RMDs Without the Fire Sale
Required minimum distributions don’t have to trigger a fire sale. Don explains how an in-kind transfer can move an investment from an IRA to...
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Talking Real Money - Investing Talk
34-year financial talk radio veteran, Don McDonald and former host of Serious Money on PBS, Tom Cock, join forces to talk about real money issues. In each episode, they solve real money prob...
Episodes
20 of 1,957 episodes
The House Takes a Cut
Wall Street can promise dazzling returns, but private equity’s fees, illiquidity, and tax drag may leave investors with far less than the he...
The $315K Fork
Fresh from passing the CFP exam, Roxy Butner joins Tom to work through a classic retirement fork: take the richer lifetime teacher pension,...
Retirement Radish?
Just when you thought America had invented every possible retirement account, along comes the Radish. Don and Tom dig into the proposed empl...
Worst Case, Ready
Financial Physics rule five asks the uncomfortable question every investor should answer: what is the worst that could happen? Don and Tom r...
Five Questions, No Magic
Don opens with a spirited defense of AI as a creative tool—especially when it makes ideas possible that would otherwise be too expensive or...
Chargeback to the Future
Chargebacks were built to protect consumers from stolen cards and crooked merchants. Now they’re increasingly used when a subscription surpr...
Three Funds, One Risk Dial
VT, DFAW, and AVGE all promise global diversification—but they take different roads to get there. Don and Tom compare cost, holdings, factor...
Money by the Decades
From your 20s to your 60s, the priorities change—but the basic job doesn’t. Don and Tom walk through emergency savings, Roth IRAs, 401(k) ma...
Gravity Loses, Eventually
Rule Four of Financial Physics says everything eventually rises—not every stock, not every year, but human productivity and global economic...
Another Day of Q and A
Can 21 funds deliver useful global diversification—or mostly camouflage overlap, cost, and complexity? Don opens the Friday Q&A by giving on...
The Index Ate Their Homework
Active fund managers have a new explanation for years of underperformance: index funds have made their old job harder. Don and Tom examine t...
The Big Question Pile
Listener questions take over the studio as Don and Tom work through a very big pile without sacrificing any more forests than necessary. The...
Bubble Trouble?
AI stocks are booming, valuations are stretched, and capital spending is surging. Does that add up to a bubble—or just another story investo...
Fluctuation Is the Feature
Markets fluctuate. That sounds obvious—until a favorite stock climbs for years and investors start treating gravity as optional. Tom and Don...
Brakes, Balance & $5 Million
Bonds are supposed to be the brakes in a portfolio—but should those brakes be BND, a shorter-term fund, CDs, or a Treasury ladder? Don expla...
Robot Advisor, Human Judgment
AI can crunch a portfolio, harvest losses, and explain an investment concept in seconds. But can it stop a nervous investor from selling at...
Kid Money, Sorted
A quarter in the piggy bank has grown into a maze of UTMAs, 529s, custodial Roth IRAs, and the new child investment accounts. Tom and Don so...
Chasing Returns, Catching Losses
Chasing performance feels like the easiest way to make money—but buying what has already gone up often means arriving late and leaving with...
Less Means Paying More
The episode covers market bubbles, diversification, Social Security timing, and retirMarkets aren’t mysterious—they’re driven by one of the...