A Family Correspondence. Letter from the Son…
Dear Mom and Dad,
When I stormed out of your house, I was furious. It just didn’t seem fair that you taxed me for my morning tea—especially when it wasn’t even that good. In hindsight, it was probably a blessing. I switched to coffee, which at least wakes me up before my workday rather than lulling me back to sleep.
Of course, it didn’t help that a few years later you burned down my house.

Have you ever regretted being frugal? I certainly did this morning. My 5:30 a.m. flight to Alicante in Spain was meant to be the start of a nice break meeting a friend flying in from London, but thanks to my decision to save forty bucks, it became an endurance test.
When I booked the flight, I decided against paying for a reserved seat, thinking I’d play the check-in lottery and get a decent spot for free.

The IRS released a draft Form 1040 and the new  Schedule 1-A for 2025. It shows calculations for the new some OBBBA deductions, including the No Tax on Tips, Overtime, Car Loan Interest, and the Enhanced Senior Deduction.

I ran my own business for nearly 30 years. It had a multimillion-dollar turnover with multiple income streams and complex timing around incoming and outgoing payments. Managing this intricate system required meticulous budgeting and continuous use of spreadsheets and accounting software—exactly what you’d expect from a well-run business.
I’m now retired, and in stark contrast to my business experience, on the domestic side of finances my wife Suzie and I don’t operate on a detailed budget per se.

The 4% rule (or is it 4.7% now?) is supposed to be a simple way to figure out how much you can safely withdraw each year, but I’m curious – do HD members really follow it?
While it’s a decent projection, I imagine there are plenty of circumstances where a fixed percentage needs updating – health expenses, market swings, helping family, inflation surprises, or even big life events like moving or starting a new chapter you hadn’t planned for.

This article popped up in my email this morning, and a lot of the advice reminded me of various HumbleDollar discussions: https://www.thewealthminded.com/lifestyle-and-money/10-frugal-habits-that-secretly-make-you-wealthier?lctg=64810442f2b7387f8e68c961
I didn’t actually resonate with most of them. I do #5 (automate savings) and #7 (cook at home), and I’m working on the “cancel subscriptions” (#8) thing. The rest of it, not so much.
OK, a couple of caveats. If we were in a financial spot where money was extremely tight and we had to watch every penny,

I’ve just got a hug from my daughter as she heads out our door to make her way home. I always have a sense of regret when a visit from one of our children ends. It’s always lovely to see them, but with my youngest child I admit to normally heaving a sigh of relief. Not very fatherly, but she truly vexes me.
Let me explain my difficulty. My daughter is 27 and, to my mind,

This morning the IRS in IR-2025-91 announced that the pending Secure 2.0 final regulations regarding catch-up contributions to qualified retirement plans will be published tomorrow, 9/16/2025, in the federal register.
My initial reading of a summary has two key takeaways for me.
A requirement that catch-up contributions that will require such catch-up contributions to be ROTH for certain taxpayers based their on earned income ($145K indexed) of the prior tax year.
The effective date of the new catch-up provision will now be for tax years after 12/31/2026,

HD writers and commentators have discussed a wide range of topics related to an enjoyable retirement. Finances is a primary topic, including investments and drawdowns, budgets and such. Closely following is use of time and dealing with the break from a working life. 
I think I am fighting a mid-retirement life crisis. All I want now is peace of mind, and to limit stress as much as possible. I don’t want to worry, but that is not happening lately.

Including my time delivering newspapers, I’ve had a total of ten different employers in my life. Some jobs were more memorable than others. One of my early roles was at a company that created merchandise catalogs for department stores.
I was twenty—shy, insecure, and working part-time while attending college. I mostly did the tasks no one else wanted: vacuuming, taking out the trash, cleaning the bathrooms. Yet, two women at that company saw potential in me that I couldn’t yet see in myself.

I think I’m getting in the way. Nothing specific drives this feeling—it’s just a tingling sense from a longtime marriage. Although a suggestion from my wife Suzie about “perhaps taking yourself out for a dander would be helpful” could possibly be concrete evidence of my suspicion.
My getting underfoot arises from the fact we’re organizing to return to our permanent home after spending the summer at our vacation house. There’s a lot of things to do,

I guess I’m going to be hounded out of the forum with pitchforks and flaming torches for confiding this dirty little secret. Apparently, confession is a catalyst for redemption, so here’s the truth: I never have and probably never will produce a statement of net worth.
I really don’t see the point. My two homes and cars aren’t for sale, and their personal contents are just that—personal and not for sale. Since I don’t view any of these possessions as liquid,

I’ve been using an iPhone XR for almost 8 years now. It’s crazy to think about as I bought it back when it first came out, and somehow it’s still chugging along. The battery isn’t great anymore and the camera definitely shows its age, but it still does the job.
With Apple dropping their newest iPhone, I’m finally thinking about upgrading. Part of me feels like I’ve squeezed every drop of life out of this XR,

This issue has come up before, but I was reminded of it this morning when Ben Carlson’s blog linked to a piece by a doctor who followed the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) approach but now works part time. He is thankful he discovered FIRE, but sees three problems with it, one being the definition of retirement. He writes: “I “retired” in 2018, but I still do work I love. I practice part-time as a hospice doctor,

WHEN IT COMES to financial decisions, there are, as I’ve argued before, two answers to every question: what the calculator says, and how you feel about it. There’s a fly in the ointment, though: Calculator answers might appear to be based in logic, but they’re still imperfect.
Why?
Ian Wilson, a former executive at General Electric, explained it this way: “No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all knowledge is about the past,