Lessons
- Your emergency fund: how much, and where to keep it Lesson 1, 7 minutes
- Inflation and real return: what your money can buy Lesson 2, 7 minutes
- Income funds: why yield is not return Lesson 3, 7 minutes
- Taxable or tax-advantaged: where payouts get taxed Lesson 4, 7 minutes
- Bonds for income: duration and the rate cushion Lesson 5, 7 minutes
- Retirement withdrawals: a 4% draw in a bad year Lesson 6, 7 minutes
Your progress
Finish all 6 lessons and get 2 of 3 right on each quiz to earn the course certificate.0 of 6 lessons passed on this device.
What you learn
- How to judge a short-term home for an emergency fund: the value must hold, so look at total return and the worst fall, not the yield
- What inflation does to a return: nominal against real, and why a cash fund keeping pace is not losing
- Why yield only counts the cash paid out, and how price change and total return show whether the payout was earned
- How the account a fund sits in decides when its payouts are taxed, and why the fund's own tax split still has to be read
- How bond price moves with rates (duration), what a year of income offsets (the rate cushion), and why a higher yield is not a better fund
- Why a fall early in retirement hurts most when the yearly draw is large: the same dollars become a bigger share of a smaller balance