The Case For Keeping Some Cash

Two issues ago, I urged everybody to suspend all inclination to brood about gathering risks or missed opportunities and let ones portfolio snooze.

- Jeffrey R. Kosnett

I obeyed my own counsel, not only by skipping this column for a month, but by ignoring my IRA and 401(k) and other investment accounts. In August, I sold a house I’d owned for 27 years, but so far, the proceeds are in the bank while my wife and I decide what comes next. (We’ll probably zero out the mortgage on our vacation—and our eventual retirement—home.) Whether it’s advisable for others to grab some capital gains, pay off debt or make other moves is a personal, life-stage decision rather than a blanket financial strategy.