CRITICS OF INDEX FUNDS are pursuing a new line of attack. Passive investing, they argue, is distorting market prices and creating an unhealthy bubble.
To be sure, the market today is expensive. The price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of the S&P 500 stands at about 22. That’s substantially above its long-term average of about 16. Of more concern, that metric is approaching a level not seen since the market peak in 2000, just before stocks dropped 57%.

MY WIFE AND I have around $50,000 of emergency funds (~8 months of expenses). Considering that the job market is shaky, we feel comfortable holding this much cash.
Of course, it’s important to make the most out of your savings, so I want to share some options available to earn ~4% yield on your money.
Keep in mind that you should only use the following options for emergency savings and specific saving goals (e.g.

For many years I, and probably many of you, have been reading from the gospel that people, on average, will collect the same amount of money from Social Security without regard to the age that benefits begin. 
The thing is, we have been preaching that gospel for as far back as I can remember. Actuaries calculated this decades ago, and over the years, life expectancy have increased. An exception was during COVID, still, the mortality tables have us living about 3 years longer than 30 years ago.  

I was shredding very old paperwork a few weeks ago when I came across the brochure and policy documents for the very first retirement account I opened in the mid 1980s. It made me shudder looking at it and I was glad to shred the evidence of my past financial mistake.
I think I’ve been quite fortunate in life when it comes to making bad financial decisions. If I’m honest, I think it’s been a total of two missteps in the last forty years.

My wife and I received letters in the mail today from Conduent, and underneath this name Return to Kroll.
I was suspicious so Googled it. This is what I found:
In early 2025, Conduent experienced a cyberattack where hackers accessed their systems, stealing personal data (names, SSNs, medical info) of over 10 million people, impacting users of various state agencies and health insurers like BCBS.
This is the fourth such data breach affecting me in the past few years.

When it comes to Social Security we hear:
Congress stole the trust fund and never paid it back
I paid taxes and thus paid for my own benefits 
If we didn’t pay benefits to people not eligible, there would not be a problem.
Social Security is a scam, a Ponzi scheme. 
Why doesn’t the trust earn interest?
Health insurance misinformation is even worse:
I feel like health insurance should be free, like it is in other places.

On 12/02/2025 the IRS issued Notice 2025-68 which is a notice of intent to issue regulations with respect to section 530A Trump accounts that will become active no sooner than July 4, 2026, one year after the signing of the legislation  commonly referred to as OBBBA. Thus the IRS is in the very early stages of the writing of the tax rules as this 44 page notice is not proposed regulations or final regulations but largely a question and answer format of IRS preliminary thinking and intent to propose regulations providing guidance.

Jonathan used to chastise me for saying that I thought a good goal for retirement income was to replace 100% of base pay or salary- excluding overtime and any form of bonuses. 
I was making a suggestion, opinion, not suggesting a requirement because given most people don’t reach that goal, it is obviously not required even while desirable. 
However, that’s the way Connie and I live. In fact, between my pension and our combined social security,

A just published article in the Harvard Gazette touches on many of the concerns brought up by HD posters and commenters in recent months. It consists of an interview with John Y. Campbell, an economics professor and co-author, with Tarun Ramadorai, of a new book: Fixed: Why Personal Finance is Broken and How to Make it Work for Everyone. The article treats why it is currently so hard to save for retirement, how the complexity of the financial system fosters inequality,

Vanguard has announced it will be offering an annuity option to 401k plan sponsors next year. It will allow the participant nearing retirement to elect a portion of their account to be an annuity payment.
Let’s hope plan sponsors add the option
A steady income stream and still keep investments. I have been advocating for this for years.
HALLELUJAH ‼️‼️‼️

I was catching up with one of my former employees recently, someone who’d been critical to my business for years. She left a few weeks after I sold the company and has moved into a senior managerial role elsewhere. As we were wrapping up our conversation, she laughed and said she had to get back to being a productive member of society. Then she headed off to work.
It was meant as a joke, obviously. But it stuck with me.

MY RETIREMENT HAS been wonderful so far. Honestly, sometimes I have to stop and remind myself how lucky I am. Rachel and I have our health and enjoy each other’s company, which is not always true when a couple retires. However, there are four things that concern me as I reach my mid-70s.
Loneliness
I tried calling Mark, my old high school friend, a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t heard from him.

Although well past retirement age, I was always gadget oriented and fascinated by the evolution of consumer electronics. For the past several years, I have been working part-time at a national retail electronics chain advising customers how to buy computers, printers and digital cameras. With the introduction of artificial intelligence in computers, I wanted to point out a few features in the new computers for anyone thinking about replacing an older unit or who has not been in the market for a while.
 

This morning on the elevator Connie and I were commiserating with a friend, a fellow octogenarian, we exchanged the normal pleasantries-how are you, how’s it going, what’s new, how are you feeling? “Can’t complain” was the standard answer.
But then he said … “they lied to us, where are the Golden Years?”
Have we been duped by advertising? “Golden years” refers to the later years of life, typically retirement-originally in the context of age 65,

Yesterday an involuntary chuckle escaped my mouth. I hadn’t entirely lost the plot and descended into madness—I happened to be thinking about my financial arrangements for the first few years of my recent retirement and in retrospect, I found them amusing.
On Humble Dollar we all, I assume, like to think of ourselves as rational and reasonably “on the ball” when it comes to our retirement portfolio and finances. One of my choices makes me question my right to claim the same ability.