Looking forward to some downtime over the holidays? Below are some new personal finance books and articles to consider.

​A Richer Retirement by William Bengen – Back in the 1990s, financial planner William Bengen developed what’s come to be known as the 4% rule. It’s a framework to help retirees determine a sustainable portfolio withdrawal rate. This year, Bengen updated and expanded his research. The most compelling addition: Bengen addresses the question of asset allocation. In one volume, we now have a guide to both building and withdrawing from a portfolio.

​How to Retire by Christine Benz – This book isan eminently useful field guide to every aspect of retirement. Where should you live? How should you think about healthcare? How should you structure your time? These questions, and many more, are answered by the group of experts that Morningstar’s Christine Benz assembled for How to Retire. If you’re approaching—or even thinking about—retirement, this book will be an excellent companion.

​The Trick to Enjoying a Vacation (and Investing Successfully) by Mike Piper – Historian Charles Kindleberger observed that, “there is nothing as disturbing to one’s well-being and judgment as to see a friend get rich.” The reality is that there will always be someone who bought Nvidia or some other high-flying investment and can’t wait to tell you about it. To combat this dynamic, author Mike Piper offers a helpful perspective: In building a portfolio, he says, “no matter what you pick, there’s going to be countless other options that would have been better.” But, Piper says, “as long as your original decision was reasonably well informed, it’s not helpful to spend a bunch of time looking at other allocations, other mutual funds, or other individual stocks that you could have selected instead.” Not only could that lead to regret, Piper says, but it could lead to performance chasing.

​Oddball Funds Gave Investors Fits by Jeff Ptak – One of the more amusing facts about Wall Street is that there are far more mutual funds and ETFs than there are stocks. As a result, there’s no shortage of unusual strategies vying for our attention. Morningstar’s Jeff Ptak asks the obvious question: Are these witch’s brews worth investing in? You can probably guess the answer. In related research, Ptak looked at so-called thematic funds, where the results were similar.

​Rebuffed: A Closer Look at Options-Based Strategies by Cliff Asness – Investment manager Cliff Asness and a colleague looked at a breed of funds that gained popularity this year: buffer funds, also known as defined-outcome funds. Their conclusion was blunt: These funds are “a failure for investors lured in by the overpromise of magical equity returns without equity risk and then overcharged for the pleasure.” In short, investors shouldn’t feel compelled to over-engineer their portfolios.

​The Complexities of Moving Toward Simplicity by Allan Roth – What if you already have a buffer fund or some other unusual investment in your portfolio? Should you simply sell it? “Simplicity is a virtue,” financial planner Allan Roth argues, “but not always easy.” In part, that’s because of tax constraints. And certain investments are so complex that it’s hard to know how to evaluate them. “Analyzing a permanent insurance product makes rocket science look simple.” In this article, Roth walks through his framework for evaluating whether to hold or to sell various types of investments.

​Mutual Fund Skill by Javier Vidal-García and Marta Vidal – We’ve all seen the research: Actively-managed funds, on average, lag their index-based peers. An interesting question, though, is why that’s the case. To be sure, cost is a factor. But how should we think about investment managers’ stock-picking skills? This study’s finding: Fund managers actually do a reasonably good job at picking stocks. When it comes to timing decisions, though, fund managers struggle. Stock-pickers, in other words, are good at picking stocks but not very good at deciding when to buy or sell them.

​How Not to Invest by Barry Ritholtz – This book offers investors a cautionary tale—many of them, in fact. Bad actors like Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff are well known. The reality, though, is that they represent just one of the many types of risk that investors can encounter. To help us navigate the “bad ideas, bad numbers and bad behavior” that pervade the world of investing, How Not to Invest is a very useful, and also very entertaining, guide.

​Is it a Bubble? by Howard Marks – Investor and author Howard Marks compares today’s market to past market bubbles and delivers this characteristically even-keeled conclusion: “Since no one can say definitively whether this is a bubble, I’d advise that no one should go all-in without acknowledging that they face the risk of ruin if things go badly. But by the same token, no one should stay all-out and risk missing out on one of the great technological steps forward. A moderate position, applied with selectivity and prudence, seems like the best approach.” I find this sentiment very useful. At times like this, when valuations are high, a good approach is to be prudent but not to panic.

​Trillion Dollar Market Caps: Fairy Tale Pricing or Great Businesses? (video) by Aswath Damodaran – NYU professor Aswath Damodaran is the author of a thousand-page book titled Investment Valuation and offers his own perspective on the AI economy, digging deep into the numbers. I recommend this video not because I think everyday investors should be analyzing stocks but because I think work like Damodaran’s should get more attention. Instead of hand-waving and story-telling, in other words, Damodaran focuses on facts and logic. That can help investors remain balanced in their thinking.

​Should You Build a TIPS Ladder in Retirement? (video) by Rob Berger – In 2022, when inflation surged, investors were disappointed to see their inflation-linked bonds lose money. Vanguard’s popular Inflation-Protected Securities Fund (ticker: VAIPX) saw shares sink nearly 12% that year. It was not what people expected, and that led many to question the wisdom of holding TIPS. In this video, investment educator Rob Berger clearly explains how TIPS work, then looks at the difference between TIPS funds and individual TIPS bonds.

​Should You Just Buy Stocks Until You Die? by Jason Zweig – Over time, stocks have handily outperformed bonds. Everybody knows that. So if you’re in your working years, with no near-term withdrawal needs, does that mean you should hold only stocks in your portfolio? Zweig discusses new research which makes precisely that argument. But he goes on to offer investors this clear-eyed advice: “​You can’t just take an analysis of the past, no matter how careful it is, and assume you can extrapolate it into the future…Let’s say the odds that stocks will outperform bonds in the future—if, but only if, the future resembles the past—are something like five out of six. As investing author William Bernstein points out, ‘That is also how often you win at Russian roulette.’”

​Farewell Friends by Jonathan Clements – The world lost a kind and decent person this year when Jonathan Clements died at age 62. He was a friend and a mentor to his many followers and was endlessly generous with his time and wisdom. In this article, published posthumously, Jonathan talks about his family, life and career. His parting words: “I faced the final months not with sorrow, but with great gratitude. I had spent almost my entire adult life doing what I love and surrounded by those that I love. Who could ask for more?”​