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The Financial Stress a Simple Document Could Have Prevented

Lucretia Ryan | May 23, 2026

"I live in Alabama, I have consulted two attorneys in regards to the need of a “revocable living trust”. I have been told in my situation it is not needed. All states and family dynamics are different. "

- Warner Charlie

My Father: The Peace He Never Found

Andrew Clements | May 20, 2026

"Wow Andrew, thank you for sharing such a powerful personal story and to the HD community, as usual your comments are equally as moving and thought provoking. I must say that the HD community has a real knack for posting articles that capture my current thinking. I am just back from a wonderful 10 day vacation with my wife of almost 35 years, during which I spent a good deal of time thinking about retirement. Financially I am all set, but as I have learned from this site and stories that others have told me, I am still searching for that activity or activities that will provide the structure and sense of purpose that work has provided the majority of my life. I am not proud of it, but like many others, my work and ability to provide financially for my family has defined me, more than any other role, for nearly 38 years. Articles such as this one hit me hard, because I fear the worst outcome when I retire. Boredom, depression, the alienation of loved ones, etc. I keep searching for something to fill the void and provide that sense of purpose, but until I find it, I feel like I have to keep working. Signed, Searching in NJ"

- gnussen623

Country Club Venture Capital

Mark Crothers | May 17, 2026

"My girls were singers, not dancers. In high school, my older daughter got into the madrigal choir, which required a renaissance costume. I paid $1500 for a local seamstress to make it for her. This was back in 2004! I was quite relieved when her younger sister chose the jazz choir instead. That outfit only cost $200."

- DrLefty

Deeply Rooted

ArticleMark Crothers | May 23, 2026

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.

Should Retirees Get a Temporary Flat Tax Window on IRA and 401(k) Withdrawals?

Jeff Peck | May 18, 2026

"Unintended consequences like encouraging a stock market selloff."

- MikeinLA

Time to scrap IRAs, 401k, 403b and all the rest

R Quinn | May 21, 2026

"No reason to change that. The main goal is one plan, one set of rules and limits, to encourage saving for retirement."

- R Quinn

Taste Bud Training

Mark Crothers | May 22, 2026

"We did a chauffeured foodie tour in the region and went to a Balsamico farm (?) which included lunch for just the two of us. In addition we went to a Lambrusco winery which is the grape they use to make Balsamico, as well as a Reggiano parmasean (I affectionately call it Reggie) facility. To see the wheels stacked floor to ceiling was amazing."

- David Lancaster

A Time to Save

D.J. | May 21, 2026

"I hope your grandchildren listen to your wise recommendations, William. We can’t control all life throws at us, but we can do our best to save and stay invested in the market so compounding can perform its magic."

- D.J.

The reality of Social Security and Medicare- My real life experience.

R Quinn | May 4, 2026

"This sounds like NY state. My father retired in 1990 but had his premiums reimbursed for years by NY state, as far as I know until he died in 2012. When he asked them they claimed it was his unused sick time and vacation time. For 22 years? he did the math and called them several times but they never agreed with his calculations and kept paying."

- Concerned

Lifetime Supply

Dan Smith | May 20, 2026

"Suzie and her dad made that exact journey three years ago, after a family wedding in San José."

- Mark Crothers

Writing a Book in Retirement: The Good, the Hard, and the Surprisingly Meaningful

mllange | May 13, 2026

"Excellent, thank you for sharing. It's also relevant in the life of my daughter, so we have something to look forward to."

- mllange

Inflation and Innovation

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | May 23, 2026

ECONOMICS IS KNOWN as “the dismal science,” and perhaps for good reason. Oftentimes it can be abstract and overly academic. There are, however, certain economic concepts that can be helpful to individual investors. Below are two that I see as especially important. When it comes to the government’s ability to control—or least influence—the economy, there are two main levers. The first is fiscal policy, which refers to Congress’s (as well as state and local governments') ability to levy taxes and to spend money. The most well known economist associated with fiscal policy was John Maynard Keynes. During economic downturns, Keynes argued, governments shouldn’t hesitate to spend more—and to run deficits, if need be—to help reduce unemployment and lift the economy back up. This is a generally accepted concept today, but in the 1930s, in the depths of the Great Depression, it was not obvious, and many believe that policymakers’ efforts to exercise fiscal discipline by balancing the budget during the Depression ended up prolonging the misery. It wasn’t until the mid-1930s, in fact, that President Roosevelt changed his view on this question. In their correspondence, Keynes convinced Roosevelt that loosening up on fiscal discipline, though counterintuitive, was the best way to bring the economy back to health. This approach has been used in every recession since. Most recently, during the pandemic, the government issued several rounds of stimulus payments to help bolster consumer finances. Monetary policy is the government’s second key lever. Unlike fiscal policy, monetary policy is the domain of the Federal Reserve. When you hear about the government “printing money,” it’s the Fed they’re referring to. Through a unique process, the Fed is able to create dollars out of thin air and then to use those dollars to help support the economy during downturns. During the pandemic, the Fed created trillions of new dollars through this mechanism. The Fed also lowered short-term interest rates, which it controls, in a further effort to nudge consumers to open their wallets. Both fiscal and monetary policy are powerful. But as we’ve seen in recent years, each can also carry side effects. In the case of fiscal policy, spending too much for too long can drive the deficit to unsustainable levels. This has become a persistent problem. Though it’s now been several years since the pandemic, the federal government is still running deficits of about $2 trillion per year. In round numbers, taxes bring in about $5 trillion, but spending exceeds $7 trillion. Of particular concern is the fact that more than $1 trillion of that $7 trillion must now be allocated to interest payments on all the accumulated debt. To put that in perspective, we’re now spending more on interest than on defense. Is this situation sustainable? Here’s how I think about it: Imagine an individual with an annual income of $50,000 who spends $70,000 each year, including $10,000 in credit card payments. At some point, something will need to change, but neither political party seems interested in tackling it, for the obvious reason that any solution would require either raising taxes or cutting spending. Neither would be popular, so the deficits persist. The consequence of overdoing it with monetary policy is also serious: inflation. That’s what we saw very significantly in 2021 and 2022, and that’s where monetary and fiscal policy can become intertwined. For a brief period during the pandemic, a concept known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) gained popularity. The argument was that countries like the United States, with very large economies, were essentially immune to inflation risk and could print money almost without limit. It turned out, though, that MMT was a theory with no basis in reality, and that deficits do matter. Since ancient times, excessive use of monetary policy has always resulted in inflation, and that was exactly what we saw as a result of the Fed’s extraordinary monetary interventions in 2020. After inflation rose to nearly 10% in 2022, the Fed was forced to reverse course and raise interest rates. That had the desired effect of slowing inflation, but it then caused another problem: Since the government has to issue new bonds practically every day, higher rates have the effect of driving up the government’s borrowing costs, which then worsens the deficit. Higher interest rates also hurt consumers, especially those looking to buy homes. This, unfortunately, describes the situation we’re in today. In an effort to combat the pandemic, the government used both of the levers that it had, but now it’s effectively out of ammunition. Federal debt held by the public just recently climbed above 100% of gross domestic product for the first time since 1946. The Wall Street Journal referred to this as “a once-unthinkable threshold.” But before we declare the situation hopeless, it’s important to look at a separate concept in economics. In 1942, Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter released a book titled Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Among the concepts Schumpeter proposed was the notion of “creative destruction.” The idea—central to capitalist systems—was that entrepreneurs could always be counted on to move technology forward. At the same time, this meant that older technologies and companies would regularly find themselves pushed aside by new innovations. Importantly, though, Schumpeter argued that the net effect would be greatly positive. The evidence in favor of Schumpeter is all around us. Horse-and-buggy companies went out of business when the automobile was invented. Pony Express gave way to the telegram, then to the telephone. Typewriter manufacturers are mostly gone. And so on. And yet, despite all these changes, unemployment is under 5%, the economy is larger than it’s ever been, and income-per-capita is at an all-time high. What’s the relationship between Schumpeter’s theory and the earlier discussion about the government’s debt situation? You may recall that in the late-1990s, the federal government surprised observers when it began to run budget surpluses after years of deficits. How did things suddenly improve? Most attribute it to the productivity boom and stock market rally set in motion by the popularization of the internet. It's too early to know whether artificial intelligence will deliver the same economic benefits in the coming years as the web did 30 years ago. But as investors, this history is important to keep in mind. It’s a reminder that, in making financial decisions, we should be careful about reacting to economic forecasts. To be sure, the government’s financial health doesn’t look great, but as history has shown, this could change. Adam M. Grossman is the founder of Mayport, a fixed-fee wealth management firm. Sign up for Adam's Daily Ideas email, follow him on X @AdamMGrossman and check out his earlier articles.

The Financial Stress a Simple Document Could Have Prevented

Lucretia Ryan | May 23, 2026

- Warner Charlie

My Father: The Peace He Never Found

Andrew Clements | May 20, 2026

- gnussen623

Country Club Venture Capital

Mark Crothers | May 17, 2026

- DrLefty

Deeply Rooted

ArticleMark Crothers | May 23, 2026

Should Retirees Get a Temporary Flat Tax Window on IRA and 401(k) Withdrawals?

Jeff Peck | May 18, 2026

"Unintended consequences like encouraging a stock market selloff."

- MikeinLA

Time to scrap IRAs, 401k, 403b and all the rest

R Quinn | May 21, 2026

"No reason to change that. The main goal is one plan, one set of rules and limits, to encourage saving for retirement."

- R Quinn

Taste Bud Training

Mark Crothers | May 22, 2026

- David Lancaster

A Time to Save

D.J. | May 21, 2026

- D.J.

The reality of Social Security and Medicare- My real life experience.

R Quinn | May 4, 2026

- Concerned

Inflation and Innovation

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | May 23, 2026

Manifesto

May 24, 2026

NO. 49: WE SHOULD ensure our family will be okay financially, even if we aren’t around. That means making sure there’s enough money—and making sure our affairs are well organized.

Truths

May 24, 2026

NO. 60: SHORT-TERM results matter to long-term investors. Even if you’re investing for the long haul and have a strong stomach for short-term price swings, this volatility can have a huge impact on your long-run returns. Want to retire rich? Pray for lousy markets as you regularly save money during your working years—and buoyant markets as you approach retirement.

humans

May 23, 2026

NO. 33: WE'RE SWAYED by anecdotes, not statistics. The numbers tell us we’re more likely to be killed in a car accident than a plane crash, and yet we’re far more nervous about flying than driving. Plane disasters garner big headlines, and such stories stick in our mind. Ditto for investment narratives, like the hyped-up stock story or the scary market prediction.

act

May 23, 2026

CHECK WHO YOU have named as beneficiaries. Your retirement accounts, life insurance and any trusts will typically pass to the beneficiaries specified on those assets and not to the people named in your will. If your family situation has changed, or you simply don’t remember who you have listed, take a few minutes to review your beneficiary designations.

Money Guide

Manifesto

May 24, 2026

NO. 49: WE SHOULD ensure our family will be okay financially, even if we aren’t around. That means making sure there’s enough money—and making sure our affairs are well organized.

Spotlight: College

Saved by Borrowing

Morgen Henderson | May 12, 2020

IN HIGH SCHOOL, I worked at a local roller-skating rink to save money for college. I calculated that, if I kept working at the same rate once I was in college, I could make it through my four-year degree without taking on any student loans.
I was determined to make it work.
In my freshman year, my plan started with a budget—and that budget included this simple edict: Spend the least amount possible on everything.

Making Their Own Way

Ken Begley | Jun 20, 2023

OUR FIVE KIDS SPENT a collective 24 years in college. All five have bachelor’s degrees, and three also have master’s degrees. The youngest graduated May 2023. Only one child qualified for non-merit aid—a $300 Pell grant.
My wife and I didn’t give them money for college. We don’t live near a major public university, so four of the five had to live on campus. Here’s what prepared them for college and how to pay for it.

College Math

Kyle McIntosh | Nov 22, 2021

WHAT’S THE REAL PRICE? In September, I wrote about the potential tab for sending our first child to college in 2025. The four-year cost was estimated at anywhere from $65,000 to $430,000, depending on the college chosen.
This wild disparity led me to conclude that college financial planning was like saving to buy a car—when you don’t know if you’ll drive off the lot in a Honda or a Lamborghini.
Since then, I’ve tried to put a sharper pencil to college costs.

Falling Short

Howard Rohleder | Sep 6, 2021

I SERVED ON a scholarship committee for a local foundation. We offered awards to college students entering their sophomore year. Our coordinator had the unhappy job of explaining to some students and parents that, even though their students had a full freshman schedule and passed all their classes, they didn’t actually have sophomore standing. How can this be? The answer is remediation.
Almost 24% of entering college freshmen at Ohio universities required remediation in English or math and 6% needed both.

A Real Education

Casey Campbell | Mar 7, 2024

WE’RE A SINGLE-INCOME family with five children, so the prospect of paying for college for all our kids is daunting, to say the least. Yes, our oldest is now in her second year of college. But we still have a long way to go before they’ve all crossed the finish line.
Our kids are ages 19, 17, 12, nine and six. We’ve been homeschooling them since the beginning, with a few brief exceptions, including one daughter in a Department of Defense high school in Korea for a year and another daughter in a private high school for two years.

Kids These Days

Kyle McIntosh | Dec 15, 2021

A FEW WEEKS BACK, Jonathan Clements wrote an article reminding readers that they, too, likely made financial missteps in their younger days. His article was in response to comments by HumbleDollar readers about the perceived lack of financial discipline shown by those currently in their late teens and early 20s.
Before my recent career change, I would’ve had the same opinion as many readers. With my new job teaching accounting to undergraduates,

Final Arrangements: A Learning Curve

DrLefty | Aug 18, 2024

As I’ve written here before, my mother-in-law has been dealing with Alzheimer’s, and this last year has been a constant learning curve of navigating long-term care policies, trying out in-home caregivers (pretty major fail), and finally a memory care residential facility. Well, this past week was a new challenge. My MIL passed away suddenly on Tuesday night. We got a call from the memory care facility that she’d fainted several times, so they’d called an ambulance. We were concerned, but she’d had issues with fainting before. 20 minutes later, a hospital nurse called and said she’d arrested (she had an DNR order) and died on the way to the hospital. It was very abruptly conveyed, and the nurse barely took a breath before asking which local mortuary we’d like the body transferred to. We said we’d have to call her husband (my husband’s stepfather) and get back to them. It was a traumatic few minutes. Alzheimer’s notwithstanding, she’d otherwise been in good health and had never had heart problems. She was 84. Anyway, the real drama involved the final arrangements. My in-laws had purchased cemetery plots in Palo Alto, CA, where other family members have been laid to rest. But they live in Southern California, some 400 miles from this cemetery. Nothing had been set up with a local mortuary. We had to really quickly find one that (a) would take the body from the hospital (b) prepare the body for a 400-mile road trip and (c) transport the body. Then we had to figure what would happen on the other end after the transport. My father-in-law also had to go to the local mortuary and fill out lots of paperwork as next-of-kin to get the body released. He’s 82 and gets easily confused and frustrated. My husband had offered…

When and Where?

Dana Ferris | Sep 6, 2023

A LOT HAS BEEN written, here at HumbleDollar and elsewhere, about the “when” of retirement. Not surprisingly, there are strong opinions. For example, I’m a member of a Facebook group where the overwhelming consensus is, “Don’t work one single day longer than you absolutely have to.” Of course, many people don’t have the luxury of choosing their ideal retirement date because life intervenes: They get let go from their job or experience health issues that dictate the answer to the “when” question. Despite reading and thinking a lot about the next stage of life, my husband and I are still struggling to set an exact retirement date. Beyond the “when,” we also have had hours of discussion about the “where.” The “when” question. We both turn 63 this year. Thankfully, we’re in good health. I’m a tenured university professor, so I have the security of knowing that I—not my employer—will choose my exit date. My husband is employed in the private sector and doesn’t have the kind of job protections I do. Still, it seems the “when” decision will be primarily in our hands and won’t be imposed on us. We’ve identified two possible exit dates: July 1, 2025, or July 1, 2026, when we’d be turning either 65 or 66. I think we’re both pretty clear that we’re ready, mentally and emotionally, to be done with our day jobs. Leaving on the earlier date would be our preference. Why the ambivalence? In a word, money. An extra year of earnings would help us save more cash for the “bridge” to Social Security and that bridge would be 12 months shorter, plus we’d add another year of contributions to our retirement accounts. The pension I’ll receive when I retire is based on service credit, and another year would add 2.5%…

Thank you, Jonathan

DrLefty | Sep 23, 2025

I hope I’m not overstepping here, but since I read the news yesterday, I’ve been thinking that it would be nice to have a thread in which we thank Jonathan for the various ways he touched our lives, whether it be as a writer or just a manager of our finances. I’m hoping it’s something his family might enjoy reading when they’re ready. So here’s mine: Unlike many of you who go back to Jonathan’s WSJ days, I only discovered him and HumbleDollar in 2020, early in the pandemic. I don’t recall exactly how I came across it, but I definitely remember reading Dick Quinn’s articles about being stuck on the cruise ship after COVID hit. I think those were the first ones, and then I started poking around through the other articles, and subscribed to the twice-weekly newsletter. Over the next couple of years, I began to think about proposing an article myself to Jonathan and even started keeping a list of ideas. Finally, in early 2023, I got up my nerve and wrote to him. He couldn’t have been more welcoming, encouraging, and helpful. Between 2023 and when HD stopped publishing articles, I published 9 pieces edited by Jonathan. I was so impressed that he shared the platform he’d created with such a wide variety of people. I’m no financial expert—honestly, I barely understand investing—but like so many other HD authors, I had life experience and stories to share. So thank you, Jonathan, for giving me a seat at this table and helping me find my voice. What about you? Please share here if you feel moved to do so. Thank you, Jonathan.—Dana Ferris

Six Months In! (from Dana/DrLefty)

DrLefty | Jan 1, 2026

Happy New Year, HumbleDollar folks! Today, besides being the first day of 2026, is also the six-month anniversary of my retirement. How's it going so far? I thought I'd follow up on a couple of posts from last year--this one was a year ago today (a "six months out" post). So far, I absolutely love being retired. Seriously, I'm just ecstatic about it. I said to my husband recently, "I thought I'd miss it (my career) a little bit." After all, even though university politics had soured me on my day job, I always loved teaching, and I enjoyed it right up through my last day of class in June. But I'm just feeling a sense of relief about the absence of responsibility. The Biggest News. After a few months of watching me live my best life, my husband started rethinking the "maybe I'll work until 70" plan (we're 65). His contract with his firm requires six months notice, so he's planning to give notice on April 1 for an October 1 retirement date. (Why that date? He has a couple of projects he wants to see through, and bonuses are paid in August.) It's possible that they'll ask him to stay on either as a part-time employee or as a consultant--he has a pretty specific skill set that will be hard to replace--and he's open to that, but he's committed to being done with full-time employment by October 1, 2026. How I'm Spending Time. That has gone pretty much as I expected. After a lot of travel over the summer, we had a quieter fall mostly at home. I'm working on several academic writing projects (a new edition of one of my books, journal articles from my final two research projects, and a new collection I'm co-editing). I'm trying to work on those…

Estrangement & Estates

DrLefty | Jul 10, 2025

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. The reasons for this alarming trend are sociologically complex. One expert on the topic is psychologist Joshua Coleman, who's written a couple of books and many articles based on insights from his own practice and his research. He notes that while about half of the estrangement situations happen for reasons we'd all consider legitimate (e.g., clearly abusive behavior), others are harder to peg, and what one adult child might consider a "toxic" on the part of their parents might be incomprehensible to their sibling. As I said, it's complicated. Sometimes, according to Coleman, the estranged family members might find a way back to each other. In other cases, the person is (most likely) gone forever. The question arises as to the implications estrangement has for one's estate. Coleman urges parents with an estranged adult child not to cut them out of their will, arguing that this will just exacerbate an already painful situation. However, others might argue that if a family member has chosen to exit the family, causing pain by so doing, they are no longer entitled to family resources--and including them in an estate plan might even seem or be disrespectful to other family members who have been hurt by their actions. I'll be vague, but we have an estrangement situation in my…

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

DrLefty | Jul 29, 2025

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. The parameters and principles I hold to right now (about the older generation) could well be turned around to apply to me and my husband, and that all factors in to how I think about these matters. Anyway, let's dig in. I see two separate but related sets of factors or questions. Financial/Practical Questions If the aging parent needs regular or even daily assistance, are you willing and able to provide it? How might time spent fixing up their home, driving them to appointments, buying groceries, cooking, cleaning, and more, affect your own financial situation, especially if you're still working? What about your ability to care for yourself and your own family, if you have one? What if you don't live anywhere near them? If the parent says something like "I want to live out my years in my own home. Don't ever put me in assisted living"--are you (and your siblings, if applicable) able and willing to help make that happen? Will a family member move in with them? Will you have to provide the care yourself, or pay for in-home caregivers? If the parent has their own means to pay for help, who will be in charge of arranging and overseeing that care? If there are gaps in coverage,…

The Financial Stress a Simple Document Could Have Prevented

My Father: The Peace He Never Found

Country Club Venture Capital

Deeply Rooted

Should Retirees Get a Temporary Flat Tax Window on IRA and 401(k) Withdrawals?

Time to scrap IRAs, 401k, 403b and all the rest

Taste Bud Training

A Time to Save

The reality of Social Security and Medicare- My real life experience.

Lifetime Supply

Writing a Book in Retirement: The Good, the Hard, and the Surprisingly Meaningful

Inflation and Innovation

The Financial Stress a Simple Document Could Have Prevented

My Father: The Peace He Never Found

Country Club Venture Capital

Deeply Rooted

Should Retirees Get a Temporary Flat Tax Window on IRA and 401(k) Withdrawals?

Time to scrap IRAs, 401k, 403b and all the rest

Taste Bud Training

A Time to Save

The reality of Social Security and Medicare- My real life experience.

Inflation and Innovation

Free Newsletter

Get Educated

Manifesto

Truths

humans

act

Money Guide

Manifesto

Spotlight: College

Saved by Borrowing

Making Their Own Way

College Math

Falling Short

A Real Education

Kids These Days

Spotlight: Ferris

Final Arrangements: A Learning Curve

When and Where?

Thank you, Jonathan

Six Months In! (from Dana/DrLefty)

Estrangement & Estates

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