Policymakers and researchers have been fretting that the share of older Americans with debt has risen from 38 percent to 63 percent since 1990. Having debt, however, doesn’t have to be a bad thing. For example, households that take out a low-interest mortgage to buy a home, which typically appreciates, are likely making a savvy…
When a colleague and I wrote a book on 401(k) plans in 2004, we devoted a whole chapter to the perils of investing 401(k) assets in company stock. And many meetings around that time involved impassioned pleas for Congress to limit company stock investment. At one of these meetings, someone suggested that the company stock…