Laura E. Kelly

Comments

• Hi David. When I bought the house (and the condo before it in a different town), I hoped each would be an “investment property.” My sister was supposed to pay enough rent to cover the annual carrying costs, but that never happened. Between my carrying costs adding up year after year and unexpected expenses—like roofing issues and having to replace the basement HVAC and washer & dryer a year after she moved into the house, following a “once in a lifetime” river-flooding event that caused huge water & sewer backups throughout town—I now think “money pit” not “investment.” I guess we’ll know for sure when I sell the house someday and compare what I’ve paid over the years to what’s left after everything settles. I can’t imagine it will look like a good investment, but I’d be happy to be wrong.   If you meant “investment property” as a tax or legal term, my husband and I are planning to meet with an estate attorney this year to better define and understand the situation in case something happens to me. The attorney may also have additional advice about how to handle this arrangement. I think one lesson is: take care before making a generous offer. Ethically, it can turn into a lifetime commitment.

  Post: The Home Ownership Gamble

  Link to comment from April 12, 2026

• I’ve realized that there are all sorts of people who can’t manage and need help with their living arrangements. Could be a kid who’s a slow starter in life. Could be an adult who will always be dependent in some way. Could be someone who is getting old and needs a change in their housing. It seems to me it’s a different calculus for each situation. I could share the story of housing my sister (who falls into the middle category I listed), but I’m not sure if enough HD readers are in my boat and would find it useful or interesting. But maybe it’s worth doing just for my own purposes, like “for the record.”

  Post: The Home Ownership Gamble

  Link to comment from April 12, 2026

• I have a hard-to-boil-down story of how I came to buy first a condo and then a house (during the pandemic) for my “impulsive and volatile by nature” sister in two different towns. I could write up for HD readers how I found myself pledging to cover the cost of housing my sister and her then-school-aged daughter, complete with lessons I’ve learned and money I spent, if anyone requests it, but for the purposes of this comment, I’ll spare you.  Just wanted to chime in to say that sometimes renting an apartment for somebody else is impossible when the other person has no work history and no income, and they need a 2BR place NOW. If the rental market is tight, nobody wants to rent to this person, and later could throw them out for all sorts of reasons, including wanting to suddenly rent the place to a relative of their own (which just happened to a widowed friend of mine last month). Buying a house in a rush for my sister was not something I wanted or planned to do, and it’s cost me dearly (I don’t care what Zillow says that small 1920s house is worth today because I don’t get to sell it until something major changes in my sister’s life). BUT if you ignore the sunk cost of the house purchase (gulp), I’ve figured out that my annual costs for home insurance, out-of-state taxes, the town water/garbage bills, and small annual repairs add up to less than any 2BR apartment annual rental costs in the town she is living in (where her old school friends look in on her and emotionally support her). My sister pays me no rent, and never will, but so far my firm boundary has held that I’ll pay for the “roof over her head” and nothing else (including her utilities and food bills). How is she paying those other bills? That’s another story. Final note: I don't count the above house in my net worth. I have convinced myself that that chunk of money is just gone because, for all intents and purposes, it is.

  Post: The Home Ownership Gamble

  Link to comment from April 11, 2026

• This topic is at the forefront of my mind right now. One of my slightly younger sisters recently lost her 63-year-old husband to a sudden heart attack in December. She had happily given him full charge of their financial situation, but he kept putting off writing things down for her. Not only was there nothing like a Next of Kin (NOK) box with password lists for various accounts, but he had just gotten a new laptop she could not get into—no passwords anywhere to be found. Luckily for her, she was able to get into his iPhone, and that helped a little. This sister has had no access to money in this first month since his death except her own meager savings account, but luckily she had a credit card to put some bill payments on.  It’s like their 60s snuck up on them. They had done no estate planning or will either. The delays of probate are in her future.  My husband and I both know where all our papers and passwords are, but what happened with my sister has been a real wake-up call. I made an appointment with an estate lawyer to review our 10-year-old estate plan and get some recommendations for going forward now that we're retirement age. Frankly, though, I’m more concerned about someone else having to piece things if we both died one after another for some reason (we don’t have kids). I will either order a NOK box or create something like it myself very soon. As for your question about “what worked for you,” I know from my mother’s sudden death at age 66 back in 2001 the best gift she gave her kids was a folder in the red desk in her house that contained written instructions on who first to call (the cremation place she had prepaid for) and then who next to call (she had a whole list, starting with her doctor) if she suddenly died, and also how exactly how she wished her funeral to go (down to the songs someone would sing). She had her house and money papers in the folder, too. She never spoke to us directly about any last wishes, but when she died suddenly, we all remembered her telling each of us four kids about the "folder in the red desk." In our 30s and 40s, we would have had NO idea what to do otherwise. My father, many years divorced from my mother, did NOT leave us a helpful folder when he died 15 years after her, but that’s another story.

  Post: Your two best investing books—and do you also keep an End-of-Life “family binder”?

  Link to comment from January 20, 2026

• I'm on Team Suzie. We paid off our 1996 (6%) mortgage as early as we could. I don't care if it was a good decision or not, monetarily. It's just been one less thing to think about for decades now. Being debt-free is what works for me. Plus I made a few of my friends jealous, which is fun.

  Post: The $8,000 Cost of Peace of Mind

  Link to comment from January 20, 2026

• 😁

  Post: Spending Without Guilt: An Overlooked Retirement Skill

  Link to comment from January 20, 2026

• What is the "HB ecosystem"? If you're asking about content on HumbleDollar.com, I am retirement age and come to the HD.com site for updated money investment and budgeting tips as our world continuously changes, since I have to plan to fund another 30 years of living (possibly). So "general investment" articles would be of interest, but mostly if they are written by someone with some real knowledge and experience and are not written for those just beginning their savings and investment journeys.

  Post: Retirement or Investment Content

  Link to comment from January 17, 2026

• When I read posts like this one and Where to Keep Cash (which I have way too much of, but at least not at .01 APY), and all the commenters who chime in, I know I have found my tribe.  I’ve been part of the Mac ecosystem since my first computer back in the ’80s, and now own an iPhone and an iWatch, two Swiss Army Knife–devices that are worth their price because of the many things, big and little, they can do. My iWatch timer just buzzed me to remind me that the clothes in the dryer are ready and when I glanced at its watch face, it showed me a random photo I’d taken of a sparkling canyon river in Zion Park a while back. These random photos make me smile many times a day and often evoke a little ping of gratitude, which is worth something, I think.  Along with some other commenters, I am a Subaru fan. We bought a 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Sport that is similar to our 12-year-old Subaru Impreza (in that it is short enough to fit into our 1950s garage) but has all the safety features I’d heard tell of (favorite: the rearview mirror blindspot lights) and sits much higher up—less groaning getting in and out!  😳 I guess I subscribe to “little things mean a lot.”

  Post: The Point of Diminishing Returns

  Link to comment from December 6, 2025

• If reading through the latest ins and outs of authentication & passkey set-up (see Doug C's comment below) makes my head hurt, it will make my Luddite husband's head explode. I would love to bolster our digital security but still waiting for a simple silver bullet. Maybe it'll be passkeys? Still not sure how facial recognition or fingerprint fits into everything, particularly if you need to access someone else's devices. For now, I'll just keep following HD threads like this, looking for that silver bullet.

  Post: Dealing with Financial Affairs for Someone Else…..

  Link to comment from November 25, 2025

• Have to share this wonderful NYTimes profile of a Seattle man who changed his working life. It begins: "Eleven years ago, Paul Lundy was dying a slow, workingman’s death under fluorescent light." Gift share: How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life

  Post: When to walk away

  Link to comment from November 23, 2025