Michael Flack

NOW THAT I’M RETIRED and have all the time in the world, I often use that time to worry about money. That brings me to a recent offer from Wells Fargo to get a $525 bonus for depositing $25,000 in a savings account for 90 days.
My immediate concern was whether the $525 would more than compensate for the paltry interest rate that Wells Fargo pays. A quick calculation determined that investing $25,000 in a Wells Fargo savings account and getting the $525 bonus—rather than the 4.25% I could then earn with Capital One 360 Performance Savings—would still leave me almost $260 ahead.

IN AN EARLIER ARTICLE, I detailed how Charter Communications wasn’t so much my internet provider as my extortionist. I thought I’d dealt with it all in an equitable manner. But then, exactly two years after our relationship began, Spectrum abruptly increased the price it charged for internet access by 67%, from $29.99 a month to $49.99. I guess we didn’t have a relationship so much as a contract.
While I didn’t take too kindly to that,

DEAR DAVID: LAST WEEK, you emailed me, “If you had $20,000, didn’t want to take risk and wanted the best return, how would you invest?” It’s a timeless issue, most likely first asked the day after money was invented.
You may be wondering why, besides asking where your money is currently invested, which turns out to be Bank of America at 0.2%, I haven’t asked about your risk tolerance, current financial situation and future financial needs.

THESE WORDS STRIKE fear into the heart of any husband: “Honey, the [insert: A/C, heat, refrigerator, roof, foundation] doesn’t seem to be working.” But from 2017 to 2021, they were mere words to me, no different than, “Honey, let’s go out for coffee.”
For four glorious years, my wife and I traveled around the world and the country, unfettered and unburdened. If we ran into any equipment issues, they were immediately referred to the landlord for rectification.

WHEN MOST PEOPLE retire, they have a good idea where they’ll live. It might be where they currently reside, or where they vacation, or a place near their children or grandchildren. Whatever the case, there’s usually a limited number of possibilities.
But what if you move to a new city for the last two years of your working life, never vacation in the same place twice, don’t own a vacation home, are childless and—upon retirement—sell your home,

THERE’S ONLY ONE THING I like more than writing about personal finance, and that’s drinking a salubrious cocktail. When I realized I could combine both, this article almost wrote itself.
Two decades ago, I read the best cocktail book ever written, The Essential Cocktail: The Art of Mixing Perfect Drinks by Dale DeGroff. He thought so highly of my bartending skills that he even inscribed my copy, though that’s a whole other article.

SHOULD A REASONABLE real estate buyer expect the multiple listing service (MLS) to provide a reasonable description of the property being purchased? What if it doesn’t?
All the previous times I’ve purchased real estate, the MLS accurately described the property I was buying. I realized that disclosures were also provided by the seller, and those specified the finer points of what was being purchased. Still, I’d come to expect a certain amount of integrity from the MLS listing itself.

MY WIFE BELIEVES travel is an adventure filled with new food, new adventures and new friends. Others believe it’s a never-ending series of negotiations, surcharges, taxes and exchange rates, and these need to be painstakingly managed to minimize cost and the deep-seated shame associated with overpaying.
I guess I lean a little more in one direction, as evidenced by my recent travel adventure: a road trip to the East Coast followed by a flight to Chile.

I HAVE WRITTEN THIS article about bourbon because, when HumbleDollar’s editor previously asked me to write about my travels, I thought, “Hey, if someone wants to pay me $60 to write about travel, I’m in. I’m hoping he’ll next suggest I write an article about drinking bourbon.”
Sadly, this site’s editor didn’t ask me to write about bourbon. But I went ahead anyway.
I “spiritually” came of age when I was 19 years old.

ACCORDING TO OXFORD Languages, the word invest means to “expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit.”
I like this definition better than some others because it includes the word “expectation,” which therefore should exclude casino gambling and sports betting. But what if you have an expectation of winning? Couldn’t casino gambling and sports betting both be considered investments? As Zach Galifianakis’s character said in The Hangover, “It’s not gambling if you know you’re going to win.”
How can one create this expectation?

I JUST FINISHED rereading a book every serious investor needs to reread: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It was written by Michael Lewis in 2003, but it’s still quite relevant to baseball—and to investing.
It’s the story of the Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane, and his struggle to create a competitive baseball team on a limited budget. How does this relate to personal finance? Well, first let me explain my connection to Moneyball.

“I DON’T LIKE BEING too much of an example for people who just want to make money. If you wrest a fortune from life by buying little pieces of paper, I don’t think that’s enough. I never consider it enough of a life to merely be shrewd at picking stocks. If you’re good at just investing your own money, I hope you’ll be good at something more.”
What Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway,

A FEW MONTHS BACK, this site’s editor suggested I write an article about the “10 things I learned about money from four years traveling the globe.” I thought, hey, if someone wants to pay me $60 to write about travel, I’m in. I’m hoping he’ll next suggest I write an article about drinking bourbon.
Starting in September 2017, my wife and I traveled the world for four straight years. Travel can be wondrous. Filled with new tastes,

I RECENTLY READ AN article in Barron’s that inadvertently revealed two more reasons investing in broad-based index funds is the only sensible course of action.
The article, titled “This ‘Crazy’ Retirement Portfolio Has Just Beaten Wall Street for 50 Years,” touted the “All Asset No Authority” (AANA) portfolio. This “simple portfolio” consists of splitting your money equally among U.S. large-company stocks (S&P 500), U.S. small-company stocks (Russell 2000), developed international stocks (MSCI’s Europe,

“I WOULD SAY TO the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering…. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory. Victory at all costs—victory in spite of all terror—victory, however long and hard the road may be,

KIPLINGER’S HAS TOUTED using dividends to “Fund 20 Years of Retirement,” Forbes insists they’re useful “For Sleeping Well At Night During Turbulent Times,” and Seeking Alpha declares “I’m Living The Retirement Dream, Paid With Big Dividends.”
Morningstar has an entire monthly newsletter devoted to the subject of dividends. I even vaguely recall HumbleDollar praising the virtues of dividend-paying stocks.
Investing in such stocks is perhaps the oldest investing meme in the world,

GOOGLE THE WORD “annuity” and you’ll receive 97 million and one results. Is there anything left to be said?
Yes, I think there is.
About 11 years ago, my 89-year-old mother asked me if she should invest more money in her Knights of Columbus annuity. Unbeknownst to me, she and my father had purchased it many years earlier. It earned a guaranteed 3.5% annual interest rate, which was better than every savings account or certificate of deposit available,

I’M STILL AMAZED WHEN I speak with friends and neighbors who have no idea what their home is worth. They tell me they might sell in the near future. When I ask them how much they think they’ll get, they say something like, “I’m not sure, I’m meeting a real estate agent next week.”
Homeowners always need to know how much their home is worth. You can’t wait until your boss tells you about a great opportunity in Honolulu to start determining your home’s value.

IT’S A QUESTION FOR the ages—or perhaps the aged. Since the day the first pension was promised, someone has wanted to know the answer. If you look hard enough, I’m sure it’s referenced in the Bible.
I’m writing this article not to help you answer the question, but to help me answer it. You see, my old employer, Exxon Mobil, has offered me a “onetime lump-sum opportunity.”
I have the option to take a single lump-sum payment of $335,641.85 starting Nov.

IF THERE’S ONE THING that causes more marital stress than money, it’s the thermostat. I figured combining both into one article would be nothing less than genius.
As I grow older, I’ve come to appreciate my father’s fascination with the thermostat, because now I, too, am constantly adjusting it. In my case, based on the current and future temperature, humidity and cloud cover, the adjustments are in the most economical direction. My wife is a set-it-and-forget-it kind of gal,

I MUST ADMIT THAT a part of me finds the subject of inflation a little boring and yet endearing, because it reminds me of conversations with my late mother. She’d balk at paying $2.50 for a cup of coffee at Dunkin’—hey old-timers, that’s what they call it now—as she distinctly remembered buying a cup of coffee for a nickel the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.
Another part of me, though, is feeling a little pinched.

IN THE NAVY, THEY USED to say, “You don’t get what you expect, you get what you inspect.” Inspections played a major role in how the Navy determined the competency and capability of a warship. For nuclear-powered submarines, the most important inspection was the Operational Reactor Safeguard Exam, or ORSE, which rhymes with horse.
A team of experts thoroughly inspected all aspects of a submarine’s nuclear power plant. This covered everything from material readiness (“verdigris on valve stem”),

I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to view Gustav Klimt’s most famous work of art, The Kiss, while visiting Vienna a few years back. It depicts a couple locked in an intimate embrace. It’s an oil painting with a significant amount of gold leaf—quite distinctive.
A few weeks later, I had an opportunity to buy a Klimt. I was in a gallery in Salzburg and came across a drawing of his which was titled Stehender Rückenakt –

IT SEEMS EVERYONE in the personal finance world is flipping out about inflation. Some are lamenting the cost to fill up their F-150—with the optional 7.2kw onboard generator for tailgate parties no doubt. Others are decrying the $6.39 it takes to buy two liters of ginger ale or the $198 million required for a Rembrandt.
Hey, I don’t like higher prices for bourbon, vermouth, bitters and maraschino cherries any more than the next guy shaking a Manhattan,

I REALIZE THAT MOST HumbleDollar readers share a similar investment philosophy. They believe in market efficiency, keeping expenses low and holding down taxes, all of which leads them to genuflect at the altar of the all-mighty index fund.
Words and phrases such as Robinhood, bitcoin and active management don’t appear often on this site and, when they do, they’re mentioned with disdain. While this may be a good thing in the main,

“REGRETS, I’VE HAD a few. But then again, too few to mention.”
What was true for Frank Sinatra most definitely isn’t true for me. I’ve had more than a few regrets, and I want to mention the most recent one.
Late last year, Mark Cuban offered me $100 in bitcoin to download the Voyager app, deposit $100 and make a $10 trade. For those of you who are lucky enough not to know what Voyager was,

I JUST RECEIVED an email from TD Ameritrade Clearing, Inc., imploring me to “Vote now! KYNDRYL HOLDINGS, INC. Annual Meeting.”
For the few who haven’t read my fascinating earlier article, I will share my heuristic for voting proxies: “yes” to independent chairmen, “no” to classified boards, “no” to options, and then “yes” or “no” to whatever piques my interest.
I’ll usually spend 10 minutes max thoroughly reviewing the issues for the first proxy I receive in the new year.

MANY YEARS AGO, I read an article that posited that U.S. income inequality is due, in part, to the unwillingness of unemployed and underemployed Americans to move to a new state or city to take a better job.
It mentioned three reasons for this reluctance. First, folks didn’t want to sell their home, which may have decreased in value due to the recession that caused the bad job market in the first place. Second,

I RECENTLY MADE a good decision, all thanks to director John Frankenheimer’s penultimate film, Ronin. In it, Robert De Niro plays a mercenary who, early in the movie, refuses to enter the roadway under Paris’s Pont Alexandre III because he’s wary of getting caught in an ambush. It’s a decision that saves his life and that of his colleagues. When he’s later asked about the decision, he replies, “Whenever there is any doubt,

A RECENT ARTICLE on HumbleDollar, which detailed the economic and moral shortcomings of commodity producers, reminded me of a conversation I had in 2004. I was in my study reading Security Analysis or watching The Sopranos—it was a little while ago—when I heard a knock at the front door. I opened it to find an earnest but scruffy sandal-wearing young man trying to raise funds for the Sierra Club.

MOST PEOPLE THINK that selling real estate is the flip side of buying. But in most cases, selling is a very different enchilada, and that should drive who you hire as a REALTOR®—and, yes, that is the preferred style.
Buyers face an almost infinite list of potential properties to purchase. Initially, almost every house is a possibility. As the buyer and agent review the buyer’s requirements, the list is whittled down until the dream home is found.

I’VE BEEN GIVING salient and