Richard Connor

FIVE YEARS AGO, there was a big increase in the price of the “America the Beautiful: National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Senior Pass.” For a one-time fee, the pass gives people age 62 and older free lifetime access to many of America’s most popular vacation and day-trip spots.
How big was the increase? In 2017, the price of the senior pass went from $10 to $80. I tipped off some older relatives about the looming price increase,

MARCH 31 MARKED the fifth anniversary of my retirement from fulltime work. Back then, I didn’t think I was retiring and I’m still not sure I really have retired. Instead, over the past five years, I’ve described myself as semi-retired. But a recent HumbleDollar article provided a better description of my situation: I’m in a “phased retirement.”
How have things gone, what have I learned and what would I have done differently?

RETIREMENT COMES with many risks, but the scariest I’ve witnessed is dementia. It’s estimated that more than six million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, and they account for just 60% to 80% of all dementia cases.
Other types include vascular dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease dementia and Lewy body dementia. Drug side effects, brain injury, depression and alcoholism can create dementia symptoms, too. The symptoms may get better when those conditions are treated.
Whatever the cause,

THIS IS MY FOURTH year serving in AARP Foundation’s TaxAide program. I prepare federal and state tax returns three days a week for a mixture of retirees and lower-income citizens.
Each week, I see clients who are baffled by the complexity of our tax code. Many have been paying hundreds of dollars to commercial preparers because they’re afraid of making a mistake.
And no wonder. The federal tax code has myriad twists and turns that can confound the average taxpayer.

I LEARNED SOMETHING new while preparing a tax return recently for a widowed senior citizen. I volunteer for AARP Foundation’s TaxAide program. A widow in her mid-70s had received her 2021 required minimum distribution (RMD) from her IRA—and it consisted entirely of Exxon Mobil stock.
Her account’s custodian, instead of selling the stock and distributing cash, gave her the actual shares. This had never happened to her before, and she hadn’t requested it. Why did the custodian do it?

RECENT NEWS ARTICLES have noted the sharp increase in early retirements, many triggered by the pandemic. Just over 50% of Americans age 55 and older are now retired, a two percentage point increase from 2019, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
I have several friends and colleagues who are bucking that trend and instead delaying their retirement. They’re financially set but concerned about the transition from fulltime work to “doing nothing.” Yet some of these same workers are also struggling with changes in their companies and industries.

IT’S OFTEN SAID THAT beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The same could be said of fairness in taxation.
A recent article by Kelly Phillips Erb addresses this contentious topic. Erb, who tweets as @TaxGirl, is the team lead for insights and commentary at Bloomberg Tax and Accounting. Her article was titled, “Did you pay your ‘fair share’ of federal income tax this year?”
The piece discusses the history and current state of U.S.

MY BROTHER AND I recently reminisced about the investment club we helped found in the late 1980s. The club’s benefits were threefold: financial education, the pooling of money and camaraderie.
Our club was composed of family and friends. We met monthly. When we started, investing was largely a manual process. There were few discount brokers and even they charged relatively high fees. You bought and sold with a phone call, and mailed checks for payment.

IS IT JUST ME OR HAS dealing with health insurance companies become more confusing and frustrating? Trying to figure out who to speak to feels like that classic Abbott and Costello comedy routine, “Who’s on first?”
My wife retired last July. For the previous four years, we’d used her employer-provided medical benefits and now we needed to shop for coverage. Under my old employer’s pension plan, pension-eligible employees like me—who retired prior to beginning Medicare—were eligible to sign up for one of the company’s medical plans.

I HATE LOOKING AT life through the lens of taxation. But at this time of year, it’s hard to avoid.
I’ve been doing my own taxes for more than four decades. But this year represents a new milestone in my tax return preparation career. We moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey at the end of March 2021, so I’ve had to prepare 2021 tax returns for both states. Although I’d researched New Jersey’s tax code and made an estimate of what the differences would cost,

I RECENTLY HAD a chance to go back in time. An alumnus from my high school is spending his retirement documenting the school’s football program. He’s done an amazing job. He created a YouTube channel populated with an extensive library of game films dating back to the 1950s.
I recently stumbled across the channel, and scrolled to my senior year, which was 1974-75. I played tight end on arguably the worst team in my high school’s long and storied history.

AS A YOUNG ENGINEER at General Electric, I took a three-day class on career development. That class strongly influenced my thinking about my career—and my life. The class made use of a great little book by David P. Campbell called If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, You’ll Probably Wind Up Somewhere Else.
The premise of the book is that life is a journey, not a destination. We should set some basic goals that help guide our journey,

LOTS OF RESEARCH has been done on the best way to generate retirement income. It’s one of the most popular topics on HumbleDollar. I think this popularity is driven by two things: its obvious importance—and the fact that there’s no one right answer.
By contrast, figuring out how much we need to save for retirement is relatively easy. It isn’t hard to pick a future retirement date, or at least a range of years during which we’ll likely retire,

WHAT IF WE MADE IT easier to delay Social Security, so more retirees ended up with a larger monthly check?
Last year, I wrote about a study from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research (CRR) that detailed the value in claiming Social Security later. A new CRR paper examines the topic further.
The paper describes a survey of those nearing retirement. The goal: to gauge interest in using a 401(k) “bridge” to generate income while folks delayed claiming Social Security.

THE SOCIAL SECURITY claiming decision is one of the most complex—and contentious—choices that retirees have to make.
I was reminded of that in December, while at a Christmas party. Two former colleagues were discussing their Social Security decision. Both are male, single, childless, retired engineers. Each has a traditional pension, a paid-off home and significant retirement savings. Ted is age 77. Fred is 66.
Ted took his Social Security at 62. His reason was longevity or,