Many people can tell you their portfolio balance. Far fewer can tell you what else determines whether their retirement actually works. That's understandable. The balance is the number on the statement. It's concrete, and it feels like a score. But judging retirement readiness by that one figure is a little like judging your health by your weight—useful, and nowhere near the whole story. A framework published in the Journal of Financial Planning offers a wider...

Inflation remains elevated. The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index showed as much in August. Specifically, the PCE and core PCE, which excludes food and energy components, increased 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively, on a month-to-month basis, with the core figure running a tenth of a point below expectations. From a one-year perspective, the PCE and core PCE rose 3.4% and 3.0%, respectively, with both metrics still above the central bank’s target rate of 2.0%. At...

For decades, you trained one financial muscle: save, invest, don't touch it. Then retirement arrives and asks you to do the opposite. Nobody teaches that part. There is no course on how to spend the money you spent a lifetime building, so the discipline, the caution, and the watchful eye on every balance don't switch off just because your career did. The Switch Most Savers Struggle to Flip Researchers who study retirement have been paying...