SUCCESS

After decades of watching paychecks come in, many new retirees struggle to start spending the money they worked so long and hard to save. A common version of that worry takes the form of a simple rule: Never touch the principal.

Wes Moss, fiduciary financial advisor and host of Ask an Advisor on the Clark Howard Podcast, heard it from a client he calls “Jim” on a July 2026 episode. Jim was retiring after more than 40 years of work and told Wes he was scared of not having earned income and didn’t want to touch his principal. For Jim, Wes said, it’s very possible, and the way he got there works for plenty of other retirees too.

Start With the Gap

Your portfolio doesn’t have to pay for all of retirement. It only has to cover what your guaranteed income doesn’t.

How to calculate your gap: Add up Social Security for you and your spouse, plus any pension or lifetime annuity, and subtract that from what you plan to spend each year.

Wes used a simple illustration. If your guaranteed income adds up to $75,000 a year and you need $100,000, your investments only have to produce $25,000. That number, not your total budget, is what decides whether you can leave the principal alone.

Where the Income Comes From

To leave principal alone, you live on what the portfolio pays out. That means stock dividends plus interest from bonds, CDs and other fixed income.

Stock dividend yields are lower than they used to be. Wes noted that prices have risen so much that 4%, 5% or 6% yields are harder to find, even though the dollar amount companies pay out has kept climbing. Stocks with dividend yields of 2% or 3% are still easy to find, and bonds pay around 4% to 5% (without going into junk bond territory). Put them together and a balanced portfolio can yield about 3%.

At 3%, a $1 million portfolio pays $30,000, enough to cover a $25,000 gap with room to spare. “If you never have to worry about touching the principal, you just live off of the income, dividends, interest, distributions, then you really do not have to ever worry about messing with the principal or ever even coming close to running out,” Wes said.

Don’t Forget Inflation

Leaving the principal alone keeps the dollar balance intact, but not its buying power. At 3% inflation, $1 million left untouched for 20 years buys about what $550,000 does today.

Your gap tends to grow too. Social Security gets a yearly cost-of-living adjustment, but many pensions and lifetime annuities pay the same amount every year. If the $25,000 gap in Wes’s example rises with 3% inflation, it’s about $33,600 in 10 years and about $45,200 in 20.

Where your income comes from matters here. Bond interest is fixed, so a bond paying $4,500 a year still pays $4,500 in 2040. Stock dividends have historically grown over time, which is why you should keep a meaningful share of your portfolio in stocks even when income is the goal.

It also helps to start with income comfortably above your gap, as Jim’s $30,000 covers his $25,000, and to plan for income that can grow rather than just cover today’s bills.

When Income Alone Isn’t Enough

For many retirees, a 2% to 4% yield won’t cover the gap. Wes’s next step is what he calls the “4% plus rule.” You withdraw roughly 4% to 4.5% of your portfolio each year, up to 5% in some years, and increase the dollar amount with inflation. Part of that comes from dividends and interest, and the rest comes from selling some shares.

That sounds like spending principal, and technically it is. Over time, however, it often doesn’t feel that way. Wes pointed out that in most of the research on these withdrawal rates, balances keep growing. A mix of stocks and bonds that earns 6% to 7% a year on average, while you pull out 4% to 5%, tends to stay ahead over five, 10 and 15 years, even if a single bad year knocks it down.

Keeping a year or two of spending in cash or short-term bonds helps here. In a down market, you can draw from the cash instead of selling stocks at low prices.

The Cost of Being Too Careful

A never-touch-the-principal rule protects you from running out of money, but it can also keep you from using money you could safely spend. If your portfolio’s income more than covers your gap, as it did for Jim, the balance is likely to keep growing for the rest of your life, and you may end up with more than you started with.

Leaving money to your kids or a cause you care about is a fine goal. If that isn’t the plan, a portfolio built to never shrink may cost you trips, help for your family or simply less worry about every expense.

How To Find Out if It Works for You

Add up your yearly guaranteed income from Social Security, pensions and annuities.

Subtract it from what you expect to spend. That’s your gap.

Look at last year’s statements and total the dividends and interest your portfolio paid.

If that income covers the gap, you can likely leave principal alone. If it falls short, a withdrawal rate around 4% to 4.5% is the next place to look.

Set aside a year or two of spending in cash so a bad market doesn’t force you to sell.

Final Thoughts

Retirement planning isn’t just about accumulating money. It’s about making that money work for you throughout your lifetime.

Living on dividends and interest can help you cover expenses without selling investments, but it isn’t an absolute guarantee that your principal will remain intact or that you’ll never run out of money. Dividends can change, inflation can erode your purchasing power, and market downturns can affect how long your savings last. Even a portfolio that earns more than you withdraw in an average year can face challenges if poor returns come early in retirement.

The goal isn’t necessarily to preserve every dollar at all costs. It’s to build a retirement plan that balances your spending needs today with the need to make your money last. Start by understanding your income, expenses and portfolio yield, then consider how inflation, taxes and market risk could affect your plan over time. If you’re unsure how much you can comfortably spend, a fiduciary financial advisor can help you evaluate your options.

After decades of saving, you deserve to enjoy your money. The key is making sure you can do so without sacrificing your financial security down the road.

The post How To Retire and ‘Not Touch the Principal’ appeared first on Clark Howard.

Procter & Gamble (PG) is up about 3% so far this year, putting it behind the S&P 500. However, on Oct. 6, 2026, Evercore ISI upgraded Procter & Gamble from In Line to Outperform and raised its price target to $166 from $161.

The new target points to about a 14% increase from the stock’s close on Oct. 5. After investors heard news of the upgrade, PG shares rose between 1.5% and 2% in afternoon trading.

This is the first time Evercore has given P&G a clear bullish rating since the firm became cautious about the stock back in mid-2025. Evercore turned cautious because it noticed P&G underperforming across the Amazon channel.

P&G’s Amazon market share was only about a third of what it held at Walmart and Costco, even as Amazon drove roughly half of U.S. HPC growth.

Investors are now wondering why Evercore has changed its mind about the stock.

The Procter & Gamble cost problem Evercore flagged

Before the upgrade, one of the biggest reasons Evercore stayed on the sidelines was that P&G was being squeezed on costs.

Oil prices had been climbing, which pushed up the price of plastic packaging that P&G uses — for example, Tide bottles, Pantene shampoo containers, and Pampers packaging, according to a Reuters report on U.S. News.

Shipping and freight rates were also moving higher, which meant it was becoming more expensive for the company to move finished products from its factories to retailers like Walmart, Costco, and Target.

On top of that, tariff-related expenses added another layer to the input cost base. All of these costs emerged at the same time, and P&G had not fully baked them into the guidance it gave investors earlier in the year.

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The reason this mattered so much to analysts is that P&G sells products at relatively fixed shelf prices, and retailers tend to push back when suppliers try to raise prices too quickly. So when raw materials and shipping get more expensive, the company either absorbs the hit on its margins or risks losing shelf space to cheaper rivals if it passes the cost on.

Evercore’s earlier concern was that this cost pressure, combined with the Amazon channel issue, could cap sales growth below the 4% level the firm sees as the threshold for operating leverage.

That is the backdrop against which the latest upgrade must now be understood.

Why Evercore became bullish on P&G after 15 months on the sidelines

Robert Ottenstein is the analyst behind the call. He has covered consumer staples at Evercore ISI for more than a decade, and his past calls on names including Coca-Cola and Diageo have made him well known to investors in the sector.

Ottenstein’s main reason for upgrading the stock is that P&G has stopped losing ground online.

In 2025, the company had been losing e-commerce share on Amazon, and because each brand brings in so much money, when its products don’t get as much visibility on the platform, it affects the company’s overall revenue.

Evercore now says P&G is “structurally no longer losing U.S. e-commerce market share,” CNBC reported.

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Ottenstein raised his first-quarter fiscal 2027 organic sales growth estimate to 3%, which is a full point above the Wall Street consensus of 2%. He expects P&G to end fiscal 2027 with close to 4% growth, and he called the upcoming quarter the “end of downside risk” for P&G’s top-line sales, Investing.com reported.

He also said Procter & Gamble’s U.S. category volumes increased by 40 basis points from the last quarter, which means more households are now buying more units of P&G products, CNBC reported.

Growth that is led by actual volume is usually stronger and more lasting than growth that comes from price hikes.

P&G’s higher-margin brands are also contributing more to the company’s revenue. Olay, Downy, Native, Dawn, and Pantene are growing faster than franchises like Pampers, which raises the company’s overall profit mix.

Procter & Gamble owns more than 20 brands with over $1 billion in annual sales, including Tide, Pampers, and Gillette.SOPA Images / Getty Images

What the reset means for dividend investors

P&G is one of the oldest Dividend Kings around. The company marked its 70th straight year of increasing its dividend in April 2026, as shown in its SEC filing, putting it ahead of peers like Johnson & Johnson, which is still in the 60s range of consecutive dividend increases.

The stock currently has a dividend yield of about 2.9%.

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If the company’s organic sales growth actually climbs back to 4% by the end of fiscal 2027, as Ottenstein expects, paying approximately $10 billion in annual dividends will be understandable.

P&G will also be able to justify its ongoing share buybacks. And that outcome is actually what most retirees and conservative investors who only want steady income are hoping for.

Where the P&G thesis could still face pressure

Evercore pointed out a few risks that are worth paying attention to: rising oil and shipping costs.

These costs matter to the company’s guidance because higher oil prices increase the cost of plastic packaging, and higher shipping rates increase the cost of moving products to retail stores. If P&G cannot pass those costs on to retailers, its profit margins could be affected.

The broader market is another factor to consider. If the AI rally continues, P&G may still remain behind the main index even if its own business improves.

The company’s next test is whether it can actually achieve the stronger sales growth Evercore expects over the next two or three quarters.

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The majority of people won’t even see the patents hidden within their computers, phones, or linked automobiles.

Those patents have gained exceptional significance for Qualcomm (QCOM) this week, however.

Qualcomm and China’s Huawei agreed to a broad, multi-year patent licensing deal covering 5G, computing, artificial intelligence, and networking, according to Reuters. Qualcomm will also buy several Huawei U.S. patents related to networking, AI, computing, and other technologies as part of the transaction.

After two days, it was even more difficult to ignore the geopolitical context.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said Oct. 7 that it will vote on a proposal to prohibit Chinese laboratories from testing electronic products such as smartphones and computers for the U.S. market. The CIA has already placed restrictions on Huawei’s equipment because of national security concerns.

For investors, this produces an odd split-screen.

Washington keeps erecting obstacles between the Chinese and American technological sectors. Meanwhile, Huawei and one of the biggest semiconductor firms in America are expanding their 25-year intellectual property partnership.

Additionally, elsewhere, investigators are looking into Qualcomm’s patent business.

This week, the chipmaker is back in court with Arm Holdings (ARM) in a dispute that may result in future royalties worth billions of dollars.

Suddenly, Qualcomm’s often unseen licensing division is at the center of other, far larger technological conflicts.

Qualcomm clarifies what its Huawei deal actually means

At first, it was unclear which firm would end up paying the other after the Huawei statement.

Qualcomm moved to clear that up Oct. 6.

Qualcomm said reports characterizing the company as a net payer under the licensing agreement were incorrect. It also said assertions connecting the agreement to Huawei’s LogicFold semiconductor technology were inaccurate.

This difference is important.

The businesses signed into a comprehensive cross-license that included patent portfolios in networking, computing, AI, and 5G. Yet Qualcomm claims that its deal to buy certain U.S. patents from Huawei constitutes a different transaction.

Financial details are kept private.

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This indicates that the situation is more complicated than Qualcomm paying Huawei to exploit Chinese technology.

While Qualcomm independently believes that parts of Huawei’s U.S. portfolio are valuable enough to purchase those patents outright, both firms are leasing intellectual property to one another.

Huawei has developed that portfolio over several years. The Chinese technology behemoth had more than 165,000 active issued patents by the end of 2025 and had inked more than 260 patent licensing deals with significant tech firms.

Since the start of its partnership with Qualcomm, Huawei’s stance has evolved significantly. In 2001, it paid Qualcomm its first license fee. Motorola paid Huawei for intellectual property in 2011, marking the company’s first licensing revenue, Reuters reported.

Qualcomm is purchasing several Huawei patents 25 years later.

This does not imply that Huawei has surpassed Qualcomm in terms of technology. It does, however, show how much intellectual property Huawei has amassed in spite of years of limitations on its access to American technology.

Qualcomm’s Huawei deal arrives at an awkward moment.Cheng Chia Huang / Getty Images

U.S.-China tensions make Qualcomm’s deal more unusual

The cooperation is particularly noticeable, given the current timing.

The FCC will vote Oct. 29 on rules barring all Chinese laboratories from testing electronic devices destined for the U.S. market, Reuters noted.

With Huawei, the FCC has already made significant progress. The business is still on the agency’s covered list, which limits products and services that the U.S. government deems a national security risk.

However, commercial technological linkages do not always neatly align with geopolitical boundaries.

Qualcomm and Huawei own the intellectual property used in the communications sector. Even when businesses compete or governments impose restrictions on their activities in other domains, devices manufactured by one firm may rely on technology patented by another.

With standards like 5G, this is especially true.

Fifty-five Fortune Global 500 firms license parts of Huawei’s patent portfolio.

Its arrangement with Qualcomm comes after another with HP Inc. (HPQ), demonstrating that Huawei can continue to make money from licensing deals with American businesses, even if it is still severely limited in its ability to sell certain gear in the United States.

It’s becoming more difficult to overlook the paradox.

China and the United States are making an effort to lessen their technical reliance on one another.

Commercially, it might be far more difficult to fully separate their technological businesses due to decades of common standards and overlapping patents. Because of this, Qualcomm views the Huawei transaction as more than just an obscure patent arrangement.

It serves as an illustration of how closely linked the communications and semiconductor sectors are, despite attempts by governments to separate them.

Qualcomm’s patent business faces another test this week

Qualcomm is involved in a different conflict over the economics of intellectual property related to the Huawei purchase. In the most recent round of their protracted licensing battle, Qualcomm and Arm went back to court in Delaware on Oct. 5.

Qualcomm is trying to avoid paying Arm certain royalties, which could add up to billions of dollars over five years, Reuters reported.

Additionally, according to Qualcomm, Arm is requesting a significant raise in royalties for its next-generation design.

Arm contends that Qualcomm enjoys advantageous conditions under an earlier license arrangement and refutes Qualcomm’s accusations.

The timing highlights Qualcomm’s licensing approach for investors.

The majority of Qualcomm’s income comes from the sale of chips and associated goods, although Qualcomm Technology Licensing grants manufacturers access to some of the company’s intellectual property.

In terms of profitability, that company has always outperformed its peers. Qualcomm has also been strengthening some of its most significant license partnerships lately.

Qualcomm and Apple (AAPL) extended their worldwide patent licensing contract in September. A recent TheStreet story noted that the agreement extends an important relationship, even as Apple develops more of its own modem technology.

Qualcomm is attempting to create whole new companies at the same time. Its September agreement with Amazon (AMZN) could involve as much as $60 billion of Qualcomm AI data center technology and services, another TheStreet report found.

In addition, Qualcomm and Amazon Web Services have a multi-generation partnership combining AI infrastructure and customized chips. These actions are important because Qualcomm wants investors to see it as more than just the manufacturer of smartphone modems.

It is expanding into robots, industrial computers, PCs, automobiles, and AI data centers.

However, the advancements in Huawei and Arm serve as a reminder that Qualcomm’s future still depends in part on something much older: the patents that underpin all of that technology.

The hardware is altered. The gadgets shift. Even the businesses that construct them undergo change. However, having the technologies that everyone needs might be worth a lot of money for many years.

Because of this, Qualcomm’s deal with Huawei seems much more significant than a typical patent release.

Related: Qualcomm CFO says look beyond the Apple deal

Oracle was founded in 1977 as a software consulting company, but in recent years, it has pivoted toward artificial intelligence to help customers manage their databases. A focus on AI has helped to boost Oracle’s stock price, which has lifted the fortune of both its investors and company executives, including co-founder, former CEO, and current CTO, Larry Ellison.

As a co-founder, Ellison held a large number of shares when the company went public in 1986, and since then, his stake in Oracle has become significant.

Here’s how many Oracle shares Ellison owns, how much they’re worth, and how he accumulated his stake in the company.

How much of Oracle does Larry Ellison own? 

Larry Ellison owned 1.158 billion shares, equating to 38.2% of Oracle, according to the tech company’s 2026 proxy statement, which was released in late September 2026. Those shares were valued at $157 billion as of an early October share price of $135.69. 

Related: How much Oracle stock is Larry Ellison using as loan collateral?

Is Larry Ellison the largest individual shareholder of Oracle?

Ellison is the largest shareholder of Oracle. No other executive or individual comes close to Ellison’s ownership. The next biggest owners of Oracle stock are institutional investors.  

Oracle’s largest institutional shareholders

Oracle’s largest institutional shareholders are among the world’s largest fund managers.

BlackRock owned 145.35 million shares, or a 4.8% stake, as of the end of June 2026, according to data compiled by Yahoo! Finance. Rounding out the top three among institutional investors, Vanguard Capital Management held a 3.7% stake, and State Street owned 2.6%.

How & when did Larry Ellison accumulate his Oracle stock?

Ellison was a founder of Oracle, which began operations in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories. (The company took up the Oracle branding — after the code name of a CIA project on a database management system worked on by Ellison — in the 1980s.) Oracle went public in 1986, and Ellison, as a founder and CEO since inception, held a significant stake. 

In Oracle’s 1994 proxy statement — which was the earliest statement made available by Oracle on its investor relations page of its website — Ellison owned 67.3 million shares, or a 23.5% stake. 

Ellison’s stake in Oracle increased significantly over the years through a combination of stock splits and the company’s share repurchase plans. The company conducted its first stock split in 1987 and had its last split in 2000.

Due to those stock splits, a single Oracle share in 1986 would now have been split into 324 shares. 

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Ellison, for the most part, held onto his shares, although he has sold some from time to time. Despite his occasional stock sales, Ellison was also regularly rewarded with new stock as compensation for meeting the company’s internal performance targets. 

Rather than selling large stakes in the company to raise cash, Ellison is well known for taking out personal loans, using Oracle shares as collateral — a move that he has repeated many times over the years.

Borrowing money using Oracle shares as collateral has allowed Ellison to keep his shares (and the voting power they come with) while avoiding paying the capital gains taxes he would have incurred had he sold them. 

How much stock does Larry Ellison get as part of his compensation package? 

In 2026, Ellison took a base salary of $950,000 for his role as executive chair and chief technology officer. His total compensation, however, was much greater. Stock awards, bonuses, and other incentives pushed his total compensation up to $131 million. His option award for the year amounted to $117 million.

Related: Larry Ellison’s net worth: The Oracle founder’s wealth & income

The Trump administration has enlisted Russia to help boost U.S. and global diesel supplies in an effort to lower prices for the fuel ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November.

Recently, my son sent me a video clip of “me” speaking online. I have to tell you, I was genuinely creeped out.

It sounded 100% like me — the right inflections, my tone, everything. The video made it sound like I was giving expert advice on which iPhone to buy. But I never said a single word of it. I don’t review technology like that! Anyone listening, though, would have believed without a doubt that it was me.

This experience really drove home how fast artificial intelligence is evolving — and how dangerous it is becoming for your money.

The “My Voice Is My Password” Danger

After my wife, Lane, listened to the fake clip, she brought up a great point: What about all those financial institutions that use voice verification?

You’ve probably heard the prompt when calling your bank or brokerage: “My voice is my password.”

Guess what? That is so not safe anymore.

If a scammer can clone my voice using a tiny snippet of audio from my show, they can do the same to you. The financial industry — from major brokerages to independent investment advisers — is living in fear right now. In fact, Barron’s recently ran a major story highlighting the huge risks financial planners face from AI impersonation.

Scammers are using AI tools to impersonate clients over the phone and via audio to instruct brokerages to drain accounts. It’s creating massive reputational and financial risks for firms, and devastating consequences for everyday investors.

The “Success Tax” of Saving and Investing

I always say there is a “success tax” in life: If you’ve done a great job working hard, saving, and investing your money, you automatically become a target for criminals looking to steal it.

I recently got a panicked call from a relative who accidentally clicked on a suspicious link. She was freaked out that a virus was on her device and that a criminal was going to get into her accounts.

When you open an investment account today, you almost always do it online. You rarely deal with someone face-to-face. That anonymity gives scammers a massive advantage.

So, what did I tell my relative — and what should you do to protect your hard-earned life savings from AI scams? Here is my playbook.

3 Essential Steps to Protect Your Brokerage Accounts

Adopt the “Mon-Wed-Fri” routine: Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, sign in to your financial accounts just to check on them. Think of it as basic digital housekeeping, no different than checking your email. If fraudulent transfers happen, time is of the essence. If you catch an unauthorized transaction within 24 hours, you have a very strong chance of reversing the damage. But if you don’t notice until you check a quarterly statement three months later? It’s often too late.

Know the difference between bank and brokerage protections: A lot of people assume their brokerage accounts have the exact same legal protections as a checking account at a bank. They don’t. Banks and credit unions have federal laws that clearly define consumer protections if your account is hacked. For brokerages, your protection relies heavily on the firm’s specific written policies. Furthermore, if a scammer impersonates your brokerage or financial advisor and tricks you into handing over your login info or two-factor authentication codes, the brokerage’s guarantee may not cover you. Always verify who you are talking to before sharing sensitive information.

Put an “ACATS Lock” on your investment accounts (if possible): ACATS (Automated Customer Account Transfer Service) is the system financial institutions use to easily roll over or transfer entire portfolios from one firm to another electronically. Scammers love this system because if they breach your account, they can use ACATS to drain your entire portfolio in one move. Contact your brokerage firm today and ask to put an ACATS Lock (or account transfer freeze) on your accounts. This requires extra verification steps before any full-account transfer can occur. (Please note that not all brokerages offer an ACATS Lock at this time.)

Final Thoughts

Am I trying to make you paranoid? No.

Am I trying to make you careful? Yes.

The threats posed by AI voice cloning and online impersonation are developing rapidly. Every few weeks, we hear tragic news stories about everyday people losing their entire life savings to sophisticated cyber scams.

By practicing regular account housekeeping, staying vigilant about who you’re talking to, and locking down your accounts with extra security layers, you can make sure your hard-earned money stays right where it belongs: with you.
The post The New AI Voice Scam Threatening Your Life Savings — and How to Protect Yourself appeared first on Clark Howard.

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