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Starting Up – Part 2

Andrew Clements | May 14, 2026

"Great story of resilience, planning, and adaptation. Congrats!"

- Jeff Bond

"Nice post, D.J. I describe my first day on the job here. It didn't go well, and I can't say I came away from it with immediate lessons that I could apply to future work. I did eventually learn that the skills you number are important, however, and good advice anyone."

- Edmund Marsh

HumbleDollar’s HumbleDrivers

Dan Smith | May 13, 2026

"My car is so quiet, not only can’t you feel the stop/start, you can’t be sure the engine is running if you don’t look at tachometer."

- R Quinn

The Mirrored Funnel

Mark Crothers | May 10, 2026

"Your story mirrors mine to a certain extent especially feeling liberated from the daily grind. Of course, I have my mother to take care of but that's a burden of love."

- Andrew Clements

Best method for buying home for permanently disabled daughter (SSI and ABLE account)

Dianne Baumert-Moyik | May 13, 2026

"Have you considered posting your question to the bogleheads.org forum. Vastly wider audience and many have experience in this area. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php"

- B Carr

My Recent Fill-up

Michael01670723 | May 13, 2026

"When I was a kid I lived in France. The gas price on the USArmy military base was 5 cents / gallon."

- B Carr

Retiring before age 65? COBRA vs ACA plan- important decision

R Quinn | May 13, 2026

"The quasi-state employer I worked for provides a state-negotiated health insurance. The state itself administers the plan, COBRA and also a retiree Advantage plan."

- Jo Bo

Direct Indexing Anyone?

ostrichtacossaturn7593 | May 10, 2026

"Thank you for clarifying this, Howard."

- ostrichtacossaturn7593

Benefits Young Adults Should Look at Before Taking a Job

Jeff Peck | May 10, 2026

"Where I worked, if we wanted to create a new position, we had to budget the salary of the person, of course, and also had to add 35% of the position's salary for benefits. Very, very few people who got hired, I imagine, had any idea of the value/cost the organization placed on those benefits. It took a while for me, at least, to fully understand how valuable they were."

- John Katz

Slow on the Draw

ArticleEdmund Marsh | May 9, 2026

RETIREMENT IS LIFE’S most expensive purchase. During our working years, we deprive our present selves of immediate pleasure by refusing to spend money for nicer cars, a bigger house or a vacation to boast about. Instead, we squirrel away those saved dollars with an eye toward keeping the future us fed, clothed and living indoors. At age 64, after decades of choosing to save and invest a large chunk of each paycheck, rather than spend it, I’ve bought a choice: Fully retire to fully embrace life after work, or carry on in a career that still adds purpose to my life. I’ve chosen to stay, but I’ve whittled down my work hours too far to handle all of my family’s spending needs. Thus, I’m faced with reaching into savings for the first time. More about that later. But first, where is our money, and why? Taking advantage. The bulk of our retirement savings is invested in tax-advantaged accounts. Until we reached our mid-30s, neither my wife nor I had invested a dime in the stock market. Since that time, however, we’ve stuffed dollars from every paycheck into our workplace savings accounts. Initially, these contributions went into traditional accounts, but we switched to the Roth option when it became available. We also topped-off Roth IRAs every year, and stashed a smaller amount in a taxable brokerage account. A little less than half of our total investments reside in future-tax-free Roth accounts. Most of the balance is tax-deferred, traditional money, which is subject to ordinary income tax rates the year it’s withdrawn. The distinction between how these two types of accounts are taxed influences where we position assets between those accounts. Accordingly, we’ve looked at two scenarios that may raise our future tax rates: One begins in a little more than a decade, when required minimum distributions (RMDs) from my traditional retirement accounts begin at age 75, followed by my wife’s RMDs a few years later, plus my Social Security, begun at age 70. The other is triggered when the first of us dies and the surviving spouse moves into the single filer tax bracket. Because we still owe ordinary income tax on the savings in our traditional accounts, we’re making Roth conversions and taking the tax hit now, at a known rate. We’re also seeking to curb the growth of our traditional accounts by keeping all our bonds there. By contrast, our Roth accounts, on which we should never owe future tax, are invested 100% in the stocks we expect to grow over time. Picking winners. In the beginning, my wife and I entertained thoughts of alternatives to stocks, such as real estate. Soon, however, we decided that maximizing market participation was our wisest wealth-building tactic. As our knowledge of finance grew, we further refined our focus by choosing broad-based, low-cost index funds over other options, for good reason: They out-perform actively-managed funds. I don’t doubt the intelligence of active fund managers. On the contrary, I suspect they carry bigger brains than me, and know they command more resources to sniff-out future winning stocks. But they swim in a tank with fish just as big, and it's tough to get a fin up on the competition. The result: Each year, index funds finish strokes ahead of their active cousins. For the same reason, we’ve shied away from individual stocks. Have we lost out? I’d argue we profited. Simple diversity. Moving into retirement, my ideal portfolio is heavily influenced by decades of working closely with older patients in my physical therapy practice. I’ve followed a number of folks as they age from their vibrant, active 60s through the years of physical deterioration. Along the way, I’ve observed the cognitive decline that affects most of us as we age. I don’t count on escaping a similar fate. Hence, rather than covering every corner of the stock market with a complicated collection of index funds, my wife and I have been shifting toward a two- or three-fund portfolio, to achieve the same result. We aim to hold shares in virtually every public company across the globe, housed in two funds, plus one bond fund. Our choice for U.S. stocks is Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (symbol: VTSAX). For foreign stocks, we like Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund (VTIAX). Tending to just two stock funds cuts complexity, especially decisions like when to rebalance and how to go about it. Aside from the biases that affect most of us, there’s that issue of our aging brains, again. Why fret about realigning our investments when just keeping track of medical appointments has become a challenge? To further simplify our lives, at a bit more expense, we could let Vanguard Group, Inc. do all the work with their Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund (VTWAX).. Picking our peril. Our nest egg is weighted a little heavily toward stocks, which means its sum will rise and fall with the market. That can be unnerving, but it’s the price we'll pay for the extra risk that gives us a shot at outpacing inflation. Without the long-term growth provided by stocks, our buying power might not keep pace with our expected long lives. That strategy is fine when the market is riding high, but where do we go for spending money when stocks are in a slump? Selling depressed stocks in a pinch to raise cash is hazardous to our wealth. For that reason, the balance of our savings is in mostly short-term government bonds and cash, enough of a cushion to cover several years of expenses until the market regains its footing. To be sure, that money is mostly idle, but it's ready when needed. When I finally clock my last-day-forever in the clinic, we might buy an income annuity to replace earned income with insured money to add to my wife’s modest Social Security check, which she expects to start collecting in a little over a year. This combination of regular monthly paychecks would provide a floor of income to keep the household going, and bolster our courage to boot, when the market hits the skids. Drawing it down. Meanwhile, we’ve yet to settle on a plan to siphon off savings to pay the bills not covered by my part-time income. At the moment, there’s little pressure to find the perfect formula. For starters, we’re not calculating the highest withdrawal rate our investments will bear to bankroll a spending spree. Also, part of our retirement preparation included holding steady to a frugal lifestyle and eliminating debt. Our low expenses give us breathing space to decide how to replenish our cash account. Why the dithering? It turns out nailing down a withdrawal plan is my toughest financial decision to date. But it’s not the math that has me stymied. Rather, it’s the emotion. Yes, I believe the research, and I’ve run analyses that assure me our money will probably outlive us. Still, thinking of pushing start makes me queasy, so we’re sliding into the task. Instead of a rate, we’ve chosen the dollar amount that sustains our current lifestyle over the coming year. It falls short of the figure we expect to reach once we’ve limbered up our spending legs, but one allows us to work up to a rate that doesn’t outpace my level of comfort. Ed is a semi-retired physical therapist who lives and works in a small community near Atlanta. When he's not spending time with his church, family or friends, you may find him tending his garden and wondering if he will ever fully retire. Check out Ed’s earlier articles.

Tax Season Wrap up

Rick Connor | May 11, 2026

"Thanks Marilyn."

- Rick Connor

Dickie and his magic beans

R Quinn | May 6, 2026

"Good one."

- Jack Hannam

Starting Up – Part 2

Andrew Clements | May 14, 2026

"Great story of resilience, planning, and adaptation. Congrats!"

- Jeff Bond

First Job, Lasting Impact

D.J. | May 14, 2026

- Edmund Marsh

HumbleDollar’s HumbleDrivers

Dan Smith | May 13, 2026

"My car is so quiet, not only can’t you feel the stop/start, you can’t be sure the engine is running if you don’t look at tachometer."

- R Quinn

The Mirrored Funnel

Mark Crothers | May 10, 2026

"Your story mirrors mine to a certain extent especially feeling liberated from the daily grind. Of course, I have my mother to take care of but that's a burden of love."

- Andrew Clements

Best method for buying home for permanently disabled daughter (SSI and ABLE account)

Dianne Baumert-Moyik | May 13, 2026

"Have you considered posting your question to the bogleheads.org forum. Vastly wider audience and many have experience in this area. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php"

- B Carr

My Recent Fill-up

Michael01670723 | May 13, 2026

"When I was a kid I lived in France. The gas price on the USArmy military base was 5 cents / gallon."

- B Carr

Retiring before age 65? COBRA vs ACA plan- important decision

R Quinn | May 13, 2026

"The quasi-state employer I worked for provides a state-negotiated health insurance. The state itself administers the plan, COBRA and also a retiree Advantage plan."

- Jo Bo

Direct Indexing Anyone?

ostrichtacossaturn7593 | May 10, 2026

"Thank you for clarifying this, Howard."

- ostrichtacossaturn7593

Benefits Young Adults Should Look at Before Taking a Job

Jeff Peck | May 10, 2026

- John Katz

Manifesto

May 13, 2026

NO. 42: WE SHOULD never take investment advice from brokers and insurance agents—because they have an incentive to sell high-commission products and get us to trade excessively.

think

May 14, 2026

RISK TOLERANCE. Objectively, we may be able to take a lot of investment risk because we have a secure job and a long time horizon. But before we invest heavily in stocks, we should consider our personal tolerance for risk. This isn’t easy because it changes with the market: We grow braver as stock prices climb—and fearful when the market falls.

humans

May 13, 2026

NO. 13: WE'RE GIVEN to inertia. Even if our financial situation is bad, we fear any change will make it even worse—and we’ll end up racked with regret. Such fear can leave us holding bum investments we should have ditched years ago. Still, inertia isn’t all bad. It takes effort to sign up for the 401(k). But once we have, we tend to stick with it, thanks to inertia.

act

May 13, 2026

USE TWO-FACTOR authentication. If a thief gets online access to your financial accounts, your life’s savings could be at risk. What to do? If your bank, brokerage firm or fund company offers it, set up two-factor authentication. Your financial firm will text you a special access code every time you log on or when you log on from an unrecognized computer.

Money Guide

Manifesto

May 13, 2026

NO. 42: WE SHOULD never take investment advice from brokers and insurance agents—because they have an incentive to sell high-commission products and get us to trade excessively.

Spotlight: College

The New Gender Gap

Dennis Friedman | Oct 13, 2021

IF I WERE STARTING my career all over again, I don’t know how well I’d fare in today’s economy. By contrast, if my dad were alive, he wouldn’t have any trouble finding work. He was good with his hands and could fix anything. He was a machinist by trade, but he could’ve easily been an electrician, plumber or carpenter.
All the disasters we’ve endured during the past few years have created an explosion in skilled,

Think of the Children

Greg Spears | Aug 24, 2022

WE PUT OUR TWO KIDS through college using 529 plans—and I estimate the accounts easily added 10% to the value of our college savings, compared to what we would have accumulated if we’d invested through a regular taxable account. Yet only 37% of families use 529s to help pay for college, according to a 2021 survey by Sallie Mae.
Like an IRA, a 529 plan gives you a tax break for saving for a specific goal—but,

A+ for Effort

Charles Schafer | Jun 3, 2022

WE HAVE A PROBLEM: We may have saved too much for our daughter’s college education.
My wife and I started contributing aggressively to our daughter’s 529 college savings account as soon as she was born. For the first two years, we invested the full amount of the annual gift-tax exclusion, which was then $14,000. Now, the exclusion is at $16,000, but lately we haven’t been saving as much as we used to. The reason: Our early aggressive saving,

What’s the Price?

Kyle McIntosh | Sep 29, 2021

DRIVE TO HOSPITAL. Cut the umbilical cord. Figure out names. Open a 529.
While the primary focus upon our two babies’ births was bonding, I had another item to check off: I opened a 529 college savings account for each one within a month of their births.
It’s paid off handsomely. Through automatic monthly contributions—plus stellar market performance over the past decade—they’ve amassed sizable balances for higher education. One child now is in high school,

Quinn ponders the College Conundrum

R Quinn | Oct 8, 2024

Connie and I had four children between July 1970 and September 1975. That was a fun decade especially given I was going to school three nights a week until 1978 when after nine years I received a degree.
Those fun times were only surpassed by the ten years when we had one, two or three children in college at once. Our oldest went to Carnegie Mellon on a required five-year program and the others all went to Franklin and Marshall –

Finding Merit

Anika Hedstrom | Jun 30, 2021

THERE’S NO SINGLE, right way to legally crack the college admissions and financial aid systems. It’s up to teenagers and their parents to do the necessary work.

Still, it helps to have a tour guide—which is what you get with The Price You Pay for College, the new book from New York Times financial journalist Ron Lieber. Lieber’s book discusses why college costs so much, digs into the allure of elite schools,

Make My Day Punk, Harvest the Bubble.

Mark Crothers | Oct 14, 2025

The normal thinking would have us believing that a bubble is a dangerous situation for our retirement accounts. What if I told you that I believe a market bubble makes your portfolio more resilient? Would you believe me? Everyone fears bubbles. You should harvest them. Don't worry, I haven't lost the plot, let me be clear: I'm being deliberately provocative to make a point about something some investors neglect when things are going splendidly well, disciplined rebalancing. In reality, bubbles are only devastating if you lack a system. With the right approach, they can actually strengthen your portfolio. I have some caveats to qualify my contention, although they are actions you should, as a responsible investor, already be practicing. Rule one. Don't be greedy and lose track of your investment statement. Rule two. Rebalance your inflated equity position back to your proper asset allocation. Rule three. When the bubble bursts, draw from your cash and bond positions. That's all you need to do. Rule one forces you to rebalance, rule two forces your allocation back to your statement allocation and indirectly increases the size of your safe assets. Rule three stops you from selling distressed equities. Let me show you what this looks like in practice. Say you start with a $1,000,000 portfolio split 60/40 between stocks and bonds. This means you have $600,000 in stocks and $400,000 in bonds.A bubble inflates your equities by 50%, growing your stocks to $900,000 while your bonds stay stable at $400,000. Your total portfolio is now $1,300,000. You now have a risky 69/31 split.Most investors, your neighbor, for instance, ride this wave, convinced they're geniuses. You rebalance.You sell $120,000 in stocks at bubble prices and use that cash to buy bonds. Your portfolio is now back to a 60/40 split, with $780,000 in…

The Playground Indicator

Mark Crothers | Jan 30, 2026

Gold fever seems to be everywhere at the moment. My grandson asked me the other day, "Do you own any gold, Pops?" I said no and asked why he was curious. Apparently, even ten-year-olds know that gold is having quite a run. Pushing through the $5,000 mark had captured his imagination. There's something amusing about being financially questioned by a ten-year-old who only recently discovered the tooth fairy isn't real. I've been investing for decades, and I'm getting the third degree from a kid whose worldly wealth consists entirely of football cards and a bag of loose change. "So you don't have any?" he pressed, with a disappointed tone. "Afraid not," I admitted. He shook his head with the wisdom of someone who's watched three YouTube videos on the subject. "You should probably get some, Pops. Everyone's talking about it." Everyone, meaning him, his buddy, and presumably their classmates who watched the same three videos. I know the usual advice is probably true: gold has historically moved differently from stocks and bonds and all that stuff. I also realise many investors hold a modest amount through a low-cost ETF, treating it as a bit of fun. But I don't own any. Not because I think it's foolish, but because I've never gotten around to it. My portfolio does fine as it is. The only gold I possess is a wedding ring. Could I be better diversified with some gold exposure? Goodness knows. But do I care? Not enough to have done anything about it over the last forty years. To my mind, gold doesn't pay dividends or interest. It doesn't grow earnings. Its only return comes from price appreciation, which depends on some eejit being willing to pay more for it later. I just like stocks and bonds, which generate…

The Best Money We Almost Didn’t Spend

Mark Crothers | Nov 7, 2025

The thought came into my mind the other morning when drinking coffee in the sunroom. Over the years have you ever prevaricated or had doubts about spending money on specific things, then with the gift of hindsight realised it was a great use of your hard earned cash? The sunroom in question very nearly didn't happen. My wife Suzie and I had closed on an old two bedroom house. We could see past the surface state and knew the plot had massive potential for refurbishment and expansion into a great home. Six months later, with the end of the project in sight and with a considerable amount of cash sunk into the refurbishment, the contractor floated the idea of knocking out another wall and building a large sunroom overlooking the large mature garden. Cash was tight and it would be a considerable extra expense, but after a lot of thought we went ahead. The last minute addition is now the heart and most used space in the whole house. I don't have to stretch my memory that hard to find other occasions when doubt and reluctance over purchases have in retrospect been wonderful uses of money. When younger I anguished over taking three months unpaid leave to hike around Australia and parts of South East Asia with my wife Suzie. The loss of earnings and depletion of savings turned into one of the best experiences imaginable. Unique memories, like trying to hurry a comfort break in the Australian outback when I noticed a twenty foot snake wrapped around the roof beam above my head. Or dining in a pagoda in Java during a tropical rain storm when thousands of bullfrogs unearthed themselves for breeding during the rains. They hopped through the wall-less restaurant looking for frog romance. That money bought…

Financial Wisdom from the Scottish Bard

Mark Crothers | Jan 25, 2026

I'm sure there's a few readers on Humble Dollar with a Scottish heritage and you might also be aware that tonight in Scotland, the air will be thick with the scent of haggis and the sound of bagpipes. It's Burns Night, the annual celebration of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. While he's famous for "Auld Lang Syne," Burns wasn't just a romantic; he was known as a "Ploughman Poet" who knew the weight of debt and the grind of manual labor. Burns famously noted in To a Mouse that "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley" (go often awry). It’s a reminder for any retiree. You can project a 7% return until you’re blue in the face, but life and the markets, much like the plow that upturned the mouse’s nest, rarely follows a straight line. The simple lesson? Build a plan that accounts for the "agley" moments, prioritizing liquidity and flexibility over rigid spreadsheets. But why do we save at all? Burns captured the heart of the "being Financially Independent" mindset long before it had a name. In his Epistle to a Young Friend, he advised gathering wealth "not for to hide it in a hedge... but for the glorious privilege / Of being independent." Retirement, to my mind, isn't really about hoarding wealth for its own sake. It’s about buying back your time. That "glorious privilege" is the ability to wake up and own your day without a manager's input, the ultimate return on investment. The Bard called it a “glorious privilege”, modern terminology might use a more colorful acronym involving the letter F If I stretch the meaning of one more of the poet's lines "it's no in wealth like Lon'on Bank / To purchase peace and rest." We can think of…

The High Cost of Financial Advice: A Tale of Two Portfolios

Mark Crothers | Jul 8, 2025

Suzie and I present a microcosm of the debate around financial advisors. I choose to use Vanguard and keep my costs low, whereas Suzie uses a former long-time colleague from her days in the banking sector who happens to be an independent wealth manager to operate her portfolio. To me, the portfolio seems unnecessarily complicated with an average fund fee of slightly over 1.5% in addition to a 0.5% advisor fee. This seems exorbitant in my eyes. My wife's portfolio is approximately 50% larger than mine but pays 900% more in fees. And no, I didn't make a mistake with an extra zero. The difference in absolute fees becomes even more substantial as the portfolio grows. While my Vanguard fees benefit from the platform's fee cap, Suzie's fees continue to scale directly with the size of her portfolio. This illustrates how the impact of higher percentage fees becomes increasingly significant, dramatically reducing the potential for long-term compound growth on larger sums of money. For simplicity's sake, if I take a 7% average gross return, my portfolio will be bigger than Suzie's within 25 years. If that doesn't work as a stark reminder about the corrosive effect of fees, I really don't know what will. (I got Google Gemini to work this out for me) The question is whether the additional services provided by Suzie's wealth manager justify the significantly higher cost, especially when simpler, lower-cost alternatives exist. Luckily for me, I'm in the privileged position that Suzie is my wife and doesn't mind me logging into her portfolio's access portal and nosing around. Our portfolios are substantially similar in makeup. I've a slightly higher equity allocation, and Suzie has more infrastructure and utilities, which I think is the reason it had slightly less volatility during the recent market turmoil. But…

The Edge of Indifference

Mark Crothers | Oct 15, 2025

I don't know if there's an academic term for one aspect of my personality. I honestly struggle to articulate what it is. The best I can do is describe it as a total lack of emotional investment in the political and economic situation in the world around me, an absence of the ability to deeply care about the personalities and themes of the great political and financial stage. It puzzles me that people feel so passionately about these events and figures. The contradiction is that I'm intellectually engaged and interested in the financial and business landscape and the underlying economic systems supporting the world economy. As for politics, I'm totally agnostic. My only interest is in how the leader of the moment's policies intersect with the economy and their impact on the financial world. Beyond that, our political mob could be from Mars for all I care. So why am I sharing this personal worldview? It's simple: I have many annoying facets, but the detachment I've described is, I think, the state we should aspire toward in our financial and particularly our investment lives. What I call "detachment" can be viewed as prioritization. I'm not emotionless, I care about understanding the systems. I don't care about the hyperbolic theatre that accompanies actual events. I process political information for its long-term, systemic impact, a change in corporate tax rates, a shift in regulatory framework, and immediately discard the rhetoric and personality clashes. I feel some investors get burned because they conflate the globe's economic systems with the political and media circus. The economy operates on innovation, productivity, and wealth generation. The circus is a nonstop source of short-term noise, driven by election cycles, geopolitical shocks, and breathless financial headlines. This noise is specifically engineered to bypass your rational thought process. Behavioral…

Starting Up – Part 2

First Job, Lasting Impact

HumbleDollar’s HumbleDrivers

The Mirrored Funnel

Best method for buying home for permanently disabled daughter (SSI and ABLE account)

My Recent Fill-up

Retiring before age 65? COBRA vs ACA plan- important decision

Direct Indexing Anyone?

Benefits Young Adults Should Look at Before Taking a Job

Slow on the Draw

Tax Season Wrap up

Dickie and his magic beans

Starting Up – Part 2

First Job, Lasting Impact

HumbleDollar’s HumbleDrivers

The Mirrored Funnel

Best method for buying home for permanently disabled daughter (SSI and ABLE account)

My Recent Fill-up

Retiring before age 65? COBRA vs ACA plan- important decision

Direct Indexing Anyone?

Benefits Young Adults Should Look at Before Taking a Job

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Manifesto

think

humans

act

Money Guide

Manifesto

Spotlight: College

The New Gender Gap

Think of the Children

A+ for Effort

What’s the Price?

Quinn ponders the College Conundrum

Finding Merit

Spotlight: Crothers

Make My Day Punk, Harvest the Bubble.

The Playground Indicator

The Best Money We Almost Didn’t Spend

Financial Wisdom from the Scottish Bard

The High Cost of Financial Advice: A Tale of Two Portfolios

The Edge of Indifference