Should you rent a home in retirement? Renting is not necessarily just throwing money down the drain. There's more to the decision than financial concerns, but those should be considered carefully.

Hindsight may be telling us we should have sold in March. Don't listen.

Markets are showing a pattern of extreme calm followed by periods of extreme volatility. The last 30 years of stock market performance do not appear to be normally distributed. It is very important to be able to run scenarios on severe market downturns to stress test your investments and retirement plan.

It used to be--and still is, in the case where the original owner of the IRA died before the end of 2019--that owners of traditional IRAs inherited from someone other than the original owner's spouse only had to take annual required minimum distributions. Otherwise, an IRA could be passed on, theoretically, for generations.

Taking some risks with your portfolio can lead to higher returns over time. Over time" is important; in the short run, high risk can do damage to a portfolio--and a retirement plan. Emerging markets investments have a place in most portfolios. The question is how much.