I don’t know about you, but the solid build up of backward progress (on what feels like all fronts) has left me feeling a little indifferent to reading personal finance stuff, as if nothing’s wrong with the world and all we need to worry about is our net worth or whatever.

But I’m still reading, still searching for voices and perspectives different from the mainstream (with varying degrees of success), still looking for wisdom and hope. If you’re with me, here are four things to read before you go do the next right thing:

It’s Time To Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

From Jennifer Taylor Chan

What’s more hopeful than using your resources in ways that don’t just benefit you, but make the change you want to see in the world?

While I’d like to consider myself a principled person, I’ll admit that I often neglect to think about how spending and managing my money could be in more in line with my values. For the longest time I parked my money in a major bank, bought cheap clothes at places like H&M and Forever 21, and made financial decisions that saved me the most money.But, as you know, what's convenient or lucrative doesn't always coincide with your principles. And betraying your principles for the sake of money is hardly a way to live.

Read the full article here.

Happily Misbehaving

From Adam M. Grossman

It’s not your bottom line that matters most. It’s how you use it and how it makes you feel.

People often struggle with financial decisions when the ‘right’ answer from a numerical standpoint doesn’t feel like the right answer from an emotional standpoint...Just because they seem like purely financial decisions doesn’t mean that they need to be decided on a purely quantitative basis...if a certain financial choice will bring you happiness—and it won’t greatly hurt you—then I wouldn’t be concerned. Your financial assets should bring you happiness and peace of mind.

Read the full article here.

The Best Advice You Can Ever Give

From Gustavo RazzettiI’m a professional advice giver, and I can testify to this:

Staying silent is more effective than providing unsolicited advice. It’s switching your role from hero to helper; to focus on listening and understanding what’s going through the other person’s mind.It’s better to be a good listener than to give advice no one will follow.

Read the full article here.

Your Financial Planning To-Do List

From Christine Benz

If you want to manage your resources so you can be generous with them, there’s no better way to do so than through financial planning. Here’s a 14-step process from Morningstar, complete with worksheets and tools if you want to tackle it yourself.Read the full article here.

Finally, summer is here! While I heartily encourage you to spend every possible minute outside (as I write this indoors because I’m tired of wiping pollen off my laptop screen), you may find yourself wishing for some great reads, and boy do I have some for you.

If you can only read three, I’ve picked them out for you below. If you have time for more, here’s one on the inequitable outcomes of school fundraising (it might ring some bells for parents looking forward to the end of school and the end of the neverending fundraisers), here’s one on how robo-advisors and fee for service financial planners can deliver superior value at lower cost to traditional “wealth management” offerings, here’s another reminder that bonds still (yes, still) belong in your portfolio, and there’s more fantastic stuff in the list below.

Read on!

Create Your Own Online Spend Tracker

From Owen Winkelmolen

This is a simple, elegant, and free system for tracking spending that you can set up, customize, and be using in less than half an hour. Yes, please.Read the full article here. [

To Be a New Fool in the World

From Jason Zweig

This is a total cheat, since it’s a list of posts, but when someone as smart and dedicated to continuously pursuing wisdom as Jason Zweig publishes a list of what he considers his best work, you read it.Read the full article here. 

You Are What You Read

From Josh Brown

Make damned sure your sources and curators come from different backgrounds than yours & each other’s. Diversify your world view, don’t de-worsify it by adding more of the same crowd. (That might include me & that’s okay.)

Read the full article here

You can read this month's entire list below:

Occam’s – Does Dollar Cost Averaging Make Sense? | Bob French

Investing a large lump sum: all at once, or in smaller amounts over time?

Break the Chain: Stop Being a Slave | Farnham Street

It can be hard to say no. It means refusing someone, and often it means denying yourself instant gratification. The rewards of doing this are uncertain and less tangible.

[great article; terrible title]

Safety Net Funds: Why Traditional Advice Is Wrong | Dan Egan

This is a really interesting compromise for emergency funds.

The Financial Literacy Hoax | Sandy Hudson & Nora Loreto

Financial literacy education, when divorced from the politics of the public pension and tax systems, essentially teaches that "if you're poor it's because you don't know rules, not because the system doesn't serve you."

How to rebalance when some ETFs already do it themselves | Dan Bortolotti

On rebalancing around the all-in-one Vanguard funds in a couch potato portfolio.

The Great Divide: Fundraising is no solution to under-resourced classrooms | Erika Shaker

If we want things like well-stocked libraries and well-resourced classrooms (and field trips and musical instruments and art supplies and team uniforms and sports equipment) for our kids, then we have to acknowledge that all kids deserve these things too. So let’s make sure we pay for them in the most efficient, effective, fairest way possible.

Do Bonds Still Diversify When Rates Rise? | Cullen Roche

And that’s why you own bonds – not for the sexy returns, but because they make your overall portfolio more behaviorally sustainable.

I have a short reading list for you this month, since most of us are either rushing to file our taxes or rushing to get outside after a long, cold winter. Notable articles that didn’t quite make the top three include this one from Andray Domise on how - if 40% of Canadians withdrew from their RRSPs last year - maybe it’s the design of the program that’s to blame rather than the people who are using it “incorrectly,” this one from Jennifer Chan on how she set up her finances when she first graduated law school with $40,000 in debt, and this one from Jonathan Clements on the four financial questions that reasonable people can disagree on.

And now:

Here’s a Counterintuitive Idea for Your Retirement...

From Paula Pant

If you know there’s such a thing as “the 4% rule” but don’t really know it's provenance or what said rule actually says, this is the article for you. Paula has a long-proven gift for clear financial writing, and this article is one of the best entry-level explanations of what the “rule” is, why it matters, how it might be flawed, and what to do about it for those of you who want to know more but don’t want to dig into past issues of the Journal of Financial Planning.

Read the full article here.

Three Ways to Increase Your Portfolio’s Longevity

From Anthony Isola

“Concentrate on improving the lifespan and healthspan of your money. The same principles will exponentially increase the quality of your life.”

Read the full article here. 

Some Alternatives to Evidence-Based Investing

From Josh Brown

“Systematic approaches to investing are the best way to express the fact that a) the future is unknowable b) no one can reliably guess at what’s going to happen for extended periods of time and c) other approaches that rely on instinct, intuition and rapid-fire decision making are too inconsistent (and costly) to depend upon for something as serious as building a retirement plan or funding future liabilities.”

Read the full article here. 

You can read this month's entire list below:

It's Time for Canada to Get Rid of the RRSP | Andray Domise

Solid take from former financial planner Andray Domise on how the RRSP program was designed for a past reality and doesn't work for the people who need it most:

"So what we’re left with is a savings scheme that benefits almost everyone except the people it was designed to protect, and often have the most need for access to emergency cash."

Unanswered | Jonathan Clements

“There are four questions where reasonable people can disagree—and where it’s all but impossible to settle the debate, in part because we find ourselves peering into an extremely cloudy crystal ball.”

I Paid Off $40,000 of Student Loans By Organizing My Finances Like This | Jennifer T. Chan

“Once you set things on autopilot, it’s uncanny how much you’re able to let it work in the background while you do other things with your time.

It’s that time of year - at least in the middle of Ontario - where it starts to feel like winter’s this close to ending...and then it snows again. Seriously, the only thing keeping me alive right now is that this late winter garbage weather makes great maple syrup.

March’s great reads might give you just the excuse you need to curl up inside until the snow melts and spring really, truly arrives. If you can’t read anything else because you’re busy tapping trees and boiling sap, at least read the top three (and seriously, thank you for your service). For everyone else with time on their hands, the rest of the list includes being (rightly) terrified of people who know what the stock market will do next, Dan Bortolotti’s review of the new Vanguard ETFs, how making non-registered accounts joint to avoid probate fees puts seniors at risk of abuse, and a single piece of advice from a strong, righteously angry woman.

What if You Stop Expecting it to Be Easy?

From Jacquette Timmons

“Couples with a strong and healthy connection value the mundane because they recognize the power of how what you do day-in and day-out matters much more than what you do on occasion. And they apply a similar sentiment when it comes to money. Yes, there are some within my industry that thrive on you being attracted to the notion that financial success is all about the sexy headliners – the latest IPO; picking the latest top-performing mutual fund; focusing on what the market did (or didn’t do) yesterday and such; or, how many commas and zeros do you have following them, etc. With relationships and with money, the truth is far less exciting. A good portion of your relational and financial success rests in the aspects that are rather boring and quite unsexy. This matters because in much the same way as you don’t measure the strength and intimacy of your relationship on one day, the same is true when it comes to money. The ‘small,’ daily choices matter more than the grand one-off events or days.”

Read the full article here. 

Strategic Faith

From Daniel P. Egan

“Most of us will invest for about 50 years, from age 30 to 80. Over that period the primary driver of non-savings growth will be that you invest in a reasonably diversified, risk-aligned portfolio with low cost and tax drag. Once those boxes are checked, the exact flavor you choose isn’t hugely important. Market-cap, SRI/ESG, Smart Beta, Trend, Risk Parity, Global CAPE, home biased. Sure, sounds good. Go for it. Bikeshedding. They’ll all have periods where they look best, and periods where they under-perform. Except! Except if you don’t stick with it. Except if you flop in and out of strategies with each glittering fad and temporary disappointment... Distill most investing mistakes down, and you get a simple story: the single biggest factor is simply cumulative time invested. Anything we can do which increases the total time an investor holds a reasonable portfolio, is a win.”

Read the full article here. 

YOLO

From Tony Isola

“Many [retirees] constantly focus on the threat of running out of money rather than enjoying the fruits of decades of saving and sacrifice. Michael Kitces wrote an excellent article on this subject: ‘Why Most Retirees Will Never Draw Down Their Retirement Portfolio.’ He brings to light something called the ‘consumption gap.’ In theory, the whole point of saving and investing for retirement is that upon reaching retirement, it’s time to spend down the money and enjoy it. In practice, a growing base of research finds that for most of their retirement, retirees are just continuing the growth of their pre-retirement portfolios, suggesting a ‘consumption gap’ between what retirees could and should spend versus what they actually do. Most retirees do not begin to touch their principal until they reach well into their eighties. Leaving your entire principal to heirs means you under consumed your retirement portfolio and needlessly sacrificed a higher quality of life; unless, of course, that was your goal to begin with. In my experiences, it is often not.”

Read the full article here.

You can read this month's entire list below:

Will the Market Go Up or Down from Here? | Dirk Cotton

“The answer is yes. It will go up or down from here”

....and what to do about it.

Be Terrified | Josh Brown

“Imagine the sheer arrogance and borderline mental illness required for a person to assume that they can accurately foretell the actions of a hundred million investors around the world.”

Raising Red Flags on Probate Fees | Wanda Morris

“There is a clear lesson here: don’t create a joint account simply to avoid probate fees.“

“Private Banker” | Josh Brown

“There are great advisors working in conflicted situations and managing these conflicts becomes a sort of career-long struggle for them. It’s admirable, but it’s not your problem as the consumer. There are plenty of great advisors working in situations that do not require this daily conflict-management effort, because they are compensated correctly from the start – not for selling one product or service over another, but for giving advice to you without commissions from a third party or additional goals they need to meet.”

Our Single Best Piece of Advice for Women (and Men) on International Women’s Day | Kitty

“I wish I could take my younger self by the shoulders and shake her. I want to tell her that if she wants anything done, she must start doing for others.”

Your portfolio is probably down right now, and I don’t want to minimize the worry some of you are feeling, especially those of you who are about to start, or are already relying on withdrawals from your investments for income. It’s no fun, but it’s also not something you can control. These market cycles are why I use conservative rates of return in my projections and build retirement income plans with sequence of return risk in mind.

If you’ve already got a retirement plan, try to take my friend John Robertson’s advice: “use that fear to learn something...about your risk tolerance, or how to manage fear.”

And that’s all the ink I’m going to spill on market moves. Instead, the reading list this month includes a really deep look at what may be the true significance of the blockchain, using a regret minimization framework to make decisions, and taking the broken bond crisis record off of the turntable.

Why Willpower is Overrated

From Brian Resnick

What we believe about using our will to change our circumstances is probably wrong. Resisting the temptation to overspend, for example, is more about avoiding the temptation in the first place than about exercising iron self-control.

“The students who exerted more self-control were not more successful in accomplishing their goals. It was the students who experienced fewer temptations overall who were more successful when the researchers checked back in at the end of the semester. What’s more, the people who exercised more effortful self-control also reported feeling more depleted. So not only were they not meeting their goals, they were also exhausted from trying.”

Read the full article here.

How Perception Shapes Reality

From Brendan Mullooly

If you’ve been checking your portfolio daily...don’t.

“If somebody has the mental fortitude to look at their investments every single day without acting impulsively or affecting their mood, more power to them. However, I don’t think most of us fall into this category. We’re more likely to become slaves to our daily investment update, allowing it to dictate our mood and making us second-guess every position we hold. This habit applies a short-term feedback loop to long-term assets, which is a noisy mismatch, prone to misinform.”

Read the full article here.

The Actually Helpful, Nuanced, Non-Bullshit Way to Choose a Future Career

From Kitty

This career advice is hands down the best, at any age. Read it all, but especially this part:

“Some financial experts advocate for pursuing the highest-earning option, no matter what. We are not of that school. Our perspective is that life is too short to spend a third of it doing something lame. You have more options than just “engineer.”That said, money should play into the decisions you make. If Job A and Job B are equally intriguing, and Job B pays $35,000 more on average, you should probably go with Job B. Especially if you can use that extra $35,000 to fund the hobbies that are your true passions.Picture your perfect life. The life that would make you feel content down to your core. What does the budget for that life look like? “

Read the full article here.

You can read this month's entire list below:

Making History by Doing Nothing | Morgan Housel

Morgan Housel on the art of patiently doing nothing:

“People want to make history and do something. It’s mental torture to match hands-off patience with decisive action. They are opposite skills, even if they rely on one another”

Groundhog Rates | Phil Huber

“If this doesn’t deter you from making rate bets, I don’t know what will…”

Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble | NYTimes.com

Best. Blockchain. Article. Ever.

Complexity Bias: Why We Prefer Complicated to Simple | Farnam Street

So true in finance.

“People without the requisite knowledge to understand it feel alienated and removed from important conversations. It leads people to believe that they are not intelligent enough to understand politics, or not educated enough to comprehend economics.”

The Market Can Go Down? | John Robertson

“If you are feeling emotional about the markets then try to use that fear to learn something — either about your risk tolerance, or how to manage fear when markets are erasing years of gains instead of weeks.”

Minimizing Regret | Dirk Cotton

“I imagine myself at some point in the future long after having made the decision and I imagine that it turned out very badly. My future self then asks, ‘Do I still think it was a good decision? Would I make it again?’ If my future self answers no, then my present self doesn't make that decision.”