lot and not wanting to borrow at higher rates. There’s chart showing the regional breakdown, and it’s worth understanding what’s going on in your area if you’re a buyer wondering whether you can compete with all-cash offers.

Earnings Season May Bring Changes by Charles Schwab Asset Management

Jeff Kleintop’s latest gets into the slowdown in earnings he’s seeing with the Magnificent 7 and the struggles he’s already seeing with two of the names (Apple and Tesla). This could provide a tailwind to international stocks, which had already been performing strongly relative to the S&P 500 in this market cycle.

For more check out International Investing recapping a recent podcast discussion I had with Jeff about this and so much more.

Navigating Markets in an Election Year by Fiducient Advisors

Setting aside partisanship and looking at the numbers, this piece shows that markets do about the same in election years versus non-election years, there’s very little performance difference based on which party controls which combination of branches, but markets tell us a lot about possible election outcomes. It’s hard to get re-elected during a recession and easy when not facing one.

Catch-Up Contributions Are About To Get Complicated by Heritage Financial

The SECURE Act 2.0 signed at the end of 2022 has a goal of strengthening the retirement system while encouraging Americans to better prepare for retirement. With the passage of the new law came several retirement plan changes, some that have already taken effect and some that will be rolling out over subsequent years. There are three provisions that impact retirement catch-up contributions, with the first change starting in 2024. The new regulations will impact how much someone can save based on their age, as well as the income tax treatment of those savings.

ICYMI: Two Financial Literacy Resources – Here’s a short video introducing two resources I built and spend a good amount of time regularly updating to help you with your finances and financial literacy.