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What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

William Perry | Sep 14, 2026

"Thanks for your comment. A number of comments on Humble Dollar and other sites I read gives me pause about continuing to buy I Bonds. I have not had the administrative headaches you and others have had and I certainly do not want them for myself or my heirs. Converting my login at TD to ID.me is a distant secondary consideration on if I am willing to continue buying I Bonds if TD does not improve their customer service when something occurs for a person like you who has taken reasonable actions which are deemed to be insufficient."

- William Perry

Free Breakfast

D.J. | Sep 9, 2026

"A good "free breakfast" is a win-win. A good breakfast helps shape a guest's positive experience and builds loyalty for a hotel, and it can offer a good breakfast at a low cost because it has economies of scale. But a guest also benefits from a good "free breakfast" even if it is paid for indirectly. I always found the breakfast time at a hotel to be a great time to get a solid start, and to eat nutritious food instead of the inevitable later mid-morning snacks. It is a great place to discuss or resolve one's final plan for the day when on vacation, and even on some business trips. It is one place where you bond rather than argue on vacation. You also save time running out and looking for something acceptable elsewhere, especially if you have a few people in your party. You also will tend to know what you will order (or grab from the buffet) every day in advance, since you know from day 1 what you like that is on the menu and what the hotel puts out on the buffet. This works for cruises, too. However, even if a breakfast has a separate charge, it may still be useful to pay, since the value to a hotel guest can more than offset the cost. (On the other hand, a breakfast of powdered eggs, rubbery bagels, bad coffee and half-stale pastries will make one think less of a hotel, and lead to a different choice for a place to stay in the future.)"

- Martin McCue

I will still take the dividends

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"I must admit I’m more interested in the names of the two stocks then in your unique analysis. You make it seem all so mysterious. Are their names some sort of secret?"

- Michael Flack

Locking it in

greg_j_tomamichel | Sep 5, 2026

"I never liked to owe anybody money. When I was a young man, I borrowed because I needed to - school loans, car loans, mortgages, occasional purchases on credit. But I clawed along until I got free of all those things, and resolved to avoid large borrowings and to pay off my credit cards each month. I know there can be benefits to borrowing, but I like the sense of freedom I have about how I use what I've earned. I save a lot, and I put most of my money to work somehow. My weakness is imprecision. I leave more cash in my local bank account than I need to in order to get all those free services - checking, safe deposit box, etc. I let some of my RMD sit in a money market fund at my broker's, rather than investing it more carefully. I sometimes pay more to have a service done than I know I would pay if I carefully got competitive quotes. In the end, however, I do think I'm pretty efficient with money. I like the tips in the comments. I always pick up a trick or two when I read these posts. Thank you!"

- Martin McCue

A Wedding Too Far

Mark Crothers | Sep 7, 2026

"Congratulations. I have what I call the definitive Father of the Bride reception speech outline, which covers every possible thing you need to remember to cover (or affirmatively elect to ignore.) I researched it for a month for my daughter's wedding, digging through almost every wedding book in print. (Did you know that Angela Lansbury wrote a really good wedding preparation book?) I've given it to a half dozen friends as their little girls began to get married, and it saved them a lot of work. Anyway, if there is a good (and safe) way to share it with you, I'm happy to send you a copy. (I've looked for a way to publish it online to give it a broader reach, but never really came up with a way to do that.)"

- Martin McCue

Being terminated…

gnussen623 | Sep 12, 2026

"That’s awesome Julie!"

- gnussen623

The Silent Committee

John Goodell | Sep 14, 2026

"John, thanks for a really interesting article. About 30 years ago my brother-in-law called me and told his company (Cincinnati Financial) announced that they were being included in the S&P 500, and asked me what that meant. I gave him the broad explanation, but did a little research to help him understand what it meant to be included. Your article and the latest dealings with SpaceX brought back fond memories of that discussion."

- Rick Connor

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

WHEN A HUSBAND dies, his widow inherits his IRA. Somewhere in the paperwork of the months that follow there is a decision to make, and nobody presents it to her as one. She can take the account as her own, or she can leave it titled as inherited. Taking it as her own means filling something in. Leaving it means doing nothing, and the IRS tells custodians they may assume that is what she wants. So the account sits where it is, at the same firm, holding money the household always treated as joint, and the decision gets made by nobody. It is the more expensive of the two. Not by a little. Two Tables Every year, a required minimum distribution, or RMD, has to come out of the account. The amount is the balance divided by a number from an IRS table, and there are two tables in play here. Beneficiaries use the Single Life Expectancy table. Owners use the Uniform Lifetime table, which spreads the money over a longer period and therefore asks for less each year. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth about a third of the annual bill. Take a widow of 76 with $480,000. Left titled as an inherited account, she must take $34,043 that year. Had she taken the same account into her own name, she would have to take $20,253. Same money, same woman, same birthday. The difference is which box got ticked in the months after the funeral. It Does Not Happen Once That gap is not a one-year event. Run both versions forward 10 years, same account, same growth, taking exactly what is required and nothing more. The inherited schedule forces out $374,306 over the decade. As owner, $246,281. She pays about $30,600 more in federal income tax getting there, and reaches 85 with roughly $171,000 less still inside the IRA. She has not lost that money. She has been made to take it out early, pay tax on it sooner, and hold it somewhere less sheltered for the rest of her life. That is a slower kind of damage than a penalty, and a larger one, because it renews every January for as long as she lives. A Floor, Not a Ceiling The usual objection to taking the account as your own is that it locks the money up. It does the opposite. A required distribution is a floor, not a ceiling. She can take more in any year she wants it, for any reason, and nobody asks why. What she leaves alone stays sheltered and keeps compounding. The lower figure buys her the choice. The higher one makes it for her, every year, whether the money is needed or not. One Case Runs the Other Way There is a real exception, and it matters enough to state plainly. Money paid out of an inherited IRA escapes the 10% early-withdrawal penalty at any age, because the IRS exempts what is paid to a beneficiary on account of the owner's death. Take the account as your own and you are back under the ordinary rules. So a survivor who is young enough that an early withdrawal would be penalized, and who expects to need the money, has a genuine reason to leave the account exactly where it is. That threshold is 59 and a half. For most couples already retired this will not apply, and the rest of the article governs. Where it does apply, it outranks everything above. Nobody Will Prompt You I wrote recently about the letter that never comes. A custodian has to tell an IRA owner what must be withdrawn each year, and owes an inherited account nothing at all. So the choice decides more than the size of the bill. Take the account as your own and the letter starts arriving, every January, for the rest of your life. Leave it as inherited and you are on your own to remember the RMD. The branch that requires no paperwork is therefore both the more expensive one and the quiet one, and those two facts feed each other. The option that costs more is also the one that removes the annual nudge that might have made you reconsider it. Decide It Before You Have To None of this is hard to work out. It is hard to work out in the eight weeks after a funeral, which is exactly when it gets decided, usually by default. If you are married and you both hold IRAs, settle it now, while it is hypothetical for both of you. Talk through which of you would be likely to need the money soon after the other died. That is what the 59-and-a-half question really asks, and it is a conversation about your circumstances rather than about tax tables. Then decide which way the survivor should go, write it down, and put it with your trust, your will and the beneficiary designations, where a survivor or an executor will actually come across it. Tell whoever else needs to know that it exists. Look at it again as either of you nears the age your own distributions must begin. That is 70 and a half if you were born before July 1949, 72 if you were born between then and the end of 1950, 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. It is the birthday that makes the whole question live. The paperwork will not choose for you. It will simply do nothing, which is a choice, and on these numbers it is the wrong one for most people who make it by accident. ________________________________________________________________________________ John Urban is the founder of RetireSmartIRA, a retirement tax-planning app. Earlier, he founded GT Nexus, a supply-chain software company acquired by Infor in 2015. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Kathy, and enjoys time with family, travel, reading, Bay Area sports, and the occasional deep dive into the fine print of the tax code.

Total portfolio approach?

baldscreen | Sep 14, 2026

"Your second paragraph says it all. The best plan for an individual is the one which is sensible and which he or she can stick with for the long term."

- Jack Hannam

Growing Up In A Big House

DAN SMITH | Sep 9, 2026

"Thank you Dan for the wonderful story"

- Nick Politakis

Financial Choices

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Sep 12, 2026

FOR MUCH OF THE seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European monarchs used a financial instrument known as a tontine to help finance their governments. Tontines were first developed in the 1650s by an Italian government worker named Lorenzo Tonti and were similar to annuities: In exchange for a single, lump-sum purchase, tontines offered guaranteed payments for life. But tontines also offered some unique features. Unlike an annuity, where payments end with the death of the owner, tontine holders had the option of tying the payments to another person. A parent, for example, could name their son or daughter on a tontine, thus extending the payments over a much longer period. In the 1750s, however, a Swiss banker named Jacob Beaumont had a realization: While the owners of tontines typically named their children, a quirk in the rules permitted a tontine owner to name any individual. To Beaumont, this presented an opportunity: Why not name the youngest possible person, thus extending the stream of payments even further? In his home town of Geneva, Beaumont identified ideal candidates for this role: young children who came from well-heeled backgrounds and were thus likely to have access to good healthcare. He then began loading up on tontines tied to the very long life expectancies of these children. The strategy worked exactly as expected and delivered Beaumont enormous profits. Other investors then piled in, mimicking Beaumont’s strategy, which, for a time, offered a virtually no-lose opportunity for profit. This went on until the French government, in frustration, discontinued its tontine program. When it comes to financial decisions, it’s the rare situation that’s as obvious as the one that Beaumont identified. Instead, most financial decisions entail some amount of uncertainty and are subject to judgment. Some choices, though, are closer than others to being obvious decisions. Here are six that I see frequently.

Certain Social Security claiming decisions are without question. For example, if you’re married and plan to claim the spousal benefit, it’s important to know that this benefit hits a maximum at full retirement age (FRA), which is now age 67 for most people. Unlike workers’ own benefits, which can continue to increase all the way to age 70, spousal benefits are subject to a different rule, so there’s no benefit for anyone to wait beyond FRA.
You may be familiar with umbrella insurance. This provides additional liability coverage on top of auto and homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance. Because it covers low-likelihood situations, such as someone slipping and falling on your front walk, umbrella coverage is extremely cost effective—sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars per year. I see it as an obvious benefit because the situations it covers, however unlikely, are also the ones that could be the most expensive. And because it would be the insurance company that would face exposure, insurers provide legal defense, at their expense, if there is ever a claim. How much coverage should you have? I generally recommend between $1 million and $5 million, but the key point is that almost any coverage is better than none.
In choosing an asset allocation for your portfolio, I think it’s best to avoid rules of thumb, because everyone is different. At the same time, a recommendation that I see as universal is to avoid extremes. I wouldn’t get too close to 100% bonds because of the corrosive impact of inflation. And I don’t like getting too close to 100% stocks because of the volatility and risk of loss. That’s always been my view, but recent research can help investors narrow the range further. William Bengen, creator of the “4% rule,” published a book last year in which, for the first time, he looked at the question of portfolio longevity through the lens of asset allocation. What he found was that portfolios with stock allocations between 45% and 75% offered the highest sustainable withdrawal rates over multiple decades.

If you’ve recently retired, you may be considering a Roth conversion, whereby you’d move dollars from your pre-tax IRA to a Roth IRA. This is a popular strategy, but the catch is that a tax must be paid when a conversion is completed, and your tax bracket can increase as you convert more. Convert too much, and you can negate the benefit of a conversion. For that reason, it isn’t always obvious whether a conversion is advisable. There is one situation, though, where a conversion offers an almost obvious benefit: If your income, even with a conversion, would be in one of the two lowest tax brackets (10% or 12%), then it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself in a lower bracket than that in the future. In that case, especially because of special deductions provided by the new tax rules, I’d view it as an almost obvious choice to proceed with a conversion up to the top of the 12% bracket.

Looking to make charitable gifts? Because the standard deduction is now so high, fewer taxpayers are able to itemize deductions, and that can limit the tax benefit of donations. But there’s still a way to gain a tax benefit: If you have appreciated stocks in a taxable account, you can donate them to a donor-advised fund. That would allow you to sidestep the capital gains tax that would otherwise be due if you sold those stocks. Many donor-advised funds have no minimums, making this an easy choice, in my view.
If you believe your estate will top the estate tax threshold (about $15 million per person at the federal level, but much lower in certain states), then I would be sure to use the annual exclusion (currently $19,000 per donor and per recipient) to make incremental gifts to your heirs. That's because this annual exclusion is in addition to the lifetime exclusion and doesn’t carry over from year to year.

Note that these gifts don't have to be made in cash if the recipients aren't yet in a position to receive them. As alternatives, you could make contributions to a 529 account or to a trust for their benefit, and these contributions would count toward the annual exclusion. 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 Ultimate Tail Risk

Mark Gardner | Sep 13, 2026

"Great Mark G with your suggestions. Any Government regulation is better than nothing. USG definitely needs to play a leadership role. Other countries may not even know where to start since all the major AI companies are operating from our land here. As a simple software engineer continuing in the Tech Industry for four decades, I wrote my view on this topic a week ago in three pages which can be read or downloaded as PDF from the following URL. https://lnkd.in/p/eyhTxmbs Cheers."

- Senthil Nathan

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

William Perry | Sep 14, 2026

- William Perry

Free Breakfast

D.J. | Sep 9, 2026

- Martin McCue

I will still take the dividends

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"I must admit I’m more interested in the names of the two stocks then in your unique analysis. You make it seem all so mysterious. Are their names some sort of secret?"

- Michael Flack

Locking it in

greg_j_tomamichel | Sep 5, 2026

- Martin McCue

A Wedding Too Far

Mark Crothers | Sep 7, 2026

- Martin McCue

Being terminated…

gnussen623 | Sep 12, 2026

"That’s awesome Julie!"

- gnussen623

The Silent Committee

John Goodell | Sep 14, 2026

- Rick Connor

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

Total portfolio approach?

baldscreen | Sep 14, 2026

"Your second paragraph says it all. The best plan for an individual is the one which is sensible and which he or she can stick with for the long term."

- Jack Hannam

Manifesto

Sep 16, 2026

NO. 27: RISK and potential return are inextricably linked. If an investment holds out the prospect of high returns, we should presume it’s highly risky—even if we can’t figure out what the risk is.

act

Sep 16, 2026

TAP HOME EQUITY to trim other debts. If you have high-interest auto loans or credit card debt, you might set up a home equity line of credit and then use it to pay off these higher-cost debts. That’ll reduce the interest you pay. You won’t, however, save on taxes. Thanks to 2017's tax law, such home-equity borrowing is no longer tax-deductible.

Truths

Sep 15, 2026

NO. 118: OWNING both U.S. and foreign stocks will smooth out a portfolio’s long-run performance, as those two sectors take turns posting strong results. But when shares turn lower, global stock markets become highly correlated—and salvaging your portfolio’s short-run results will hinge on owning other asset classes, notably high-quality bonds.

think

Sep 14, 2026

BE AN OWNER. Home buyers typically fare better than renters, provided they stay put for at least five years. Becoming a part owner of corporations, by investing in stocks for the long haul, should be more lucrative than lending money by buying bonds. Owning a car is typically cheaper than leasing, provided you keep the vehicle for more than three years.

Money Guide

Manifesto

Sep 16, 2026

Spotlight: Insurance

Où Est l’Hôpital?

Kathy Wilhelm | Oct 5, 2023

I’D JUST ARRIVED IN the charming, car-free village of Murren in the Swiss Alps, and was trying to find my B&B on the helpful signpost near the station. Stepping back for a better view, I tripped over the curb, with my backpack pulling me further off-balance. I went down with my left wrist under my hip.

Two wonderful British couples rushed to my assistance. One pair took my backpack to my B&B and the other escorted me back down the mountain to a doctor’s office.

Protecting Poppy

Kyle McIntosh | Sep 9, 2021

OUR DOG LIKES SOCKS. A few months after Poppy joined our family, she consumed her first sock. Since then, she’s eaten two more. After the first sock was removed, our veterinarian offered some valuable advice: Get pet insurance because Poppy is likely to do this again. Within a few days, we purchased a policy from Healthy Paws for $38 a month. The policy has proven valuable: We’ve had four other unplanned trips to the vet over the past 21 months.

Insurance to cover losses from hacking?

eludom | Nov 7, 2024

I view it a matter of when, not if, large companies will be hacked. A list of breaches from this year alone shows hacks at Truist, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America. I don’t think the likes of Vanguard, Fidelty or Swchab are immune. And while I practice reasonable infosec hygene (2FA wherever possible, etc) I KNOW I’m not immune: the computers, smartphones, etc that I use to manage my accounts can be hacked.
That said,

Rental Car Runaround

Michael Flack | Mar 15, 2021

IF YOU’VE EVER RENTED a car, you’ll inevitability have heard the collision damage waiver (CDW) sales pitch. It sounds something like this: “I assume you want us to protect you bumper to bumper on the car, right?”
If you say, “yes, please,” then—for anywhere between $10 and $30 a day—the rental car will be covered for losses due to theft or damage, except for damage to certain portions of the car. Hint: Read the fine print.

Insuring Infirmity

Matt C. White | Jun 20, 2022

LONG-TERM-CARE insurance and disability insurance can both be part of a comprehensive financial plan. But is it a good idea to have both coverages at the same time, or could one substitute for the other? After all, both policies are designed to help those who are, in some way, infirm.
To answer this question, let’s start with another one: What’s the purpose of insurance? The best use of any type of insurance is to guard against financial disaster.

Their Loss, Your Gain

Adam M. Grossman | Jun 27, 2021

LONG-TERM-CARE insurance policies are, in my opinion, both a blessing and a curse. They’re a blessing because they can help cover critical and costly care when a family might have no other financial options.
But they can also feel like a curse. That’s because of what many owners of traditional long-term-care (LTC) insurance refer to as “the letter.” This is the renewal letter that policyholders receive each year. These letters provide a menu of renewal options,

Ten Reasons to Claim

John Yeigh | Sep 13, 2022

IN MY FIRST ARTICLE for HumbleDollar nearly four years ago, I said I’d claim Social Security benefits at my full retirement age of 66 and two months. By claiming mid-way between 62 and 70, I intended to hedge my bets, because I couldn’t know such relevant variables as my lifespan or future tax rates, inflation rates and investment returns. And I did indeed claim Social Security recently, though—full disclosure—it was nine months after my full retirement age. Here are the 10 factors that influenced my decision: I may have challenged genes. Not a single family member on my mother’s side has made it to age 80. I hope my daily exercise, moderate weight, lack of smoking and more balanced diet may help offset my family’s clear lack of longevity. The added Social Security income means we won’t need to take taxable IRA distributions or realize capital gains from selling investments over the next five years. By claiming earlier than age 70, my Social Security payment is somewhat reduced. This will marginally help our tax situation beginning at age 72. That’s when required minimum distributions are scheduled to kick in—and when our tax rate is likely to rise. Today’s low federal income tax rates are slated to sunset at year-end 2025, so the tax on my Social Security payments should be somewhat lower for the next three-plus years. We live in one of the 37 states that doesn’t tax Social Security income, so I won’t incur added state taxes from claiming earlier. To solve the future Social Security funding shortfall, many of the suggested fixes include reducing benefits for those with moderate to higher incomes. A recent bipartisan poll indicates that more than 80% of Americans support some sort of benefit reduction for the financially well-off. If that happens, claiming earlier may…

My Uncle’s Advice

John Yeigh | Mar 9, 2022

I LEARNED A LOT about finance and life from my uncle. He was an early investment advisor and published a book on wealth management. Even though he was not a registered investment advisor or a Certified Financial Planner, our family proudly extolled his ideas when I was growing up. My family first introduced me to my uncle’s doctrines when I was a child of five or six. I had been given a small piggybank to store my life’s savings. We soon added a couple of mason jars because I had begun collecting wheat pennies with my small allowance. Production of wheat pennies had ended three years earlier, in 1958, which led me to think they would become collectibles. I even favored older pennies since they might provide greater long-term value. Little did I know that as many as a billion pennies had been minted each year. My Depression-era parents were quite supportive of my slowly filling penny jars. Along this savings journey, they also introduced my uncle’s advice through both everyday practice and some preaching. I vividly remember wanting a Yogi Bear gun, hat, holster and badge set, which was on display at our local five-and-dime. Every time we left the store, I begged my parents to buy it. They initially said a simple “no,” and I let it pass. In those days, my family couldn’t afford much of anything on a whim. One day, my parents relented and agreed that I would be allowed to buy the set, but said I would have to pay the 99 cents from my coin jars. The 99 cents represented perhaps 20% of my life’s savings. I threw a hissy fit as only a young child can. “Not with my own money!” I screamed. I passed on the set, and we never did…

Got You Covered

John Yeigh | Jul 11, 2019

EMPLOYEES WHO accumulate significant company stock can end up with a problem, though not necessarily a bad one: concentrated stock holdings. When these employees retire, their challenge is to sell those shares in a way that maximizes their value—taking into account the share price, dividends and taxes. One strategy: Utilize covered calls. Selling a concentrated stock position can take many years because of tax considerations or restrictions on selling. For example, if appreciated shares are held in a regular taxable account, you might want to cap annual sales to limit your adjusted gross income and hence the tax rate you pay. If the shares are held in an IRA or 401(k), they can be sold without any immediate tax consequences—but, before doing so, you’d want to check whether you can make use of the net unrealized appreciation strategy. I’m no options expert. But I and several of my friends have utilized covered calls to enhance income without taking great risk. Let’s say you have 10,000 company shares that you would like to divest over a 10-year period. That means you intend to sell 1,000 shares per year. In this case, you have at least 1,000 shares on which you can comfortably sell covered calls, knowing you wouldn’t be bothered if the shares were called away. My first recommendation: Learn the basics of covered calls. When you sell a call, the buyer purchases the right to buy the stock in the future at a specified share (or “strike”) price. In return, you—the seller—receive extra income in the form of a call premium. Covered means that you, as the seller, own the shares on which you’re selling the calls and hence you’ll have no trouble delivering the stock, if the call option is exercised. Want to learn more? The Options Industry Council,…

Bogle has saved us a Trillion Dollars through Vanguard’s 50th Anniversary

John Yeigh | Apr 29, 2025

This week marks the 50th Anniversary of Vanguard, and through that time, John Bogle's company has saved investors on the order of One Trillion dollars - yes the total savings approach a huge T, not just B's!!! Vanguard serves over 50 million investors, has over $9 Trillion assets under management, and has fund expenses that average a meager $0.07%. We have about half our assets invested through Vanguard, and particularly appreciate that Mr. Bogle's fee savings have been adapted across large segments of the brokerage industry. For a great post summarizing Vanguard's Trillion Dollar savings contribution to us all, check out Nick Maggiulli's Be Minimally Extractive here: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/be-minimally-extractive/

Give Early and Often

John Yeigh | Feb 22, 2024

KEY PROVISIONS IN 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will expire in 2026 unless Congress steps in. That means folks have a two-year window to prepare. What’s at stake? Income-tax rates will increase for many taxpayers. This creates an incentive to boost income over the next few years by, say, undertaking Roth conversions to shrink traditional retirement accounts and thereby lowering future required minimum distributions. The sunsetting of key TCJA provisions would also cut the threshold for federal estate taxes in half, from an estimated $14 million per individual in 2025 to $7.1 million in 2026. The limit for married couples is double these amounts, though—to capture a deceased spouse’s estate-tax exclusion—the surviving spouse must typically file an estate tax return within nine months of the first spouse’s death. Got wealth that’s above the projected 2026 threshold of $7.1 million for individuals and $14.2 million for married couples? You should almost certainly consult an estate attorney. Two common strategies are to use trusts or lifetime gifting to capture today’s high exemptions before 2026. The IRS has confirmed that there will be no “claw-back” if you take advantage of today’s high threshold. The lower 2026 estate exemptions of $7.1 million or $14.2 million—assuming today’s higher limits are allowed to sunset—would continue to cover 99.8% of us. Still, retirees with a few million dollars of financial assets might want to review their estate plan, especially if they’re married or if they have significant assets in traditional retirement accounts, where all withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income. Why? Married couples can face tax and income penalties after the first spouse dies—what’s commonly referred to as the “widow’s penalty.” The surviving spouse is potentially subject to the quadruple whammy of a reduced standard deduction, filing as a single taxpayer rather than married filing…

Hole Truth

John Yeigh | Feb 25, 2025

SOON AFTER GRADUATING college and starting work, I visited a dentist I found in the Yellow Pages for a long overdue teeth cleaning and exam. Although I had never had a cavity, the dentist informed me that I had multiple cavities that urgently needed to be filled. Naïve me allowed this dentist to fill the two supposed cavities of most concern. Somewhat traumatized, I avoided dentists for a time. Finally, I queried several older coworkers, who recommended another dentist. Over the next 15 years, this dentist never filled a single cavity, including those that Dr. Yellow Pages said needed filling. When I transferred to a job in a new location, wiser me asked coworkers to suggest a dentist. The recommended dentist filled just two cavities over the next three decades. In 2022, my wife and I moved to a new state, and I again needed to find a new dentist. We asked several contacts, but their recommended dentists weren’t accepting new patients. No worries, we thought. Finding a reputable dentist should be easy, thanks to Yelp and Google reviews. Moreover, our insurance network covered just a few dentists in our rural area, making the research quick. My wife visited the new dentist first, and her teeth received a clean bill of health. On my subsequent visit, the dentist advised that my teeth had three cavities that needed filling. I hadn’t had a new cavity in decades, and none was found at a check-up six months earlier. I also had no tooth discomfort or sensitivity. I asked for more details about the alleged cavities, and the dentist responded that my insurance would cover nearly all the costs. I again queried about the specific teeth and cavity concerns. The dentist summarized that I had three cavities that needed prompt attention, but didn’t…

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

Free Breakfast

I will still take the dividends

Locking it in

A Wedding Too Far

Being terminated…

The Silent Committee

Widow’s IRA Choice

Total portfolio approach?

Growing Up In A Big House

Financial Choices

The Ultimate Tail Risk

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

Free Breakfast

I will still take the dividends

Locking it in

A Wedding Too Far

Being terminated…

The Silent Committee

Widow’s IRA Choice

Total portfolio approach?

Free Newsletter

Get Educated

Manifesto

act

Truths

think

Money Guide

Manifesto

Spotlight: Insurance

Où Est l’Hôpital?

Protecting Poppy

Insurance to cover losses from hacking?

Rental Car Runaround

Insuring Infirmity

Their Loss, Your Gain

Spotlight: Yeigh

Ten Reasons to Claim

My Uncle’s Advice

Got You Covered

Bogle has saved us a Trillion Dollars through Vanguard’s 50th Anniversary

Give Early and Often

Hole Truth