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Short-term trading is an act of great arrogance: You assume you know better than the market—and that you’ll quickly be proven right.

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Farrell Behavior

"Back in 2008, I was in an unusual situation that worked out well for me, ironically. In November, 2007, I joined a major fraternal financial services organization, affiliated with a major Protesant religious denomination. I had just sold my insurance agency, and was recieving my payout over a 3 year period, at roughly $70k a year. The first year was paid out in 12 installments, so as I was building my book of business from 11-2007 through 12-2008, I had a base of income in addition to the commissioins earned from product sales and bonuses earned. If any of you had advisors in those days, you may recall they were nowhere to be found and rarely heard from. from roughkly 2008-2010. This created a perfect storm for me, in that I was offering to serve their financial services needs as their portfolios were blowing up and theur advisors had abandined them. I gaithered clients hand over fist and by the end of 2008, I had built a substantial book. Even better, the clients I gathered stayed with me through their renewals in months 13 and later. 2009 was another banner year for me, in which I qualified for performance bonuses again. In 2010, I realized a lifelong dream, when I joined The American College and began a 15 years career teaching in the CFP, CLU, ChFC, and finally the RICP curricula. My students benefitted greatly because unlike traditional college professors who rarely have any real world expereince, I had been in financial services for 38 years and I was not teachuing theory. Over my 15 years career my peers and I taught and trained thousands of well educated financial sercices professional, most of whom will serve hundreds of client families, across the US. In 2013, I "met" The Bogleheads, through a friend with whom I rode motorcyles. He was a physician and actually lived on the street where John Bogle lived, in Bryn Mawr, PA. I also had a number of Vanguard employees as students, and one of them gifted me an autographed book on Mutuial Funds, authored by John Bogle. I moved all my accounts to Vanguard and used Vanguard funds in my 403b, and never looked back. Prior to retiring, I used the traditional Vanguard 4 Fund Portfolio. As I approached retirement in 2024, I purchased a series of annuities to be paired with my social security, using roughlky 40% of my fortfolio, and used them as the Bond porttion of my portfilio. Today, my 60% equity portion is 00% invested in VTI and VXUS, 80/20. Our income is almost 40% income tax free, since the annuities were funded with Roth dollars, and of course, our Social Security has a COLA feature. Our guaranteed income is over 120% of our retirement expenses, and our portfilio is there for late in life emergencies like LTC for my wife, and legacy funding. (I have a very rich LTCi policy myself, and our annuities have a LTC benefit that increases the payout by 50% for up to 5 years, for either of us. I wasn't able to buy an LTCi policy for my wife because she didn;t qualify.) I have seen any number of posts on HD where annuities are disparaged, and for those who don't like or want them, more power to them. In our case, they are doing exactly what they were purchased to do...provide a guaranteed stream of income, for life, for both my wife and me...and making the volitilty the market irrelevant. Like most HD contributors and readers, I am a huge proponent of a broadly diversified portfolio of low cost ETFs or Mutual Funds. I do not time the market, and either does anyone else,,,sucessfully. Wall Street is a shell game and the house always wins, especially when it is treated like a casino. Although not a popular opinion among many who think they are smarter than their record would indicate, I believe the market is moved by three components...Greed, Fear, and Stupidity...and I refuse to play. Continued success in your investments and retirement!"
- Mike Lynch
Read more »

The World’s Least Useful Financial Adviser

"Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It’s fascinating to see how that 'least useful financial adviser' operates, isn't it? It seems the voice speaks a few different languages. To me, on the buy side, it whispers in the language of FOMO and regret ('should have put more in'). To you, on the sell side, it switches dialect to the language of pride and precision ('you can time this exit perfectly'). But as you rightly pointed out, it’s the exact same trap. Your big win on the energy stock this year is the ultimate test—it’s the market handing you a green light after running a red, tempting you to believe it was good judgment rather than good luck. The fact that it already emboldened you to add to another declining position shows just how persuasive that voice can be! Here’s to the rest of the journey toward that 5-stock limit!"
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

Moving is Expensive!

"Timely post! Suzie and I have spent the day in the garden — I have the thorn scratches to prove it. Between bouts of weeding and tree pruning, we found ourselves wondering whether converting three-quarters of our half-acre plot into a virtually maintenance-free space might actually be cheaper than moving house — which, as we get older, is something we're increasingly having to consider. The garden is a joy, but the sheer scale of it is becoming harder to keep on top of. You've given us a data point to consider. The more I think about it, the more I reckon there's a decent post in there somewhere!"
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

My sister’s will and what it taught me.

"Thank you Jerry. Your experience highlights a lesson many families learn the hard way. When someone dies intestate, even relatively modest assets can become far more complicated and expensive to transfer than anyone expects. It's frustrating when legal fees and delays end up consuming a significant portion of what was intended to be passed on. Thank you for sharing your story, it reinforces why having a valid will is one of the simplest gifts we can leave our families."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Rethinking the “Right” Time for Social Security

"Thank you Marilyn. I love that story. It sounds like Social Security gave you the freedom to spend more time with your granddaughter, and that's a return that can't be measured by any break-even calculation. No regrets indeed."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

The Boy Who Tried Hard: A Reflection

"Thank you Rick. I think that's one of the lessons I've learned as well. We rarely know the full story behind someone's journey or the challenges they may have faced along the way. If the article encourages a little more understanding and a little less assumption, then it was worth writing."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Adam Grossman on The Long View

"I just read the interview. It was very well done. Bravo Adam!"
- Howard Schwartz
Read more »

Billionaires, taxes and you

"I think you are correct. The median net worth of Americans is about $192,000 while the average is just over $1 million. So, at least half have a very different perspective, especially since that includes their homes."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Beefing Up Security

MANY OF US HAVE little more than a weak, reused password standing between our financial assets and a remote attacker—one armed with powerful tools and a database of passwords from security breaches. This is a losing battle. It’s the most likely way for weak computer security to put our finances at risk. Think this can’t happen to you? I’ll bet you have at least one password taken in a big security breach. A quick way to find out is entering your email address at Troy Hunt’s HaveIBeenPwned site. My address turns up in almost a dozen big cyberattacks. We are notoriously bad at creating strong passwords and remembering them. When you decide to create stronger, unique passwords for each site, you quickly discover that managing dozens of randomly generated, site-specific passwords by hand is a headache. Don’t fret. Password managers like LastPass, Dashlane and 1Password make short work of it. A password manager puts all your passwords in an encrypted vault, leaving you with just one password to remember. You want to make this password really strong and unforgettable. The password manager then fills in the right password for mobile apps and websites whenever you use them. What can you expect from a good manager?
  • Up-to-date access to your password vault on all devices, regardless of the device’s operating system.
  • Updates to your vault as you create new accounts or update existing passwords.
  • A random password generator that creates really strong, unique passwords. Those passwords will meet each site’s requirements for length and allowed characters.
  • A security challenge which guides you through the work of replacing existing poor passwords—those which are known to be compromised, weak or easily guessed, or which you’ve used more than once.
  • Emergency access to your vault by someone you choose, as well as password sharing with, say, family members for your Amazon Prime or Netflix account.
  • Two-factor authentication for extra vault security.
Some of these are only available in paid versions of the service. Despite knowing better, I procrastinated in evaluating password managers. That changed the day I tried to picture life for my spouse after I leave this vale of tears. I visualized the chores I handle: Banking, bill paying and investment management all involve online accounts. That brought my password problem into focus. A list of passwords in a binder, next to our wills, isn’t secure and it’s a pain to keep up. After experimenting with a free trial, I bought a family subscription. Moving my password vault from low-ranked to the top 1% took a couple of weekends. Each weekend, I’d spend an hour or two changing passwords, guided by the security challenge and with help from the password generator. Do this on your home PC or Mac, not an office computer. I started with high-value accounts: email, cellular carrier, and then banks and brokerages. Why email? Most web sites let you reset a password by emailing a link to the address on file. If hackers have access to your inbox, they’ll use it to access every online account. The cellular account is also important if you’ve enabled two-factor authentication that triggers text messages with secure codes. What if someone hacks into your password manager’s vault? If you pick a great vault password, the odds of this are low. But when you have all your eggs in one basket, you want to ensure that basket stays safe. That’s what led me to the YubiKey 5 series hardware keys. When you use a YubiKey with a password manager, the manager encrypts your vault twice, once with your vault password and again with a secret it gets from the YubiKey. For convenience, I’m using two models of YubiKey. I use YubiKey 5 Nano with my PC and Mac. Meanwhile, YubiKey 5 NFC stays on my keyring for use with my phone. The latter should work with an iPhone 7 or newer, as well as an Android phone with NFC (near field communication). David Powell has written software or led engineering teams for 35 years. He enjoys work, vegan fine dining, cycling and travel with his spouse. His previous article was Playing Defense. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]
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Don’t Kick The Can Down The Road

"The man had priorities. Misguided, perhaps, but consistent."
- Mark Crothers
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Percentage that “age in place”

"Not necessarily. There has been a nursing care shortage for a long time that is rapidly being exacerbated by the growing number of elderly boomers who need health care. The current administration has also revoked asylum for workers from Haiti and elsewhere and is taking additional steps to limit legal immigration. A hospital staff nurse here in NYC averages about $125k and can make much more with overtime. Those salaries have an upward influence on less skilled healthcare workers. The norm for companies that provide home health care is to charge twice as much for their services as what they pay their employees. Thus, the top companies here charge about $40/hr."
- Slope
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Deeply Rooted

JUNE MARKS THREE years since my mum passed from complications of vascular dementia. It was a tough couple of years, watching her mind slowly fail and her world shrink a little more with each passing month. Anyone who has cared for a loved one in the late stages of dementia will know how difficult and disjointed even the simplest conversation becomes. The loops, the confusion, the frustration of trying to redirect someone you love from a thought they can no longer find their way out of. Mum had been comfortable, if lonely, in retirement. She was a widow for twenty-five years, and she often said with genuine surprise in her voice that she was better off financially than at any other point in her life. Not having to worry about money was a relief she never took for granted. But here's the thing: she never really thought about money either. She wasn't driven by possessions or status. She had what she needed, she was grateful, and she got on with living. Money was background noise to her, not the tune she danced to. What surprised me most came in her final year, when she was deeply confused and often entirely detached from reality. Among all the things her mind could have snagged on, the one conversation loop she returned to with unsettling clarity was money. She was convinced she had none. It made her anxious in a way that was painful to witness, a raw, childlike insecurity that seemed to rise from somewhere far deeper than conscious thought. I would reassure her, calmly and repeatedly, that her savings were healthy and there was absolutely nothing to worry about. I would joke about her bank balance making me jealous and she needed to go on a shopping spree. Sometimes it settled her. Often it didn't last more than a few minutes before the worry surfaced again. The memory care unit understandably discouraged residents from keeping personal cash, but I often broke that rule. Whenever I visited and could see that familiar agitation building, I'd press a few low value bills into her hand. Nothing significant, just the texture of something real. It worked in a way that words alone couldn't compete with. She'd look down at the money, close her fingers around it, and the tension would ease from her shoulders. She felt safe again, at least for a little while. Although, we often moved on to worrying about finding a purse to stash the bills in. For a woman who gave so little thought to money and nothing to status, I found it striking, strange even, that financial anxiety was what surfaced when the rational layers of her mind were stripped away. It made me think about what dementia actually reveals. It doesn't invent fears, it sometimes uncovers them. The fog clears away the learned, the sophisticated, the socially conditioned, and leaves something older and more fundamental underneath. At the time, I read up on this anxiety, there's some neuroscience behind it. Emotional memory, the kind wired to survival and feeling rather than fact, is stored differently in the brain and tends to be far more resilient. Dementia strips back the rational layers first. What it sometimes leaves behind is older, deeper, and harder to reach. In my mum's case, that something was the primal need to feel secure. She had grown up shaped by post-war austerity, widowhood, and years of careful budgeting on a single income. She would have been a young woman when rationing finally ended. In the world she grew up in, money wasn't abstract: it was coal for the fire and food on the table, shoes that lasted another winter without needing replacing. I think that connection between having and feeling safe wasn't a conclusion she'd reasoned her way to. It was lived, year after year, until it settled somewhere beneath thought entirely. Security and money had become inseparable, written into her long before she ever had reason to question it. I've thought about this a lot since we lost her. The concept of financial security isn't just something we think about, it seems to be something we feel, right down in the oldest parts of ourselves. It runs beneath logic, beneath personality, beneath even memory. My mum could and did forget my name on a bad day, but she could not shake the feeling that not having money meant not being safe. That instinct had been laid down so early and reinforced so consistently across a lifetime that dementia, for all its cruelty, couldn't fully reach it. To me, it says something profound about how deeply rooted our relationship with money really is. It seems to be wrapped around the core of our being. Losing my mum the way I did, piece by piece and conversation by conversation, was one of the hardest things I've been through. But in the heartbreak, she gave me this unexpected insight, pressed into my mind just as firmly as I had secretly pressed those bills into hers. Beneath everything we build and believe and become, there are feelings so fundamental they outlast nearly everything else. She reminded me that understanding our relationship with money isn't just a financial exercise, it's a deeply human one. Maybe it goes some way to explaining why we make choices that are sometimes irrational. And she did it, characteristically, without ever meaning to teach me a thing.
Mark Crothers is a retired small business owner from the UK with a keen interest in personal finance and simple living. Married to his high school sweetheart, with daughters and grandchildren, he knows the importance of building a secure financial future. With an aversion to social media, he prefers to spend his time on his main passions: reading, scratch cooking, racket sports, and hiking.
Read more »

Farrell Behavior

"Back in 2008, I was in an unusual situation that worked out well for me, ironically. In November, 2007, I joined a major fraternal financial services organization, affiliated with a major Protesant religious denomination. I had just sold my insurance agency, and was recieving my payout over a 3 year period, at roughly $70k a year. The first year was paid out in 12 installments, so as I was building my book of business from 11-2007 through 12-2008, I had a base of income in addition to the commissioins earned from product sales and bonuses earned. If any of you had advisors in those days, you may recall they were nowhere to be found and rarely heard from. from roughkly 2008-2010. This created a perfect storm for me, in that I was offering to serve their financial services needs as their portfolios were blowing up and theur advisors had abandined them. I gaithered clients hand over fist and by the end of 2008, I had built a substantial book. Even better, the clients I gathered stayed with me through their renewals in months 13 and later. 2009 was another banner year for me, in which I qualified for performance bonuses again. In 2010, I realized a lifelong dream, when I joined The American College and began a 15 years career teaching in the CFP, CLU, ChFC, and finally the RICP curricula. My students benefitted greatly because unlike traditional college professors who rarely have any real world expereince, I had been in financial services for 38 years and I was not teachuing theory. Over my 15 years career my peers and I taught and trained thousands of well educated financial sercices professional, most of whom will serve hundreds of client families, across the US. In 2013, I "met" The Bogleheads, through a friend with whom I rode motorcyles. He was a physician and actually lived on the street where John Bogle lived, in Bryn Mawr, PA. I also had a number of Vanguard employees as students, and one of them gifted me an autographed book on Mutuial Funds, authored by John Bogle. I moved all my accounts to Vanguard and used Vanguard funds in my 403b, and never looked back. Prior to retiring, I used the traditional Vanguard 4 Fund Portfolio. As I approached retirement in 2024, I purchased a series of annuities to be paired with my social security, using roughlky 40% of my fortfolio, and used them as the Bond porttion of my portfilio. Today, my 60% equity portion is 00% invested in VTI and VXUS, 80/20. Our income is almost 40% income tax free, since the annuities were funded with Roth dollars, and of course, our Social Security has a COLA feature. Our guaranteed income is over 120% of our retirement expenses, and our portfilio is there for late in life emergencies like LTC for my wife, and legacy funding. (I have a very rich LTCi policy myself, and our annuities have a LTC benefit that increases the payout by 50% for up to 5 years, for either of us. I wasn't able to buy an LTCi policy for my wife because she didn;t qualify.) I have seen any number of posts on HD where annuities are disparaged, and for those who don't like or want them, more power to them. In our case, they are doing exactly what they were purchased to do...provide a guaranteed stream of income, for life, for both my wife and me...and making the volitilty the market irrelevant. Like most HD contributors and readers, I am a huge proponent of a broadly diversified portfolio of low cost ETFs or Mutual Funds. I do not time the market, and either does anyone else,,,sucessfully. Wall Street is a shell game and the house always wins, especially when it is treated like a casino. Although not a popular opinion among many who think they are smarter than their record would indicate, I believe the market is moved by three components...Greed, Fear, and Stupidity...and I refuse to play. Continued success in your investments and retirement!"
- Mike Lynch
Read more »

The World’s Least Useful Financial Adviser

"Thanks for the thoughtful reply. It’s fascinating to see how that 'least useful financial adviser' operates, isn't it? It seems the voice speaks a few different languages. To me, on the buy side, it whispers in the language of FOMO and regret ('should have put more in'). To you, on the sell side, it switches dialect to the language of pride and precision ('you can time this exit perfectly'). But as you rightly pointed out, it’s the exact same trap. Your big win on the energy stock this year is the ultimate test—it’s the market handing you a green light after running a red, tempting you to believe it was good judgment rather than good luck. The fact that it already emboldened you to add to another declining position shows just how persuasive that voice can be! Here’s to the rest of the journey toward that 5-stock limit!"
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

Moving is Expensive!

"Timely post! Suzie and I have spent the day in the garden — I have the thorn scratches to prove it. Between bouts of weeding and tree pruning, we found ourselves wondering whether converting three-quarters of our half-acre plot into a virtually maintenance-free space might actually be cheaper than moving house — which, as we get older, is something we're increasingly having to consider. The garden is a joy, but the sheer scale of it is becoming harder to keep on top of. You've given us a data point to consider. The more I think about it, the more I reckon there's a decent post in there somewhere!"
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

My sister’s will and what it taught me.

"Thank you Jerry. Your experience highlights a lesson many families learn the hard way. When someone dies intestate, even relatively modest assets can become far more complicated and expensive to transfer than anyone expects. It's frustrating when legal fees and delays end up consuming a significant portion of what was intended to be passed on. Thank you for sharing your story, it reinforces why having a valid will is one of the simplest gifts we can leave our families."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Rethinking the “Right” Time for Social Security

"Thank you Marilyn. I love that story. It sounds like Social Security gave you the freedom to spend more time with your granddaughter, and that's a return that can't be measured by any break-even calculation. No regrets indeed."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

The Boy Who Tried Hard: A Reflection

"Thank you Rick. I think that's one of the lessons I've learned as well. We rarely know the full story behind someone's journey or the challenges they may have faced along the way. If the article encourages a little more understanding and a little less assumption, then it was worth writing."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Adam Grossman on The Long View

"I just read the interview. It was very well done. Bravo Adam!"
- Howard Schwartz
Read more »

Billionaires, taxes and you

"I think you are correct. The median net worth of Americans is about $192,000 while the average is just over $1 million. So, at least half have a very different perspective, especially since that includes their homes."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Beefing Up Security

MANY OF US HAVE little more than a weak, reused password standing between our financial assets and a remote attacker—one armed with powerful tools and a database of passwords from security breaches. This is a losing battle. It’s the most likely way for weak computer security to put our finances at risk. Think this can’t happen to you? I’ll bet you have at least one password taken in a big security breach. A quick way to find out is entering your email address at Troy Hunt’s HaveIBeenPwned site. My address turns up in almost a dozen big cyberattacks. We are notoriously bad at creating strong passwords and remembering them. When you decide to create stronger, unique passwords for each site, you quickly discover that managing dozens of randomly generated, site-specific passwords by hand is a headache. Don’t fret. Password managers like LastPass, Dashlane and 1Password make short work of it. A password manager puts all your passwords in an encrypted vault, leaving you with just one password to remember. You want to make this password really strong and unforgettable. The password manager then fills in the right password for mobile apps and websites whenever you use them. What can you expect from a good manager?
  • Up-to-date access to your password vault on all devices, regardless of the device’s operating system.
  • Updates to your vault as you create new accounts or update existing passwords.
  • A random password generator that creates really strong, unique passwords. Those passwords will meet each site’s requirements for length and allowed characters.
  • A security challenge which guides you through the work of replacing existing poor passwords—those which are known to be compromised, weak or easily guessed, or which you’ve used more than once.
  • Emergency access to your vault by someone you choose, as well as password sharing with, say, family members for your Amazon Prime or Netflix account.
  • Two-factor authentication for extra vault security.
Some of these are only available in paid versions of the service. Despite knowing better, I procrastinated in evaluating password managers. That changed the day I tried to picture life for my spouse after I leave this vale of tears. I visualized the chores I handle: Banking, bill paying and investment management all involve online accounts. That brought my password problem into focus. A list of passwords in a binder, next to our wills, isn’t secure and it’s a pain to keep up. After experimenting with a free trial, I bought a family subscription. Moving my password vault from low-ranked to the top 1% took a couple of weekends. Each weekend, I’d spend an hour or two changing passwords, guided by the security challenge and with help from the password generator. Do this on your home PC or Mac, not an office computer. I started with high-value accounts: email, cellular carrier, and then banks and brokerages. Why email? Most web sites let you reset a password by emailing a link to the address on file. If hackers have access to your inbox, they’ll use it to access every online account. The cellular account is also important if you’ve enabled two-factor authentication that triggers text messages with secure codes. What if someone hacks into your password manager’s vault? If you pick a great vault password, the odds of this are low. But when you have all your eggs in one basket, you want to ensure that basket stays safe. That’s what led me to the YubiKey 5 series hardware keys. When you use a YubiKey with a password manager, the manager encrypts your vault twice, once with your vault password and again with a secret it gets from the YubiKey. For convenience, I’m using two models of YubiKey. I use YubiKey 5 Nano with my PC and Mac. Meanwhile, YubiKey 5 NFC stays on my keyring for use with my phone. The latter should work with an iPhone 7 or newer, as well as an Android phone with NFC (near field communication). David Powell has written software or led engineering teams for 35 years. He enjoys work, vegan fine dining, cycling and travel with his spouse. His previous article was Playing Defense. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]
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Get Educated

Manifesto

NO. 74: WHATEVER the nightmare scenario—recession, inflation, deflation—the answer’s the same: We need stocks to notch long-run gains, with enough bonds and cash to survive the rough spell.

Truths

NO. 42: IT’S HARD to distinguish skill from luck. Suppose that, after all investment costs, there’s a 45% chance of beating the stock market each year. Over a dozen years, probability suggests that, out of a million investors, 69 “investment geniuses” would beat the market in all 12 years. But were these stock pickers truly skillful—or just very lucky?

humans

NO. 14: WITH EVERY dollar we spend, we’re seeking to tell others how we want to be perceived. The big house says we’re financially successful. The Prius says we’re environmentally aware. The theater subscription lets others know we’re cultured. The irony: Even as we use money to signal our success to others, we can end up damaging our financial future.

think

FIXED COSTS. Our fixed monthly expenses include items like mortgage or rent, car payments, insurance premiums, utilities and groceries. The higher these costs, the less we'll have for savings and for discretionary spending. The latter includes things like vacations, concerts, eating out and hobbies—typically the spending that brings the greatest happiness.

How to think about money

Manifesto

NO. 74: WHATEVER the nightmare scenario—recession, inflation, deflation—the answer’s the same: We need stocks to notch long-run gains, with enough bonds and cash to survive the rough spell.

Spotlight: Family

“Dad, how should I invest for retirement ?”

Ever have one of those moments?  You you’ve been reading HumbleDollar for a couple years and your 26 year old son calls and says “Dad, work is going to start kicking in %5 for a 403(b), what should I do?” “Well, son, let me tell you about low cost index funds…”
Anybody else had softballs teed up like this ?  🙂

Read more »

Estrangement & Estates

I’ve been thinking about family dynamics and how they affect financial decisions, and this will be the first of several posts on various applications of this topic.
This first one is a hard one to talk about: It’s family estrangement, specifically a family member(s) going “no contact” with or otherwise walking away from other family member(s). It’s not as unusual as you might think–there is growing research on the topic, and some estimate that more than 30% of American families have an estranged family member.

Read more »

How do you know when it is time to step in with elderly parents?

We are in this time of life. One of our elderly parents who lives alone has memory issues. How did you know when it was not safe for your parents to be in their home anymore?  Chris

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Navigating the Unknowns of Financial Decisions

WHEN IT COMES to financial decisions, there are, as I’ve argued before, two answers to every question: what the calculator says, and how you feel about it. There’s a fly in the ointment, though: Calculator answers might appear to be based in logic, but they’re still imperfect.
Why?
Ian Wilson, a former executive at General Electric, explained it this way: “No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all knowledge is about the past,

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Savoring the Moments

BASIC ECONOMICS teaches us that scarce commodities are more precious. This holds true for metals, rocks, food—and time. Which brings me to today’s topic: Time spent with my daughter and only child has reached the rare and precious stage.
In summer 2023, scarcity was far from my mind. My daughter and I traveled to visit Grandmama—my mother—five hours’ drive south of our home. The visit itself was short and mundane, with just the usual catching up with my mother and tending to her business.

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Family Dynamics, Part 3: What Do Adult Children Owe Their Aging Parents?

If you thought my posts on family estrangement and supporting adult children were doozies, wait until you dig into this one.
My musings on all three of these topics are specifically related to how complicated the interaction between family dynamics (especially if it’s a “difficult” family) and our finances can be. This one focuses on how caring for parents as they age can raise challenging questions.
Like many of you, I’m at the stage of life where I view these questions both as a daughter and as a parent.

Read more »

Spotlight: Wilhelm

The Incredible Shrinking — Stock Market?

I see a fair amount about how index funds will ruin the stock market. According to this Wall Street Journal article there is a different and more immediate issue. Seems that there is a drop off in companies raising capital on the open market, instead restricting IPOs or their equivalent to a hand-selected group of insiders. Is this a case for some kind of regulation? Hard to see what kind.
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A Question for our UK posters

Recently, on the Saving and Gifting thread, I listed the organizations I support: "a reading service for the blind, the local hospice, Planned Parenthood, public radio and TV, and the [retirement] community’s benevolent fund", to which I should have added Royal Oak, the US affiliate of the National Trust. I added that "having grown up in what some Americans no doubt consider a Socialist country [UK], I consider charity to be the job of the government, for which I am willing to pay taxes." It subsequently occurred to me, that if I still lived in the UK, I would not, in fact, need to make those contributions, aside from the National Trust. The BBC is funded by the annual license fee, plus "commercial subsidiaries ". Both the routine female medical care and abortions provided by Planned Parenthood come under the National Health Service (NHS), right? What about hospice and services for the blind? Between the NHS and very low fees for tertiary education (it was free in my day), plus at least some private pensions with COLAs, it seems to me that Brits live with a lot less stress (and debt) than Americans.
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Disappointed (and annoyed) with Vanguard.

When I started taking QCDs and RMDs, several years ago, I called Vanguard each time. Then, last year, I was able to do the whole thing on the website. Naturally, I expected to be able to do it on the web site again this year. I started with the QCDs. I found the description of what I was supposed to do after a search on the website. I found the correct location. The options presented bore no relationship to the instructions, nor to what I wanted to do. I gave up and called Vanguard. I felt sorry for the unfortunate employee who had to read a lengthy spiel four times, once per check. He offered to explain the process to me, but since it would no doubt change again next year, and in any case I would forget, I declined. Surely the RMD should be simpler, I thought. I found the right web page easily enough, only to discover that it would let me send the distribution to my bank account, but not to my Vanguard brokerage account. Just how does that make sense? I would just have to send the money back again. A further phone call got the money directed to the right place, but also informed me that I could only have tax withheld from money going to my settlement fund, and not to a mutual fund. I started the RMD transfer before close of business on Friday. The transaction officially completed yesterday (Monday), although I didn't see the result until this morning. I can conceive of no earthly reason why it should not have completed on Friday. I have been a Vanguard customer for decades but am hereby soliciting recommendations for an alternative, bearing in mind that my portfolio is almost entirely invested in Vanguard mutual…
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Which bond fund?

I'm gifting a Wall Street Journal article on the share of AI company debt in the bond market. Just as AI is becoming an ever-growing share of the S&P500, it is becoming a bigger share of the bond market. I have already shifted money from the S&P500 to the rest of the market, and to an international fund, now I'm wondering whether I should do the same for bonds. Since my asset allocation is 50% stocks, I own a fair amount of bonds. Most of the money is in short and intermediate TIPs (VTAPX and VAIPX), and short and intermediate Treasuries (VFIRX and VSIGX), but some is in high-grade corporates (VFSUX and VFICX). Would you only hold Treasuries?
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A Nuanced View of FIRE

Well, mostly FI, but some RE. (FIRE standing for Financial Independence, Retire Early). Christine Benz from Morningstar recently attended a CampFI event in Spain, and wrote about her experience here. She comments that "A lot of people have a caricatured perception of the FI community. They assume that everyone is trying to live on $10 a day in order to hang it up at age 35." While she met some young people, she met older people as well. She concludes that she learned some valuable lessons from her fellow attendees. A recommended read.
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About those US medical costs….

I am attempting to gift a Wall Street Journal article. I hope it works, but if not, all you really need is the headline: "The Average Cost of a Family Health Insurance Plan Is Now $27,000". Think about that. Then consider that US health care is generally considered to be twice as expensive as health care in other, comparable, countries for worse results. Think what corporations, never mind employees, could do with an additional $6,750/year per person.   You might follow that by listening to this podcast. A researcher is asking people to send her redacted hospital bills so she can attempt to figure out what hospital care costs. We know that bureaucratic overhead is one reason for our inflated costs - what other country has a degree in medical coding? - but high and undiscoverable hospital costs are another. A hospital can't tell you what your elective surgery will cost, even if you ask, and you are certainly not going to spend an ambulance ride after a car accident or a heart attack calling around asking about the price of care.   An anecdote: Back in 2005 I fell and broke my wrist in Murren, Switzerland. I wound up in an emergency room in Interlaken. I was the only patient - it wasn't ski season, so I was the only injury, but there were no uninsured people using the ER for primary care, either. Compare that with your local hospital any time of year. The doctors attempted to set the bones using X-ray, before taking me to the OR to insert pins under anesthetic, and then to a bed in a six person ward where I spent the night. Fortunately, I still had good retiree medical insurance, but the really interesting fact about the bill was that it was…
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