Q: If I have 5k to invest, what should I do with it? I see articles on this topic on financial websites, but they always seem to recommend things like index funds. What would you suggest? A: "7 best ways to invest $5,000" or "How to invest $5,000" or "What to do with $5,000" or "10 stocks to buy if you have $5,000." These kinds of articles are a dime a dozen online. Most of them are just naked clickbait, but they do answer a genuine interest in what novice or amateur investor

Q: If a recession is in the cards this year, what can people do to prepare themselves? A: First, let’s level-set and define what we’re talking about. The most popular definition of a recession, as articulated by economist Julius Shiskin in the 1970s, is two consecutive quarters of falling GDP (among some other rules). The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the entity that sets official start and end dates of U.S. recessions, offers a bit of a broader view: “a signif

Q: The Fed is aggressively raising interest rates. What does that mean for investors? A: Inflation is setting 40-year records. It increased through June to a high of 9.1%, even higher than the consensus prediction of 8.8%. That’s a big deal. Inflation is also one of the major economic concerns that the Federal Reserve is specifically tasked to control. Through the Federal Reserve Act of 1977, Congress explicitly ordered that the Fed’s goals should be “maximum employment, stab