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2025 and Medicare Rx

R Quinn  |  Jan 1, 2025

"And the $2K cap is only on certain drugs!"
- Dave Melick
Read more »

Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) are a Generational Bargain Right Now

Howard Schwartz  |  Jul 27, 2026

"Thank you,Bill, for the link. I will check it out. I don’t know anything about TIPS, but I trust your recommendations b/c you are always trying to help those of us who don’t know as much. I will also see what Jonathan had to write about them in the Guide. Chris"
- baldscreen
Read more »

What I Retired To

Andrew Clements  |  Jul 29, 2026

"Dana, thanks for sharing this. It’s a great reminder that retirement can still stretch us in unexpected ways. Stepping outside our comfort zone can be a little daunting, but it often leads to some of the most rewarding experiences. It sounds like you found a role that was both meaningful and enjoyable, and I hope you get to reprise that offstage scream next summer!"
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Today in Financial History

Harold Tynes  |  Jul 28, 2026

"Notice that I said I may hire an advisor someday if or when needed? This assumes that I will recognize that time is approaching and have time to interview and hire someone. Life often does not work that way. And you answered my unasked question, that is "why pay someone now to do what I may need someday, but just not yet?" By working with your advisor now, you can reasonably expect that your advisor will continue to follow your preferred strategy in the future, with or without your oversight. Smart move."
- Jack Hannam
Read more »

Taking a Loss?

Mark Crothers  |  Jul 28, 2026

"You are right. The only thing that matters is the price today and how this fits in your AA. What you paid for it is irrelevant to your decision."
- Jerry Pinkard
Read more »

Widow Tax

ArticleJohn Urban  |  Jul 25, 2026

THE WIDOW TAX is sold to the wrong households. It gets pitched to affluent couples as the reason to convert to a Roth or buy life insurance. The pitch says that when one spouse dies, the survivor files single, lands in a higher bracket, and gets clobbered. I ran the numbers for three couples at three incomes, and at the comfortable end the widow tax often costs nothing, or even less than nothing. The real cost lands lower down, on households nobody is selling anything to. What follows uses 2026 federal figures to show what the widow tax actually does in dollars, not in scary percentage points. The pattern runs opposite to the marketing. The higher your income, the smaller the hit, and the lower you go, the more it bites. Three Things Move When the first spouse dies, three things change, and they get bundled under one frightening label. One Social Security check stops, and a pension may shrink or end. That is lost income, and it is usually the largest of the three. It is not a tax. Spending shifts as well. The survivor pays one Medicare premium instead of two, but the mortgage still comes out of the same account. The third change is the only one the tax code causes: narrower single brackets, a smaller standard deduction and lower thresholds for the Medicare surcharge. The widow tax is that third piece alone, and the three households below measure how big it really is. The Affluent Couple Both spouses are over 65. Their income is about $360,000: $80,000 from Social Security, $210,000 from a pension and required minimum distributions, plus $30,000 in qualified dividends and $40,000 in long-term gains. They sit in the 24% bracket, and both already pay the Medicare surcharge. One spouse dies. The survivor keeps the larger Social Security check and most of the other income, landing at roughly $308,000. As a couple, they paid about $53,900 in federal income tax and a Medicare surcharge of about $9,240. As a single filer, the survivor pays about $55,000 in federal tax and a surcharge of about $6,355. The effective rate rises from 15.7% to 18.7%, which is the headline people remember. But the federal tax barely moves, up only about $1,100, because the survivor has less income to tax. The Medicare surcharge actually falls about $2,900, because two enrollees in the couple's joint tier cost more than one survivor a tier above. Net it all out, and the survivor pays about $1,800 a year less than the couple did. The rate went up, and the dollars went down. At the high end, the widow tax measured in money hands back a small refund. This is why the Roth conversion pitch aimed at comfortable couples misfires. If converting to Roth would cut the survivor's future taxable income without cutting the couple's lifestyle, the converted money was surplus. Surplus is money the survivor never needed to replace. Edward McQuarrie, a finance professor emeritus at Santa Clara University, made a version of this argument in a 2023 paper. He found the dollar hit inconsequential for affluent couples, and located any real cost lower down, where the Social Security torpedo bites. Where It Actually Bites Drop down to a couple with $180,000 of income: $60,000 from Social Security and $120,000 from a pension and required minimum distributions, all ordinary income. Both are over 65. The couple files jointly at $180,000; the survivor files single at about $150,000. As a couple, they paid about $17,148 in federal tax and no Medicare surcharge. The survivor pays about $22,737 in federal tax and a new surcharge of about $2,885. The federal tax rises about $5,600, and a surprising chunk of that comes from the collapse of the new $6,000 senior deduction, which phases out against a lower income threshold for singles. Then the survivor crosses into a Medicare surcharge tier the couple never paid. The total cost of widowhood here is roughly $8,500 a year, set against a $30,000 income loss. This is the one band where both the dollars and the rate move the wrong way. Now take a couple with $90,000 of income: $38,500 from Social Security, about the national average for two retired spouses, plus $51,500 from a pension and distributions. The survivor keeps the larger Social Security check and the full pension, landing at $73,500. As a couple, they paid about $3,433 in federal tax, at an effective rate of 3.8%. The survivor pays about $5,278, at an effective rate of 7.2%. There's no Medicare surcharge at this income, and there never will be. But the survivor's effective rate nearly doubles, because more of the Social Security benefit becomes taxable, up to the 85% ceiling, when the single thresholds replace the joint ones. The added tax is about $1,845, and the lost income is $16,500. Real money for a household least able to absorb it. It doubles the effective rate, and it hurts.  Read the three together and the widow tax points the wrong way from the marketing. At $360,000 it costs less than nothing, roughly a $1,800 annual saving. At $180,000 it costs about $8,500. At $90,000 it costs about $1,850, but the effective rate doubles. The affluent couples being sold protection don't need it. The middle couples who feel the sting are not being sold anything, and they're the ones for whom a few thousand dollars a year actually constrains a life. The tax code has three different mechanisms, and which one finds you depends almost entirely on your income. At the top, the Medicare surcharge does the work, and it falls. In the middle, the surcharge appears from zero. At the bottom, the Social Security torpedo raises the taxability of the benefit from 75% to 85%. The mechanism changes with the income, and so does the household's ability to absorb the hit. Plan Ahead This is where the widow tax conversation usually stops, and where I think it should start. The moves most likely to leave a survivor better off are the ones you make years before, and they help whether or not the widow tax ever bites. Converting traditional IRA money to Roth over several years before retirement smooths your taxable income. It lowers the required minimum distributions that will later push a single filer into higher brackets. It can also keep a survivor under a Medicare surcharge tier the couple never worried about. Drawing accounts in a sensible order, spending down the right buckets first, reduces the future tax base that a single bracket structure will tax more steeply. Managing required distributions as they grow, rather than letting them balloon off a rising balance, limits the single bracket exposure that builds across a long widowhood. A more tax-efficient bequest helps the people who inherit what is left. None of that is widow rescue. It is good multi-year planning that happens to compound in the survivor's favor. The widow tax is one input to that planning, not the reason for it. The reason is that the year your spouse dies is the worst possible year to be making financial decisions, and the more of those decisions you have already made, the fewer you hand to someone who is grieving. You can do a rough version of this at your own kitchen table, and you should, ideally long before you need to. Estimate the survivor's income after the smaller Social Security check and any pension change, then estimate the survivor's spending from your actual budget, not a generic rule of thumb. Subtract. If reliable after-tax income still supports the life the survivor wants, with margin, the tax rate was never the thing to worry about. Then project the survivor's federal tax, the net investment income tax where it applies and the Medicare surcharge as a single filer, and compare it to the couple. Keep the tax separate from the lost income, so you can see what the tax code actually did. Sometimes, as the affluent couple shows, it does you a small favor. Only then does a planning move earn a look, and only if you can answer what it costs today, what it might save later, who benefits and what has to come true for it to work. The widow tax is real, but it isn't the catastrophe it's sold as. At higher incomes it's not a cost at all. Lower down it is a real cost, and the lower you go, the more it's worth measuring, because the households it constrains have the least margin to spare. The planning that matters most is the kind you do years ahead, smoothing income, holding down future distributions, managing the surcharge tiers and putting the estate in order. Do that, and you've done right by your survivor, for reasons that have little to do with fear and a great deal to do with care. You'll have done it in the years when you still had the time, and the clarity, to do it well. ________________________________________________________________________________ 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.
Read more »

Credit Card Debt.

Michael l Berard  |  Nov 23, 2024

"I pay off credit debt monthly, but I don’t limit myself to one card because part of your credit score is based on the percentage of credit utilization. Your utilization rate will be lower (and credit score higher) if you have multiple credit card accounts."
- corrupt
Read more »

Can we be completely safe?

Ben Rodriguez  |  Dec 17, 2025

"My BIL was a victim of ID theft… They took control of his phone, and resetting all his password's was impossible since he no longer had a phone to use as the second factor. It took months to straighten out."
- corrupt
Read more »

Degrees of Doubt: When Higher Education Misses the Mark

Mark Crothers  |  Jul 16, 2025

"The widely cast net is catching students that require remedial classes in math, English and reading. Is it any surprise that today’s students are unable to think critically?"
- corrupt
Read more »

Inflation, prices, COLAs, retirement and the last 16 years

R Quinn  |  Jul 27, 2026

"Not early, but when I claimed I was still working and collecting a pension. Otherwise it would be unlikely we could have saved it all, but that stopped several years ago. My point was if a person can delay until age 70 presumably they don’t need SS until then so collect sooner and invest it until you do need it. Of course the tradeoff is a lower SS benefit for life vs accumulated assets that may or may not provide income to offset the lower SS benefit. The gamble also depends on how long the person lives past age 70. On the other hand, the invested funds are always available to someone. I’m not selling the idea, just something I am happy with the result."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Go While You Still Can

DavidHLancaster  |  Jul 22, 2026

"Thank you, David. I finally got around to reading the article. We just got home yesterday from a wonderful long weekend in Chicago. We had wanted to return after our first trip awhile back since we had missed some things we wanted to do b/c of the weather. We had a great time. Highly recommend the architectural riverboat tour. We also visited the Art Institute this time and there is no way you can get through it all in one day. We came home refreshed and lots of good memories. It was good to not think about family stuff. Chris"
- baldscreen
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FIFA Financials

R Quinn  |  Jul 19, 2026

"Speaking as someone from a less affluent country (which virtually everywhere is relative to the US). I could personally have afforded to fly to the US and even attend matches. But the extraordinary price gouging by FIFA, local hotels, even public transport was something I would have deemed to make it exceptionally poor value . Would I have got $10,000 of value from attending a couple of matches? Highly unlikely. In any event I have a "home" Euros in 2 years which will likely be much more affordable if I really want to see top level international football."
- bbbobbins
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2025 and Medicare Rx

R Quinn  |  Jan 1, 2025

"And the $2K cap is only on certain drugs!"
- Dave Melick
Read more »

Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) are a Generational Bargain Right Now

Howard Schwartz  |  Jul 27, 2026

"Thank you,Bill, for the link. I will check it out. I don’t know anything about TIPS, but I trust your recommendations b/c you are always trying to help those of us who don’t know as much. I will also see what Jonathan had to write about them in the Guide. Chris"
- baldscreen
Read more »

What I Retired To

Andrew Clements  |  Jul 29, 2026

"Dana, thanks for sharing this. It’s a great reminder that retirement can still stretch us in unexpected ways. Stepping outside our comfort zone can be a little daunting, but it often leads to some of the most rewarding experiences. It sounds like you found a role that was both meaningful and enjoyable, and I hope you get to reprise that offstage scream next summer!"
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Today in Financial History

Harold Tynes  |  Jul 28, 2026

"Notice that I said I may hire an advisor someday if or when needed? This assumes that I will recognize that time is approaching and have time to interview and hire someone. Life often does not work that way. And you answered my unasked question, that is "why pay someone now to do what I may need someday, but just not yet?" By working with your advisor now, you can reasonably expect that your advisor will continue to follow your preferred strategy in the future, with or without your oversight. Smart move."
- Jack Hannam
Read more »

Taking a Loss?

Mark Crothers  |  Jul 28, 2026

"You are right. The only thing that matters is the price today and how this fits in your AA. What you paid for it is irrelevant to your decision."
- Jerry Pinkard
Read more »

Widow Tax

ArticleJohn Urban  |  Jul 25, 2026

THE WIDOW TAX is sold to the wrong households. It gets pitched to affluent couples as the reason to convert to a Roth or buy life insurance. The pitch says that when one spouse dies, the survivor files single, lands in a higher bracket, and gets clobbered. I ran the numbers for three couples at three incomes, and at the comfortable end the widow tax often costs nothing, or even less than nothing. The real cost lands lower down, on households nobody is selling anything to. What follows uses 2026 federal figures to show what the widow tax actually does in dollars, not in scary percentage points. The pattern runs opposite to the marketing. The higher your income, the smaller the hit, and the lower you go, the more it bites. Three Things Move When the first spouse dies, three things change, and they get bundled under one frightening label. One Social Security check stops, and a pension may shrink or end. That is lost income, and it is usually the largest of the three. It is not a tax. Spending shifts as well. The survivor pays one Medicare premium instead of two, but the mortgage still comes out of the same account. The third change is the only one the tax code causes: narrower single brackets, a smaller standard deduction and lower thresholds for the Medicare surcharge. The widow tax is that third piece alone, and the three households below measure how big it really is. The Affluent Couple Both spouses are over 65. Their income is about $360,000: $80,000 from Social Security, $210,000 from a pension and required minimum distributions, plus $30,000 in qualified dividends and $40,000 in long-term gains. They sit in the 24% bracket, and both already pay the Medicare surcharge. One spouse dies. The survivor keeps the larger Social Security check and most of the other income, landing at roughly $308,000. As a couple, they paid about $53,900 in federal income tax and a Medicare surcharge of about $9,240. As a single filer, the survivor pays about $55,000 in federal tax and a surcharge of about $6,355. The effective rate rises from 15.7% to 18.7%, which is the headline people remember. But the federal tax barely moves, up only about $1,100, because the survivor has less income to tax. The Medicare surcharge actually falls about $2,900, because two enrollees in the couple's joint tier cost more than one survivor a tier above. Net it all out, and the survivor pays about $1,800 a year less than the couple did. The rate went up, and the dollars went down. At the high end, the widow tax measured in money hands back a small refund. This is why the Roth conversion pitch aimed at comfortable couples misfires. If converting to Roth would cut the survivor's future taxable income without cutting the couple's lifestyle, the converted money was surplus. Surplus is money the survivor never needed to replace. Edward McQuarrie, a finance professor emeritus at Santa Clara University, made a version of this argument in a 2023 paper. He found the dollar hit inconsequential for affluent couples, and located any real cost lower down, where the Social Security torpedo bites. Where It Actually Bites Drop down to a couple with $180,000 of income: $60,000 from Social Security and $120,000 from a pension and required minimum distributions, all ordinary income. Both are over 65. The couple files jointly at $180,000; the survivor files single at about $150,000. As a couple, they paid about $17,148 in federal tax and no Medicare surcharge. The survivor pays about $22,737 in federal tax and a new surcharge of about $2,885. The federal tax rises about $5,600, and a surprising chunk of that comes from the collapse of the new $6,000 senior deduction, which phases out against a lower income threshold for singles. Then the survivor crosses into a Medicare surcharge tier the couple never paid. The total cost of widowhood here is roughly $8,500 a year, set against a $30,000 income loss. This is the one band where both the dollars and the rate move the wrong way. Now take a couple with $90,000 of income: $38,500 from Social Security, about the national average for two retired spouses, plus $51,500 from a pension and distributions. The survivor keeps the larger Social Security check and the full pension, landing at $73,500. As a couple, they paid about $3,433 in federal tax, at an effective rate of 3.8%. The survivor pays about $5,278, at an effective rate of 7.2%. There's no Medicare surcharge at this income, and there never will be. But the survivor's effective rate nearly doubles, because more of the Social Security benefit becomes taxable, up to the 85% ceiling, when the single thresholds replace the joint ones. The added tax is about $1,845, and the lost income is $16,500. Real money for a household least able to absorb it. It doubles the effective rate, and it hurts.  Read the three together and the widow tax points the wrong way from the marketing. At $360,000 it costs less than nothing, roughly a $1,800 annual saving. At $180,000 it costs about $8,500. At $90,000 it costs about $1,850, but the effective rate doubles. The affluent couples being sold protection don't need it. The middle couples who feel the sting are not being sold anything, and they're the ones for whom a few thousand dollars a year actually constrains a life. The tax code has three different mechanisms, and which one finds you depends almost entirely on your income. At the top, the Medicare surcharge does the work, and it falls. In the middle, the surcharge appears from zero. At the bottom, the Social Security torpedo raises the taxability of the benefit from 75% to 85%. The mechanism changes with the income, and so does the household's ability to absorb the hit. Plan Ahead This is where the widow tax conversation usually stops, and where I think it should start. The moves most likely to leave a survivor better off are the ones you make years before, and they help whether or not the widow tax ever bites. Converting traditional IRA money to Roth over several years before retirement smooths your taxable income. It lowers the required minimum distributions that will later push a single filer into higher brackets. It can also keep a survivor under a Medicare surcharge tier the couple never worried about. Drawing accounts in a sensible order, spending down the right buckets first, reduces the future tax base that a single bracket structure will tax more steeply. Managing required distributions as they grow, rather than letting them balloon off a rising balance, limits the single bracket exposure that builds across a long widowhood. A more tax-efficient bequest helps the people who inherit what is left. None of that is widow rescue. It is good multi-year planning that happens to compound in the survivor's favor. The widow tax is one input to that planning, not the reason for it. The reason is that the year your spouse dies is the worst possible year to be making financial decisions, and the more of those decisions you have already made, the fewer you hand to someone who is grieving. You can do a rough version of this at your own kitchen table, and you should, ideally long before you need to. Estimate the survivor's income after the smaller Social Security check and any pension change, then estimate the survivor's spending from your actual budget, not a generic rule of thumb. Subtract. If reliable after-tax income still supports the life the survivor wants, with margin, the tax rate was never the thing to worry about. Then project the survivor's federal tax, the net investment income tax where it applies and the Medicare surcharge as a single filer, and compare it to the couple. Keep the tax separate from the lost income, so you can see what the tax code actually did. Sometimes, as the affluent couple shows, it does you a small favor. Only then does a planning move earn a look, and only if you can answer what it costs today, what it might save later, who benefits and what has to come true for it to work. The widow tax is real, but it isn't the catastrophe it's sold as. At higher incomes it's not a cost at all. Lower down it is a real cost, and the lower you go, the more it's worth measuring, because the households it constrains have the least margin to spare. The planning that matters most is the kind you do years ahead, smoothing income, holding down future distributions, managing the surcharge tiers and putting the estate in order. Do that, and you've done right by your survivor, for reasons that have little to do with fear and a great deal to do with care. You'll have done it in the years when you still had the time, and the clarity, to do it well. ________________________________________________________________________________ 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.
Read more »

Credit Card Debt.

Michael l Berard  |  Nov 23, 2024

"I pay off credit debt monthly, but I don’t limit myself to one card because part of your credit score is based on the percentage of credit utilization. Your utilization rate will be lower (and credit score higher) if you have multiple credit card accounts."
- corrupt
Read more »

Can we be completely safe?

Ben Rodriguez  |  Dec 17, 2025

"My BIL was a victim of ID theft… They took control of his phone, and resetting all his password's was impossible since he no longer had a phone to use as the second factor. It took months to straighten out."
- corrupt
Read more »

Degrees of Doubt: When Higher Education Misses the Mark

Mark Crothers  |  Jul 16, 2025

"The widely cast net is catching students that require remedial classes in math, English and reading. Is it any surprise that today’s students are unable to think critically?"
- corrupt
Read more »

Free Newsletter

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Manifesto

Jul 29, 2026

NO. 13: FACED with an unknown future, we should diversify our investments, buy insurance, keep some cash—and accept that, in retrospect, these precautions will often seem unnecessary.

act

Jul 29, 2026

CALCULATE YOUR monthly nonmortgage debt payments as a percentage of your pretax monthly income. We’re talking here about car payments, student loans and minimum credit card payments. Aim to keep these payments to less than 10% of monthly income, though that can be a tough target to hit if you’re a new college graduate with student loans.

Truths

Jul 28, 2026

NO. 44: GOOD companies can be bad stocks. Why? Investors bid up the share prices of widely admired, fast-growing companies—but the stocks often falter when the companies fall short of investors' lofty expectations. Meanwhile, investors shun troubled, slower-growing companies, so even so-so corporate performance can result in strong market returns.

humans

Jul 27, 2026

NO. 19: WE GET great pleasure from anticipation. The best part of any event—vacation, buying a car, the family reunion—is often the period beforehand. As we look forward to such events, we can daydream about how much fun we’ll have. Want to get the most out of anticipation? Ponder purchases far in advance—and consider all manner of possibilities.

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Manifesto

Jul 29, 2026

NO. 13: FACED with an unknown future, we should diversify our investments, buy insurance, keep some cash—and accept that, in retrospect, these precautions will often seem unnecessary.

Spotlight: Health

Paradox of choice. What to do, what to do?

R Quinn   |  Nov 5, 2024

I used to be a big fan of choice when it came to employee benefit plans including life insurance, health insurance and, of courses 401k investment options. 
When working I crafted a plan with lots of choices. Employees said they wanted choice, it was all the rage at the time. Our unions were not so thrilled, but went along. 
The unions were right and I was wrong. 
People may say they want choice, but when faced with it for very important decisions,

Read more »

Staying Alive

Jonathan Clements   |  Dec 20, 2024

I’m writing this from the infusion center, with my every-three-week cocktail of chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs dripping into my right arm. And that’s good news.
It’s been a rough two-and-a-half months. In early October, an abdomen scan uncovered a pulmonary embolism, which landed me in hospital for two days and means I’m now on blood thinners. In early November, an MRI uncovered two new cancerous lesions on my brain, while another MRI later in the month turned up four lesions on my spine.

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Building Connections

Marjorie Kondrack   |  Apr 22, 2025

I’m  not so good in the genre of Rapper or hip hop singers, but I don’t let that deter me when my mind is in tune with a good word puzzle.  Yes, I’m hooked on the NYT word game Connections.
Chances are you played or, at least heard of the New York Times “cult”puzzles.  Over the past few years, Wordle became a staple  as part of millions of peoples daily routine, and I highly recommend the addictive Connections as a new challenge for word puzzle aficionados and word mavens.

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2025 and Medicare Rx

R Quinn   |  Jan 1, 2025

Remember, starting in 2025 the annual out of pocket cost for prescription drugs is capped at $2,000. Roughly 10 percent 0f those of us on Medicare will benefit … luckily.
But it’s good to know there is a limit.
My suggestion, build that $2,000 into your planning, just in case. Plan to set up your own Rx fund or if already retired start one now. I just like funds designated for a single purpose.

Read more »

Seeking Input on Medicare Supplement Carriers

Andrew Forsythe   |  Jul 27, 2025

After just being hit with an almost 30% premium increase from Mutual of Omaha (MOO), I’m shopping around for a new Medicare Supplement carrier.
I actually like MOO for their generally good customer service, user friendly website, and fast claims processing. Twice in past years, I’ve been able to stay with MOO but avoid a price hike by switching to one of their sister companies, which I wrote about here.
It seems that option is no longer available,

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The Humbling Side of Aging

Dennis Friedman   |  May 30, 2026

WHEN I STARTED writing for HumbleDollar, Jonathan gave me some simple but important advice: “Don’t brag about your financial situation. You want readers to like you.” Perhaps that’s one of the reasons he named his financial site HumbleDollar.
I try to follow this advice not only regarding money, but in other aspects of my life. I know how fleeting things can be—especially when it comes to health. Life can change on a dime. It can humble you.

Read more »

Spotlight: Cutler

First Quarter 2025

Ken Cutler   |  Apr 7, 2025

In January, I outlined a host of money moves I’d made in the first 16 months after retiring from full-time work. Financially, things did not slow down in the first three months of 2025. Here are some of my first quarter financial actions and experiences: Distributed gifts to charity. We cluster charitable contributions so that we can itemize on our Federal tax return every other year. During the year that we take the standard deduction, I “write off” the funds earmarked for charity in my financial spreadsheets. When January of the itemizing year arrives, I distribute the previous year’s accrued charity funds. 2025 is an itemizing year, so I wrote some relatively large checks in January. Redeemed more U.S. Savings Bonds. I’ve become increasingly uneasy about the complexities that may arise in the future with respect to cashing in paper savings bonds. Marjorie Kondrack’s excellent post about savings bonds and the associated comments kept that concern in my thoughts. I ended up making three trips to the bank this year and have now completed a three-year process of cashing in all my savings bonds with a face value of $1000 or more. I hesitated to sell the last three I Bonds as they had a generous fixed rate of 3%. But as I imagined the frustration if I—or worse, my heirs—were forced to deal directly with the Treasury Department, I felt it was best to just redeem them now, while my bank still offers the service. I’d held those bonds longer than expected anyway, as the original intent was to use them for my kids’ college tuition. Purchased Certificates of Deposit. It’s so convenient to open a new CD at my credit union. I can make a phone call and within 10 minutes the new account is active. Of course, there…
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Persistence of Memory

Ken Cutler   |  Sep 15, 2024

In May of 1974, I took a trip to Israel, Greece and London with my parents and one of my sisters. I was in sixth grade at the time. Prior to our departure, I gave my parents a hard time about making me go on a trip during the school year. I was unhappy about missing two weeks of school and having to make up all that homework. I’d collected my assignments for the upcoming two weeks from all my teachers with the exception of my social studies teacher, Mr. Reiss. At the end of my last day of school before the trip, I stood in line to see him at his desk. As his conference with the student in front of me dragged on and on, I got concerned that I would miss my bus. I eventually left just in time to catch the bus for the 45-minute ride home. When I returned to school two weeks later, some kids on the bus told me that Mr. Reiss had gone ballistic when he realized I hadn’t picked up my assignments. He angrily told the class he was going to make me copy the entire textbook by hand. When I did meet with him, my consequences were only slightly less severe. He told me that I had to memorize the textbook glossary, which consisted of 104 items. I would then stand up before the class and the students could ask me to define any word they selected from the glossary. My grade would be the percentage I got correct. It was clear to me that his goal was to embarrass me in front of my classmates. As you might imagine, public humiliation was a huge fear for that somewhat timid middle-school boy. Armed with a high level of motivation and…
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Retirement Reconnections

Ken Cutler   |  Jun 22, 2024

Note: The following is an abridged version of an article I wrote months ago but never submitted to Jonathan. It's from my 'Shelved Articles' archive.  RETIREMENT CAN BE a time for reconnecting with old friends. I’ve always enjoyed keeping up with pals from my early years. Of course, many friendships have fallen by the wayside as time passed, but I value the long-term connections I’ve been able to maintain. I had a habit of saving nearly every personal letter I received—back in the days when handwritten missives were a thing. I have hundreds of letters I threw in a box 30 to 40 years ago, telling myself that they would be fun to reread when I got old. I guess that time is now. I’ve enjoyed making copies of some of the letters and sending them to the authors, allowing them a glimpse of their younger selves. It’s a small way of keeping old connections alive. During my childhood in New Jersey, I had a best friend named Scott who lived in the house behind ours. We rode bikes, played with Matchbox cars, celebrated birthdays and got into trouble together. He had two sisters—one younger, one older—and two older brothers. His two brothers and the older of the two sisters were friendly with my three sisters, who were all considerably older than me. When I was seven, he and his family moved away to Florida. I can still picture the family’s wood-paneled station wagon backing out of their driveway while I sadly waved to my friend. We exchanged a letter or two, then lost touch. Three years after Scott had moved, my parents and I took a vacation to Florida. As my dad and I exited our hotel on the way to the beach, I spied a kid who looked…
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Long Time Leaving

Ken Cutler   |  Oct 11, 2023

AFTER MY FIRST TWO years of studying electrical engineering at Virginia Tech, I got an internship at Frito-Lay working at its research headquarters in Irving, Texas, far from my New Jersey home. I was paid handsomely, treated well, had access to state-of-the-art computer equipment—and was miserable. Some of that stemmed from spending the summer away from friends and family. But I was also having a career crisis even before my career began. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work as an engineer for the next 40 years. I felt the stellar internship I’d scored was the best situation I could hope for in engineering, yet here I was profoundly unhappy. My grades were pretty good but I knew the dreaded junior year in engineering was almost upon me and my grade point average (GPA) was sure to suffer. I got the idea that I should explore becoming a doctor while my grades were still high enough for medical school admission. I ended up cutting my three-month internship short by a month. A small liberal arts college with a high medical school acceptance rate told me over the phone that it would take me. My parents were a little stunned by this radical change, which seemed to come out of nowhere. My pre-medical studies didn’t work out. Although I had a 4.0 GPA in my first semester at the new college, I had to drop organic chemistry because the workload proved too much for me. By the end of the semester, I was barely functional due to stress and anxiety, and I knew a career in medicine wasn’t for me. My second semester at the school was a disaster. I dropped all but three classes and was no longer even classified as a fulltime student. I was a college junior without…
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Billionaire Next Door

Ken Cutler   |  Apr 2, 2024

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER was the richest man in the U.S. in 1918, which happens to be the year my father was born. His $1.2 billion net worth at that time would have the buying power today of more than $24 billion. Rockefeller, with his massive wealth, could purchase things most of us can only dream about, such as sprawling estates and gigantic yachts. Still, in many ways, today’s millionaire next door has more purchasing power than this billionaire of yesteryear. Consider the things that Rockefeller—despite all his riches—couldn’t buy at any price in 1918: Internet access. Personal computers didn’t exist in 1918, let alone the internet. Today, we regular folks have access to an almost infinite array of knowledge, news and entertainment. Trillions of dollars of technological development since Rockefeller’s time have made this marvel possible. Modern vehicles. Rockefeller had a collection of automobiles, but nothing he owned could come close to the performance, comfort and reliability of today’s vehicles. His cars weren’t equipped with power steering, anti-lock brakes or even air-conditioning—which debuted in 1940. Vehicles in 1918 were subject to frequent breakdowns, causing inconvenience even for rich people. Cutting-edge health care. Medical science has advanced exponentially since 1918. Despite having what’s been termed a nervous breakdown in his early 50s, Rockefeller generally seemed to enjoy good health. Still, had he suffered from any serious health issues, the medical help available to him would have been far less advanced than what most Americans have access to today. If his appendix had ruptured, like mine did early in life, he likely would have died. Entertainment options. The motion picture industry was in its infancy in 1918. Rockefeller died in 1937. Blockbusters like The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind were released a couple of years after his death. Today,…
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Not Long Remembered

Ken Cutler   |  Nov 27, 2023

AFTER MY COLLEGE freshman year in engineering, I was hired for a part-time summer job by a civil engineering firm in my home town. The office was in an upscale building where a lot of respectable businesses were headquartered. The company had an impressive name. But after starting, I discovered it was just a one-man show. Mr. Jones was the owner. I became his sole employee. Jones was probably in his mid-70s. He’d headed up his own company for decades. Piles of brochures from his glory days were scattered about the office. They featured a photo of a smiling younger Jones, who certainly looked confident and important. The company itself appeared to be something of a success, at least based on the brochure, which included pictures of office buildings, vehicles and even a small fleet of airplanes. Jones had retired a few years previously. Retirement turned out not to be for him. On numerous occasions, I heard him on the phone, telling the story of his revived company: “I closed down my company and we moved to a retirement community. We’d play golf every day and then sit around the clubhouse having drinks every evening. About every few months, one of the guys would fall over and die. After a couple of years of this, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I told my wife I had to get out. We moved and I’m starting my company back up.” Jones was a driven man. He had an air of constant impatience. One day, the two of us drove to Atlantic City to do a land survey. During the trip down, he asked me about my engineering studies. When I told him I planned to study electrical engineering, his reaction seemed to indicate he felt any discipline but his own—civil engineering—was a…
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