Episodes

From your 20s to your 60s, the priorities change—but the basic job doesn’t. Don and Tom walk through emergency savings, Roth IRAs, 401(k) matches, rebalancing, retirement planning, Social Security, Medicare, and estate planning, decade by decade. Then Mary calls with a smart Roth-conversion puzzle. They weigh whose IRA to convert, how much to move without wasting a low tax bracket, the age-59½ penalty, and why a household’s accounts should be managed as one portfolio—even when the spouses have ...

Rule Four of Financial Physics says everything eventually rises—not every stock, not every year, but human productivity and global economic output over time. Don and Tom explain why buying the broad market is ownership in thousands of businesses, not a trip to the casino, and why international diversification matters when nobody knows which country will lead the next century. Then Kenneth asks whether a tiny slice of his emergency fund belongs in stocks. The answer is still no: emergencies tend...

Can 21 funds deliver useful global diversification—or mostly camouflage overlap, cost, and complexity? Don opens the Friday Q&A by giving one listener a sharper set of questions to take back to an advisor, including what each fund actually contributes and what would be lost by owning fewer. The questions then move from portfolio architecture to retirement reality. A listener learns why RMDs and Roth conversions should not wag the retirement dog, and another faces a sudden $15,000-a-month skille...

Active fund managers have a new explanation for years of underperformance: index funds have made their old job harder. Don and Tom examine that award-winning excuse, revisit how indexing reshaped the business, and return to the stubborn arithmetic—when active management charges more, matching the market still means losing to it after fees. Listener questions widen the lens. A UK investor wants to move from 60/40 to 50/50 without taking needless currency risk, while a family needs a sensible pla...

Listener questions take over the studio as Don and Tom work through a very big pile without sacrificing any more forests than necessary. The quick tour runs from life insurance in retirement to the seductive yield on floating-rate bank-loan ETFs—and why extra income usually comes with extra risk. Then a live call turns asset allocation into an actual retirement plan: how a couple can move from 90/10 to 70/30, use Roth space intelligently, and rebalance without guessing what the market will do n...

AI stocks are booming, valuations are stretched, and capital spending is surging. Does that add up to a bubble—or just another story investors cannot reliably time? Tom and Don walk through Fidelity’s warning signs without pretending anyone can ring a bell at the top. The practical conclusion is less exciting and more useful: stay diversified, keep realistic expectations, include the fixed income your plan needs, and do not mistake a recent gain for money the market owes you forever. Then a ca...

Markets fluctuate. That sounds obvious—until a favorite stock climbs for years and investors start treating gravity as optional. Tom and Don revisit Financial Physics and the essential difference between a temporary market decline and permanent single-company damage. The cure is not predicting the next dip. It is connecting the return you need with the volatility you can tolerate, then owning thousands of companies and rebalancing instead of reacting. Questions range from IRA eligibility for b...

Bonds are supposed to be the brakes in a portfolio—but should those brakes be BND, a shorter-term fund, CDs, or a Treasury ladder? Don explains why duration, yield stability, and personal comfort make the answer more nuanced than one ticker. The Friday questions keep coming: pairing AVGE with VT, moving $5 million from real estate into a retirement portfolio, understanding an emerging-markets fund that became legally non-diversified, and building 529s for grandchildren. The final stretch is al...

AI can crunch a portfolio, harvest losses, and explain an investment concept in seconds. But can it stop a nervous investor from selling at exactly the wrong moment—or understand the life behind the spreadsheet? Tom and Don test the robot-advisor promise, even asking ChatGPT to weigh in. The verdict is a useful division of labor: let technology handle repeatable mechanics, while human judgment, fiduciary responsibility, and behavior coaching remain hard to automate. Then the questions get wond...

A quarter in the piggy bank has grown into a maze of UTMAs, 529s, custodial Roth IRAs, and the new child investment accounts. Tom and Don sort the options by what the money is actually for—and who keeps control. The 529 emerges as the flexible favorite, especially with its education uses and limited Roth rollover. Then the conversation turns to concentrated factor ETFs, the familiar Bitcoin argument, and whether private markets are really swallowing public investing. The through-line is refres...

Chasing performance feels like the easiest way to make money—but buying what has already gone up often means arriving late and leaving with less. In this episode of Talking Real Money, Tom and Don examine the “behavior gap”: the difference between an investment’s return and what investors actually earn after buying high, selling low, and chasing the latest market story. They explain why disciplined diversification and a sensible asset allocation usually beat a portfolio built around hot ideas. ...

The episode covers market bubbles, diversification, Social Security timing, and retirMarkets aren’t mysterious—they’re driven by one of the oldest economic principles there is. In this episode of Talking Real Money, Tom and Don explain why supply and demand can send prices soaring in the short run… and why disciplined investors should usually ignore the excitement. You’ll also hear practical answers to listener questions about Social Security timing, investment clubs, umbrella insurance, and p...

This week Don tackles seven excellent listener questions covering everything from credit cards and emerging markets to covered-call ETFs, annuities, retirement buckets, and whether investors should worry about new additions to stock indexes. 00:51 Summer surge in listener questions 01:15 LitReading success and thanks 02:01 Are credit cards really evil? 05:09 Emerging markets inside international funds 07:44 Paying kids for chores to fund Roth IRAs 10:58 Covered-call ETFs (JEPI and others) ...

What exactly is a model portfolio—and should you trust one with your retirement? Tom and Don explain why professionally designed model portfolios can improve consistency and reduce advisor bias, but also why investors should be wary as firms like Morningstar begin adding private equity, private credit, and other alternative investments to traditional portfolios. 00:12 What is a model portfolio? 02:11 Why advisors should use investment models 03:31 Morningstar’s new private market portfolios 0...

Can keeping up with financial news actually make you a better investor—or just make you more confident about making bad decisions? Don and Tom dig into research on how markets react to news, why investors tend to overreact to splashy stories and underreact to boring numbers, and whether sophisticated traders can actually exploit those inefficiencies. Then, a caller nearing retirement asks how to build a conservative brokerage account to bridge the years before Social Security. Plus, the guys com...

Having a child later in life can change far more than your sleep schedule. It can completely rewrite your retirement plan. Don and Tom explore the financial realities of becoming a parent in your late 40s or 50s, from college savings and life insurance to delayed retirement and the temptation to sacrifice your own financial future for your children. Tom brings some very personal experience to the conversation—and a few stories about being mistaken for his daughter’s grandfather. Then, a listen...

Money Monday has arrived, and Don kicks off a new weekly series based on his book Financial Physics. The first “law” may surprise you: according to Don, every dollar ever earned comes from just three sources—luck, theft, or work. He and Tom debate where investing belongs, why entrepreneurship remains one of the best paths to wealth, and how much luck really contributes to financial success. Then they answer a listener’s retirement planning question about whether to finance a Florida townhouse o...

Tom’s on vacation, but the listener questions are not. In this packed Q&A episode, Don tackles one of the most common retirement dilemmas: if your Social Security and annuity income already cover your expenses, do you still need a traditional emergency fund? From there, the questions keep coming. Don weighs in on what to do with “lazy money” earning only 3%, whether a MYGA is really a better deal than a CD ladder, how to structure a taxable brokerage account for long-term growth, and where to k...

In what may be our last quiz, ever, Tom turns the tables and puts Don in the hot seat with a Wall Street Journal high-school personal finance quiz—covering the Magnificent Seven, Roth IRAs, TIPS, efficient markets, yield curves, market risk, and dollar-cost averaging. Don does reasonably well, but not without protesting a dubious “debt avalanche” question and getting tangled up in a couple of accounting and risk terms. After the quiz-show nonsense, the guys tackle a listener question from Joseph...

Tom and Don tackle one of retirement’s hardest questions: how much can you safely spend from your portfolio without blowing up the rest of your life? They walk through the familiar 4% rule, flexible withdrawal strategies, why a flat 10% withdrawal is usually fantasyland, and why the “right” spending rate depends heavily on your age, timeline, and tolerance for adjusting in bad markets. They also answer a listener question about a 22-year-old’s investment allocation and close with a timely discus...

As parents age, money can get more complicated—bill paying, account access, healthcare decisions, investment management, and eventually the possibility that someone else may need to step in. In this episode, Don and Tom walk through how families can start that conversation before a crisis hits. They cover when to begin talking, what adult children should know about accounts and spending, why durable powers of attorney need to be checked with custodians in advance, and the importance of reviewing...

Don and Tom take on the latest crypto hype cycle, arguing that Bitcoin remains speculation—not a reliable store of wealth—and that putting crypto inside retirement accounts is especially dangerous. They discuss a new self-directed IRA crypto platform, the risks of private equity and alternative assets in retirement plans, and why “get rich quickly” pitches should set off alarm bells. Then they answer two listener questions. First, Mark from Ohio asks how to prepare a retirement portfolio for a ...

Don and Tom take apart a clickbait Kiplinger piece touting the “five top buy-and-hold investments to manage market volatility,” arguing that the list is a random grab-bag of recent winners rather than a coherent portfolio. They explain why the suggested mix—VOO, VXUS, a healthcare sector ETF, Apple stock, and gold—does little to reduce volatility and instead layers on concentration risk, sector bets, and performance chasing. From there, they broaden the discussion into a more useful question: wh...

Can Tom beat the average American on a personal finance quiz? Don puts Tom in the hot seat with eight questions drawn from a financial literacy quiz developed by researchers at Stanford University and TIAA. The topics range from earning, budgeting, inflation, investing, debt, insurance, and risk to evaluating investment advice. Along the way, there’s plenty of good-natured ribbing, a debate over compounding, and a reminder that even financial professionals can stumble on carefully worded ques...