Oblivious Investor

Financial Planning Roundup: Binance Heist

Mike — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 13:00:09 +0000

Late last month, attackers (whom the FBI has identified as a North Korean state-sponsored operation) compromised two employee laptops at Binance (the largest cryptocurrency exchange) and then (after some steps that have not been disclosed) were able to steal $6.3 billion worth of cryptocurrency.

One of the arguments that crypto proponents make is that the crypto ecosystem is unencumbered by regulation. And indeed it’s true that regulations in the world of traditional finance impose costs and can slow innovation. And yet, regulations also keep depositors/investors/clients safe. The idea that somebody could compromise two employee laptops at a large traditional financial institution (e.g., Bank of America or Schwab) and then walk out the door with $6.3 billion dollars (not just customer data, but actual assets) is almost unthinkable, due to various protections built into the system.

I admit that I have never found the case for cryptocurrency as an investment asset class to be compelling. The surrounding environment (in which cryptocurrency assets are disproportionately targeted for theft, preferred as a means of fraudulent payment, and used widely for money laundering) makes it even less so.

Binance Hackers Used Fake Job Interview in $6.3 Billion Attack from Elizabeth Howcroft and A.J. Vicens

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

Disclaimer:Your subscription to this blog does not create a CPA-client or other professional services relationship between you and Michael Piper or between you and Simple Subjects, LLC. By subscribing, you explicitly agree not to hold Michael Piper or Simple Subjects, LLC liable in any way for damages arising from decisions you make based on the information available herein. Neither Michael Piper nor Simple Subjects, LLC makes any warranty as to the accuracy of any information contained in this communication. The information contained herein is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. On financial matters for which assistance is needed, I strongly urge you to meet with a professional advisor who (unlike me) has a professional relationship with you and who (again, unlike me) knows the relevant details of your situation.

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Diversifying Across Brokerage Firms, Email Addresses, and Devices

Mike — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 14:00:24 +0000

I recently received three questions with similar themes, albeit distinct topics:

“Do you think it’s wise to split assets between different brokerage firms? Having everything at one is more convenient, but I wonder if having some fraud/cyber diversification between custodians outweighs the convenience.”
“I have heard people suggest using one email account for most things and a second email account that is used for nothing other than bank and brokerage accounts. Do you think that would meaningfully improve security?”
“A family member suggested having a completely separate computer, which is used ONLY to log into financial accounts. Is that a good idea?”

Broadly, I’d describe all three of these things as reasonable practices to adopt. Each of these three practices, if implemented well, would reduce risk by some degree. But I don’t think any of these three practices is mandatory, nor would I put them at the top of my list in terms of things people should be doing.

Using Multiple Brokerage Firms

Yes, spreading your money out across multiple brokerage firms does limit the potential harm if a thief is able to access one of your accounts and the brokerage firm’s reimbursement policy does not make you whole.

However, “the thief only stole half of our money” is still an absolute disaster scenario for most households. And having accounts at multiple brokerage firms increases what cybersecurity experts refer to as the “attack surface.” That is, it increases the number of possible ways in which a bad guy could carry out an attack. The more brokerage firms you use, the more accounts you need to keep secure.

The most critical risk-reduction tools are security practices that help keep the accounts secure, rather than diversifying across multiple firms.

Separate from fraud, one point that I do think is worth considering is the “a technical glitch has temporarily locked me out of my account” scenario. In our household, even with only a single brokerage firm, that wouldn’t really be a problem. We don’t use our brokerage firm for banking purposes. We have a bank account with BankA, a credit card with BankB, and a second credit card with BankC, which collectively could be used to satisfy spending for quite a while. But for people who, for example, use a single brokerage firm and use that brokerage firm as their bank account as well, being locked out for even a matter of days could be a big issue.

Using a Designated Financial-Accounts-Only Email Address

Having a separate email account for the “financial stuff” has a few potential benefits:

It reduces the ramifications in the event that your “normal” (i.e., non-financial) email account is someday accessed by a malicious party.
It can make phishing emails easier to spot. For example, if an email from “Vanguard” ever shows up in your non-financial email inbox, it should immediately be treated as suspicious.
Many companies use your email address as the username, so if you use your most critical email address in fewer places, it’s less likely that any thieves will be aware of it.

As above though, you now have multiple accounts that you need to keep secure.

Having separate email accounts also creates some degree of hassle, in that you now need to separately check two email accounts. (And if you try to circumvent this hassle by having the financial-only email account forwarded to your main email account, you’ve substantially undermined the security benefit, because somebody who gains access to your main email account would then also have access to the financial emails being forwarded there.)

Another way in which you could accidentally eliminate much of the security benefit from having separate email accounts would be to list your main email account as a recovery option for the financial email account. In such a case, an attacker with access to your main email account might be able to get into your financial email account by using its “forgot my password” process, which would send a link to your main email account.

So again it’s a situation in which there is some additional protection to be offered, but that protection comes at the cost of convenience, and you now have more accounts to secure. (And it’s possible, if poorly set up, to not really achieve any additional protection via having that separate email account.)

And again, the most critical protections are the things that keep your email account(s) secure in the first place, rather than having additional accounts. For instance:

If you use gmail, look into their Advanced Protection Program.
If you use Apple, look into the Security Keys for Apple Account setting.
On your mobile device, use the “Require Face ID” feature (or your device’s equivalent) to lock your email app, rather than allowing anyone with access to your unlocked phone to open it.

Using a Designated Finance-Only Computer

The idea of having a separate device that is used only to log into financial accounts is again damage mitigation. It makes it a less-bad situation if you somehow end up with malware on your “main” (non-financial) device.

Of course there’s some degree of financial cost, in that you need to own an additional device at all times. (And it’s critical that the finance-only device be current, rather than one that has reached end-of-life status.)

And you now have an additional device that you have to make sure is kept secure, up to date, etc. (Also, if you only turn this computer on every few weeks, for instance, it’s likely to be out of date as soon as you power it up. So it would be important to follow a rule of turning it on and then checking for updates immediately, before logging into anything.)

In addition, the security benefit from having a separate finance-only device could be undermined somewhat if you use the same cloud accounts for both devices.

And once again, the most critical things you can do are security practices that make it less likely that you end up with malware on your device in the first place, rather than practices that make it less bad in the event that you do end up with malware. For example:

Keep your OS and browser up to date.
Create a non-administrator user account for day-to-day use.
Only install software via reputable sources and only when the developer shown is a trusted party. (Ditto for browser extensions.)

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

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Financial Planning Roundup: Guest on The Long View Podcast

Mike — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 12:00:26 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to join Christine Benz and Amy Arnott for Morningstar’s The Long View podcast. We discussed my new book and a variety of themes relating to cybersecurity, as well as how to keep ourselves (and our family members) safe as we age.

Mike Piper: Scammers Are Getting Smarter. Is Your Financial Security Keeping Up?

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of this email (or by removing this RSS feed from your feed reader if you have subscribed via a feed reader).

Tax Treatment of Selling Trading Cards (Are They Collectibles?)

Mike — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:00:02 +0000

A reader writes in, asking:

“I recently sold some old Magic the Gathering cards for a considerable sum of money. I know reddit is not the place to go for tax advice, but everybody there says this would count as a sale of of a ‘collectible’ whereas I’m getting mixed answers from AI. I’ve tried looking on the IRS website but cannot find any actual answers there. Please help!”

Firstly, let’s provide some background for anybody not familiar with why this question matters. For the most part, long-term capital gains are taxed at favorable tax rates (i.e., tax rates lower than the ordinary income tax brackets). However, long-term capital gains from the sale of collectibles are taxed at your ordinary income tax rate, subject to a 28% maximum rate. (That is, if you’re in the 0-24% brackets, a long-term capital gain from the sale of collectibles would be taxed at your ordinary income tax rate, and if you’re in the 32-37% tax bracket, a long-term capital gain from the sale of collectibles would be taxed at a 28% rate.)

In other words, if you’ve just sold something for a gain, you would prefer that it be something that doesn’t count as a collectible.

Most people would consider Magic the Gathering cards, Pokemon cards, baseball cards, etc. to be firmly within the colloquial definition of the word “collectible.” People certainly have collections of baseball cards, Magic cards, Pokemon cards, etc. The category of games that includes Magic and Pokemon is often even referred to as a “collectible card game.”

And yet, what matters is not colloquial definitions but rather our tax law.

And the law itself points in the opposite direction. The relevant definition comes from IRC § 408(m), which states:

the term “collectible” means:

(A) any work of art,
(B) any rug or antique,
(C) any metal or gem,
(D) any stamp or coin,
(E) any alcoholic beverage, or
(F) any other tangible personal property specified by the Secretary for purposes of this subsection.

In other words, it’s a specific list of things. The wording is not that the term “collectible” includes those items (and therefore potentially includes other items as well). Rather, the wording is that “collectible” means specifically the things on that list. And there’s no broad catch-all statement. The closest thing to a catch-all is paragraph (F), which indicates that the Secretary has to specify the property in question as a collectible.

So what has the Treasury Department specified as collectibles? Not very much, it turns out.

In a 1984 proposed regulation, the Treasury stated that the term “collectible” means:

(1) Any work or art,
(2) Any rug or antique,
(3) Any metal or gem,
(4) Any stamp or coin,
(5) Any alcoholic beverage,
(6) Any musical instrument,
(7) Any historical objects (documents, clothes, etc.), or
(8) Any other tangible personal property which the Commissioner determines is a “collectible” for purposes of this section.

In other words, relative to the law itself, the proposed regulation added musical instruments and historical documents. But still no wording regarding trading cards or any number of other things that we’d often refer to as collectibles. (Also, for what it’s worth, that 1984 proposed regulation was never finalized.)

More recently, in 2023, the IRS specified that NFTs (nonfungible tokens) would be considered collectibles if the underlying asset is itself a collectible. But that’s not relevant here either.

I cannot find anything whatsoever indicating that the IRS has ever publicly indicated that trading cards are collectibles, even though that’s what you’d intuitively assume would be the case. They would be collectibles if you consider them to be works of art or historical objects, but that seems like a stretch in most cases.

In a 2023 letter to the IRS, the New York State Bar Association stated:

We observe that under current law, section 408(m) may not apply to many tangible assets commonly understood as collectibles, including sports and trading cards, dolls and figurines, comic books, magazines, stuffed animals and video games. The policy arguments for extending section 408(m) to NFTs presumably apply with equal force to such tangible assets, which have been bought and sold for prices comparable to the prices commanded by the most sought-after NFTs. Yet although section 408(m)(2)(F) authorizes Treasury to identify additional categories of tangible collectibles, Treasury has never exercised that authority.

So if you sell something that we’d typically think of as a collectible, but which the law does not include in the definition of a collectible, reporting it as a sale of a collectible and paying the higher tax rate is probably the safest thing to do, if you want to be 100% sure that you won’t have your tax bill adjusted upward at a later date. But at the same time, the law says what it says. And filing a tax return that is in keeping with what the law says is generally a pretty reasonable thing to do.

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

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Financial Planning Roundup: Successful Book Launch

Mike — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:00:14 +0000

Firstly, thank you to everybody who purchased the new book Household Cybersecurity over this last week! If you have any questions about the material, feel free to ask, as you’re probably not the only person with that same question.

If you found the book to be helpful, please consider leaving a review on Amazon (or Goodreads), as that’s the best way to help others find the book.

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

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New Book — Household Cybersecurity: a CPA’s Guide to Protecting Your Accounts and Personal Information

Mike — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:00:16 +0000

I’m excited to announce that my latest book is now available on Amazon:

Household Cybersecurity: a CPA’s Guide to Protecting Your Accounts and Personal Information

As we’ve discussed here lately, data from the FBI and FTC indicate that cybercrime and fraud have been growing at an alarming rate in recent years. In part, that’s because the tools available to the bad guys are getting better and better every year.

Unfortunately, some people aren’t even aware of the problem. They’re just following the same cybersecurity practices that they were following a decade ago.

Some people do recognize the problem, but they aren’t really sure what they should be doing to protect themselves.

And finally, some people recognize the problem, and they’re actively working on improving their security, but they have a lot of questions about newer tools, what is safe, what isn’t safe, etc.

My goal is for this book to be helpful to all three groups.

Most cybersecurity advice boils down to telling you to be careful: be suspicious of that email, don’t click that link, etc. That is good advice, but it doesn’t go far enough, because it only works if you get it right every single time, for the rest of your life.

A primary theme of this book is that, whenever possible, we want to reduce the degree to which your security depends on making the right judgment, in the moment. The goal is to put protections in place that hold up even when somebody in the household makes a mistake. Because, eventually, somebody in the household will make a mistake.

It’s similar to what we do with saving and investing. A plan that relies on somebody remembering to make manual retirement account contributions every month is much less likely to be successful than a plan in which retirement account contributions are automated. In both cases, the idea is to create a system to reduce our dependence on perfect behavior.

The Focus

As is hopefully clear from the title, this isn’t a book about enterprise cybersecurity. Rather, the question at hand is: what does an ordinary household actually need to know and do to protect their money and personal information?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that cybersecurity isn’t my primary profession. But I’ve spent considerable time studying the subject: I’ve earned CompTIA’s Security+ certification, ISACA’s Cybersecurity Audit Certificate, and the AICPA’s Information Security & Cyber Risk Certificate.

The book’s guidance is grounded in recommendations and frameworks from relevant government agencies (NIST, CISA, and the UK’s NCSC), as well as the Center for Internet Security.

Still, the perspective I’m bringing to this subject is that of a CPA and financial planner. The book is specifically focused on what households can do to reduce their risk of fraud, account compromise, or other forms of financial harm.

A Broader Goal

I also have somewhat of a broader goal here. While the book itself is entirely focused on what the reader can do to protect themselves and their loved ones, I’m also hoping that this book can be one small piece in a broader shift toward normalizing cybersecurity discussions as part of financial planning discussions — no different than tax planning, for example.

As it stands right now, most general-audience personal finance materials don’t discuss it at all. Most financial professionals don’t discuss the topic with their clients. Financial planning training materials don’t cover it.

Cybersecurity gets left out, because it’s considered a “tech” topic rather than a personal finance topic.

That’s fine for the people who have a loved one who is savvy on these topics and willing to personally coach them. But most people don’t have that. Most people, even people trying really hard to make sure their finances are in order, are getting little to no information about cybersecurity and fraud prevention. And I believe that gap is a contributing factor to the dramatic increase in fraud that we’re seeing.

And so I hope this book will also be useful to financial professionals who recognize that cybersecurity and fraud prevention are increasingly relevant to the households they serve, but who aren’t sure what they should be telling clients.

Introduction: An Epidemic of Fraud

Part One: The Threat

1. What Does a Thief Need to Access Your Financial Accounts?
2. Know Your Opponent
3. We Need Protective Policies, Because Mistakes Happen

Part Two: Fundamental Cybersecurity Concepts

4. You Are the CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)
5. The CIA Triad
6. Cryptography Basics
7. Understanding Authentication
8. Password Strength

Part Three: The Tools

9. Password Managers
10. Authenticator Apps
11. Passkeys
12. Physical Security Keys

Part Four: Policies

13. Account Configurations
14. Device Security
15. Network Security
16. Security Maintenance
17. Responding to a Cybersecurity Incident
18. Protecting Vulnerable Loved Ones

Conclusion: Layers of Protection

If you think the book might be helpful to you or a loved one, please pick up a copy:

Household Cybersecurity: a CPA’s Guide to Protecting Your Accounts and Personal Information

And if you do find it helpful, please consider posting a review on Amazon!

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

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Financial Planning Roundup: Strengths and Weaknesses of Advisor Fee-Only Models

Mike — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 12:00:23 +0000

For anybody considering hiring an advisor, it’s important to know exactly what you want. That is, it’s best if you go shopping for an advisor who meets requirements that you have selected, rather than letting somebody come to you to sell you their services.

One way in which advisors can be categorized is by what services they provide. At a very high level, the options would be:

Advice-only (i.e., they provide advice but do not manage the portfolio),
Portfolio management with very limited advice, or
Comprehensive financial planning, together with portfolio management.

Financial planners/advisors can also be grouped by designation (CFP, CPA, PFS, CFA, EA, etc.) or by areas of expertise.

Finally, it’s important to have a good idea of what fee model(s) you’d be willing to accept. Allan Roth recently wrote a piece discussing the pros and cons (from the client perspective) of the various fee-only (i.e., non-commission) models:

Strengths & Weaknesses of Advisor Fee–Only Models from the Client Perspective from Allan Roth

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of this email (or by removing this RSS feed from your feed reader if you have subscribed via a feed reader).

Ways that Owning Individual Stocks Can Go Wrong

Mike — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:00:57 +0000

Most of the time, when people buy individual stocks (or choose not to sell ones that they already own), the thought process appears to be something along the lines of: I expect that this company will earn lots of profits in the coming years.

But that’s not a good enough reason to buy an individual stock. (Nor is it a good enough reason to choose not to sell a stock that you already own.)

Choosing to allocate anything more than a trivial portion of your portfolio to an individual stock means taking on considerable additional risk, relative to simply owning a diversified fund of stocks. So you need to have a strong reason to think that this particular stock will earn better returns than the overall market.

And, what most people don’t know is that the performance of a given stock is not determined by whether the underlying company performs well or poorly. Rather, it is determined by whether the underlying company does better or worse than the market expected it to do. There is, therefore, little to be gained from picking individual stocks unless you have some unique insight about the company which the broader overall market does not have — something that isn’t already “priced in.”

A quick litmus test: have you even attempted a financial analysis of the company? Have you looked at their financial statements? Have you done any financial modeling at all? If not, you owe it to yourself to be honest about what you’re doing. You’re investing based on vibes. And you’re pitting that approach, and your money, against professionals who are taking a considerably more rigorous approach to the process.

Another hurdle: if you do think you have a unique insight into this company’s future profitability, it’s important to make sure that you won’t be running afoul of insider trading rules if you make any trades based on the information you have.

But even from that point (i.e., you firmly believe you have a unique insight into the company’s future profitability, and you’re confident that it’s not based on insider information), there are still multiple ways that it can go wrong.

The unique insight you have about the company could turn out to be wrong. A common version of this is, “right line of business, wrong company.” You successfully identified a line of business that grew much faster than the market expected, but the specific company you chose turned out not to be the winner in that industry.

Alternatively, the unique insight you have about the company could turn out to be right, but you were wrong about it being unique. In other words, the market already knew, and the information was already baked into the price.

Another possibility: the unique insight you have about the company turns out to be right, but you weren’t accounting for some negative factor that the market was accounting for (and you were thus overvaluing the stock).

And finally: the unique insight you have about the company turns out to be right, but neither you nor the market was accounting for a negative factor that turned out to be important (i.e., everybody was overvaluing the stock).

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of this email (or by removing this RSS feed from your feed reader if you have subscribed via a feed reader).

Financial Planning Roundup: 153 Million Drivers License Scans Made Illegally Available for Sale

Mike — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:41 +0000

Earlier this month, news broke that somebody was selling scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses. It appears that it’s the result of a breach at a company (IDscan.net) that provides ID scanning services for other businesses, such as Hertz car rental, Target, and FedEx.

This is up there with the 2017 Equifax breach in terms of total number of people affected (i.e., almost half the U.S. population). It’s depressing/infuriating that we have so little control of where our information ends up. And this event definitely reinforces the lesson that any account secured exclusively with “private” information is no longer sufficiently secured, as the bad guys increasingly have access to our private information.

FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses from Brian Krebs

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of this email (or by removing this RSS feed from your feed reader if you have subscribed via a feed reader).

A TIPS Ladder in a Single ETF? (Northern Trust Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETFs)

Mike — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:14 +0000

A reader writes in, asking:

“Have you encountered the ‘Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder’ ETFs from Northern Trust? It looks to me that they create an entire TIPS ladder for you, and all you have to do is just buy a single fund. Too good to be true?”

Yes, the ETFs in question do create an entire TIPS ladder for you. But there is a catch. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Firstly, I want to note that these are very different from iShares’ target-maturity TIPS ETFs. The ETFs from iShares each buy TIPS maturing in a single year (i.e., each of the ETFs could serve as a single rung in a ladder, rather than being a ladder on its own).

In contrast, the Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETFs from Northern Trust each own an entire TIPS ladder (with the final year being the year in the fund’s name). Here are the options so far:

Northern Trust 2030 Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETF (TIPA)
Northern Trust 2031 Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETF (TIPE)
Northern Trust 2035 Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETF (TIPB)
Northern Trust 2036 Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETF (TIPF)
Northern Trust 2045 Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETF (TIPC)
Northern Trust 2046 Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETF (TIPG)
Northern Trust 2055 Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETF (TIPD)
Northern Trust 2056 Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETF (TIPH)

They started with the 2030, 2035, 2045, and 2055 funds last year, and added the other funds this year. It seems likely that next year they’ll launch another four funds (i.e., 2032, 2037, 2047, 2057).

The idea is that, for each fund, as the bonds mature or make interest payments, the fund distributes cash. And when the final bonds mature, the fund distributes its remaining assets and then closes. So, yes, each of these ETFs really is an entire TIPS ladder via a single fund.

And they’re low-cost as well, with expense ratios of just 0.10%.

The catch: the distribution policy makes no sense (at least in my opinion). The funds distribute cash when bonds pay interest or mature, which makes sense. But they also distribute the inflation adjustments as they occur. What that means is that, in order for your holding to actually go up along with inflation (which is generally the idea of a TIPS ladder), you’d have to manually reinvest the distributions that are the result of inflation adjustments. And you can’t just set it to automatically reinvest all distributions, otherwise you’d be reinvesting the other distributions as well.

So these ETFs are much less work to set up than a DIY ladder of individual TIPS, but they involve ongoing management work, whereas a ladder of individual TIPS is generally just left alone once it has been put it place.

They’re so close to being a major convenience upgrade. But as it stands, they’re just trading work now for work later. For some people that might still be a desirable tradeoff. For me, it puts them in the “neat idea, but no thank you” category.

One other point: so far, the funds are tiny, in terms of assets managed. I hope they catch on. But I hope even more that somebody eventually creates a product that really is a set-it-and-forget-it TIPS ladder all in a single fund.

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Read the answers to this question and several other Social Security questions in my latest book:

Social Security Made Simple: Social Security Retirement Benefits and Related Planning Topics Explained in 100 Pages or Less

Click here to see it on Amazon.

You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link at the bottom of this email (or by removing this RSS feed from your feed reader if you have subscribed via a feed reader).

Oblivious Investor

Financial Planning Roundup: Binance Heist

Other Recommended Reading

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Diversifying Across Brokerage Firms, Email Addresses, and Devices

Using Multiple Brokerage Firms

Using a Designated Financial-Accounts-Only Email Address

Using a Designated Finance-Only Computer

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Financial Planning Roundup: Guest on The Long View Podcast

Other Recommended Reading

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Tax Treatment of Selling Trading Cards (Are They Collectibles?)

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Financial Planning Roundup: Successful Book Launch

Other Recommended Reading

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

New Book — Household Cybersecurity: a CPA’s Guide to Protecting Your Accounts and Personal Information

The Focus

A Broader Goal

Table of Contents

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Financial Planning Roundup: Strengths and Weaknesses of Advisor Fee-Only Models

Other Recommended Reading

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Ways that Owning Individual Stocks Can Go Wrong

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

Financial Planning Roundup: 153 Million Drivers License Scans Made Illegally Available for Sale

Other Recommended Reading

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?

A TIPS Ladder in a Single ETF? (Northern Trust Inflation-Linked Distributing Ladder ETFs)

What is the Best Age to Claim Social Security?