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Last week’s post illustrated how important it is for our long-term financial well-being to live beneath our means and not care about keeping up with the Kardashians in the car department. But that doesn’t mean we have to rinse out our sandwich baggies so we can use them again the next day. (Apologies to my environmentalist friends) The journey to financial freedom shouldn’t be painful! No, our financial lives, like our lives in general, should be a good balance between saving for our futures and enjoying our lives now.

A few years ago my son and I parked in a parking lot here in Lexington that was filled with Mercedes, BMW’s and Range Rovers. We were in a Honda Accord. My son, 12 at the time with a keen eye for nice autos, remarked that all these car owners must be rich! For a saver like me that was a big, fat softball that I intended to slam out of the park with a valuable life lesson titled, “You aren’t what you drive.”

When I was 15 years old I had a paper route and, with no expenses and no girlfriend, I saved virtually every dime I made. At that same time, I became interested in stocks and investing. Now, I had no clue how stock investing worked and my parents, born 8 years after the Great Depression, viewed the stock market in roughly the same terms as a casino.

Enjoy this month’s edition that features a review of the stock market to date.

Stock Market: At the very moment this is being written the Dow Jones Industrial Average has just passed the 22,000 point mark – the most recent of 30 record-highs during 2017. The S&P 500 also hit new record highs in late July. Through the end of July, the S&P 500 was up nearly 9% from the day President Trump took office. For perspective, that increase has only been surpassed in recent decades by two other new administrations: George W. Bush’s first 6 months in office saw an increase of 20.7% and Barack Obama’s first 6 months in office saw an increase of 22.6%.

Enjoy this month’s edition that features an overview on President Trump’s tax plan, stock market performance and our updated Privacy Notice.

Enjoy this month’s edition that features an introduction to Moneywatch staff’s newest addition, updates on the annual TD Ameritrade conference, TD Ameritrade mailing address, and a recent Medicare question we thought was worthy of sharing and an update on two of your funds…