Don’t miss an episode of our podcast, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors. Tune in on: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Now, here’s today’s article: My parents’ home is getting ~12 inches of snow over the next 24 hours. My friends’ childhood homes, just a few miles away, are getting 24+ inches of snow. In one day!  On the map below, my childhood home is ~1 mile east of the “t” in Sodus Point. Many of my friends grew up a few miles north of the “n” and “t”, in the red and pink bands of snowfall. So it goes for the lake effect snow belts in Upstate NY.  If you’re commuting to work, running to the grocery store, or planning a picnic, a daily weather forecast is essential. You care about today’s prediction, regardless of any long-term average. But are there people for whom the opposite is true? People for whom today doesn’t matter, but the next 30 years’ weather is vital? Let’s reimagine meteorology for a second. Instead of daily forecasts, what if we had a multi-decade forecast? Would you care about average temperatures, average rainfalls, average windy days for the next 30 years?  Farmers and agricultural planners would care. Crop selection, irrigation systems, and land purchases are decadal bets. City planners and engineers would care. Roads, bridges, drainage systems, seawalls, power grids. You design infrastructure for long-term averages and extremes. Insurance companies would care. They price risk over long horizons. Flood risk. Fire risk. Storm frequency. Energy producers would care. Solar, wind, hydro, and grid capacity planning all depend on long-run climate expectations. Governments and pension systems would care. Disaster preparedness, budgeting, population migration, long-term fiscal stress. Anyone with a large, slow-moving decision would care.  2026 Stock Market Forecasts The annual stock market forecasts are out, reading the tea leaves for the next 12 months.  Even if those forecasters were as accurate as the daily weather, which they’re not, you shouldn’t care. As long-term investors, we have a large, slow-moving decision in front of us. We have decadal decisions.  We don’t need daily, weekly, monthly, or even annual market forecasts.  When it comes to stocks and the stock market, you should care about decades. If you really care about 2026 – perhaps because you need one year of living expenses from your portfolio this year – that money shouldn’t be in stocks. That money should be invested in something you can predict this year, like cash or 1-Year Treasury bonds. It’s really as simple as that. Some related articles: The Madness of Forecasting 10% Returns? What Should I Use for My Retirement Plan? The Oldest Bad Joke on Wall Street Thank you for reading! Here are three quick notes for you: First – If you enjoyed this article, join 1000’s of subscribers who read Jesse’s free weekly email, where he send you links to the smartest financial content I

Happy New Year you money monsters! I hope it will be a good year for you and your family, both in health and with your finances. Let’s start off this blogging year with a look at how we did in 2025. For today that means the 2025 dividend overview! Dividend Income Simply put, 2025 was a good year financially, the dividend front was not any different. We did shuffle some stocks around, which had it’s effect on the monthly totals. But fortunately, and that was the whole point of the shuffle, the total dividend went up in 2025. It should furthermore continue to do so in 2026. This is stilll a little bit of cash to deploy, but I have not figured out where to put it yet. 2025 Dividend Overview: Monthly Overview When you add all the monthly dividends up for 2025, and convert to Euro’s, you get the grapth below. Unfortunately due to significant exchange rate changes in 2025, we just missed out target of this year of an average of €1.000/month in dividends. Bit of a bummer, but considering that we are not taking any money out of this account just yet, it’s not a problem at all! Fortunately, the growth in CAD is really good. Hope to keep that going in 2026. 2025 Dividend Overview: yearly totals History and organic growth This dividend portfolio is (currently) our self-managed actual pension plan (all shares are held in Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSP’s) in Canada). We need it to improve on a yearly basis otherwise we are screwing our future (retired) selves. Albeit we can access this money before age 65, we don’t want to touch this until we have very little Box 1 income (likely when we are about 55-67). This is due to the withholding and income tax to be paid once we withdraw money from these accounts. With no other income, it is very tax efficient to withdraw from this portfolio. When you take out the European shares we shortly held back in 2016/2017 (leaving Canadian shares only) and take away the Exchange rate fluctuation, you get this organic growth (funds were only added in 2015 and all dividends were reinvested since). The total for 2025 came in just under $19k for the year. An growth of 7.3% in dividend income for the year compared to 2024, well above inflation, which is good. 2025 Dividend Overview: yearly overview (organic growth) Want to see more of these pretty graphs, have a look at what Bob did! Those graphs are pure magic. Sector distribution We have a fairly conservative portfolio with many boring companies. At the end 2025 it looked like this (graph making in LibreOffice is still not a pretty as with our evil Micro$oft friends, but it will have to do): We shrunk our Real Estate part of the portfolio and increased our position in the VDY.TO ETF during 2025. We are still considering what to do with the remaining real estate holdings.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome to “Thank God I’m FI” Friday, Volume #162 Here are some things I really like and that you might too!   Financial Independence/Work Life/Retirement Articles & Content Financial Optimization: When More Isn’t Better (Can I Retire… The post T.G.I.F. Friday: Volume 162 appeared first on Accidental Fire.

You don’t have to do your own taxes, but you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to file your income tax return either. If you have a relatively simple tax situation — for example, if you work… Source

If your car insurance keeps going up and you don’t want to switch companies, this is the exact process I used to cut my premium by 28% in under 15 minutes. Last year, I called my insurer using a few specific phrases I learned from an industry insider. In 14 minutes, my premium dropped from… Continue… The post How I Cut My Car Insurance $235/Year in 15 Minutes Without Switching Companies appeared first on MoneyPantry.com.

There’s an important tax calculation that will never show up on any of your tax forms, but it can make the difference between owing money and getting a refund. That calculation Is your MAGI – Modified Adjusted Gross Income. And if you’ve been getting locked out of taking some tax deductions, receiving tax credits, or benefiting from certain retirement savings options, that all comes down to your MAGI. If you get hit with extra taxes, […]

This self-employment retirement plan account comparison has been updated with information for the 2025 & 2026 tax years. My search for the best self-employment income retirement account started with this: while completing my tax return in prior years, I started noticing that I would have a not-insignificant tax bill due from self-employment, 1099, and side project income unless I found a way to reduce my taxable income. This was especially true for a number of years when I was receiving full-time employment income on top of side-project income. Our (Mrs. 20SF and I file jointly) income levels were above the The post The Best Self-Employed Retirement Accounts Comparison: SEP IRA vs Solo 401K vs SIMPLE IRA (for 2025 & 2026) appeared first on 20somethingfinance.com.

This SIMPLE IRA overview has been updated with information for the 2025 & 2026 tax years. This is the third installment in a multi-part series on retirement accounts for self-employment income. We previously covered SEP IRA and Solo 401K basics. In this post, we’ll cover the SIMPLE IRA. You don’t have to be entirely self-employed to find this or the other two retirement account options relevant. If you have any self-employment income (even part-time side income), you could use these accounts to your benefit. What is a SIMPLE IRA? The SIMPLE IRA is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not The post SIMPLE IRA Basics for Self-Employment Income (For 2025 & 2026) appeared first on 20somethingfinance.com.