BY THE 1990s, New York City had been in decline for decades. What brought about the city’s recovery? It was, in part, the broken windows theory.
Picture a vacant building with one window broken. Most people wouldn’t think much of it. But this one broken window sends a signal—and, soon enough, others get broken. How do you reverse this decline? It’s easy: You get rid of the broken windows, and make sure things stay that way.

According to one of my new AI friends, “Anchoring is a cognitive bias in behavioral finance that describes how people use a first piece of information, or ‘anchor’ as a reference point for making decisions. This bias can affect many areas of financial decision-making, including investing, budgeting, and spending.”
In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely makes the following statement: “…what consumers are willing to pay can easily be manipulated, and this means that consumers don’t in fact have a good handle on their own preferences and the prices they are willing to pay for different goods and experiences.”
What can this trickery look like?

The actual formula for how benefits are determined is somewhat cloaked in mystery (at least to me).  Before I retired in mid 2001 at age 55, I tried to at least take a look at this topic.  The SS website at the time had a calculator which you could use to estimate future benefits.  I think it began with an estimate  based on you continuing  to work at your current annual income level until FRA.  So I already  had an approximation of what might get if I continued to work.

SOME YEARS AGO, an elderly neighbor came to our door, asking for a favor. She was looking for packing tape because she’d sold her television and needed to ship it. She went on to say that the buyer, who she’d found on eBay, was in Nigeria. It was, of course, an obvious scam. But for whatever reason, she couldn’t see it.
Today, scams like this are better known and easier to recognize. But what makes online fraud such a problem is that the crooks are always developing new tricks.

Clearly the answer is maybe. It is a personal decision and I certainly am in no position to advise others or to push one decision or another.
I am more of the “bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” philosophy. We took ours at FRA and invested it for several years and we now have a pile of cash in bonds and monthly income (tax-free) to access when necessary.  After over fifteen years reinvesting that income exceeds Connie’s monthly SS benefit. 

It was a halting and sleepless night. The latest Covid vaccine just became available. I got my jab yesterday. I felt great when I turned off the WNBA game at 10:30. I awoke at midnight with aching bones and a fever, and what sleep I managed to get was hit and miss.
Oh I know there are vaccine deniers out there that think that I’m stupid to get the shot, I respect that, but I’ve lost a half dozen friends and clients to the sickness,

WE ALL HATE LOSING—and life, alas, is full of it.
I’m not just talking about investment losses. There are the career successes we never had, the relationships that didn’t pan out and the purchases that fell short of our expectations. Almost all of us, I suspect, can recall countless situations that turned out less gloriously than we’d initially hoped.
Yet, even though my failures pain me, they don’t stop me from getting up each day and trying again.

When I get an article to edit that includes a quote from a famous person, I almost always put the quote into a search engine to make sure the person in question really said it. Often, it was somebody completely different—or, alternatively, it’s not clear who said it.
Consider five examples:

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” This one is frequently attributed to the economist John Maynard Keynes. But it was probably said by the financial analyst A.

HUGE AMOUNTS OF TIME and money are spent planning for retirement. The focus is almost entirely financial—running the numbers, so to speak. How much do I need to save to retire by age 65? Can I retire with my current nest egg? What are the chances I’ll run out of money?
No doubt these are the sorts of questions that keep HumbleDollar readers up at night. And, yes, the numbers are important.

It’s not a political question, but a practical one, especially for us retirees. Let’s see.
We survived a pandemic.
My wife and I have both had expensive health issues in the last four years for which we received excellent care and that were paid in full by Medicare and our Medigap insurance.
Inflation has been up and now going down – but at its highest a lot less troubling than in the 70s and 80s. Social Security was adjusted upward accordingly.

We needed a roll of packing tape, so my first instinct was to order from Amazon. But I didn’t want a three- or six-pack, and I didn’t feel great about the environmental impact of an Amazon truck driving to my house to deliver an overly large cardboard box containing a single roll, even if it was a bargain at less than $4.
Instead, during my afternoon walk, I stopped by the local drugstore to pick up a roll—which was priced at $5.99.

I’M RELUCTANT TO ADMIT that HumbleDollar is run using smoke and mirrors. But if someone said that, I’d be hard-pressed to disagree.
I’ve long believed that the principles of sound money management are pretty timeless. What you should be doing with your money this year isn’t a whole lot different from what you should have been doing last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
This notion is baked into how much of the site operates.

Hello,
I have been reading here for a while, and enjoying the conversations. I am hoping some experts can weigh in here.
I am 58 years old and employed at a nonprofit org. I have recently been promoted and am earning a comfortable amount. I have already maxed out my 403b contributions (403b is the nonprofit equivalent of the 401k).
I asked my employer if we have a Roth IRA contribution option and we don’t.
My question is: can I contribute to a Roth IRA on my own?

I HAVE MY MOTHER to thank for my good savings habits. She opened a savings account in my name when I was a kid. She also made sure I had a Christmas Club savings account every year. I was required to make deposits regularly.
I didn’t mow my neighbor’s lawn, have a newspaper route or sell lemonade on my front lawn. Instead, the money I saved came from the allowance my mother paid me.

The Beatles got it right. If your life has been anything like mine, it’s been a “long, winding road.” It’s undoubtedly been an interesting journey, fraught with more health and relationship hardship than you had planned for. Chastened by the vicissitudes of life, you’re ready to head home and write the last chapter.
Retirement beckons and you’re smug. After all, you saved diligently, invested wisely and amassed a nest egg far in excess of what you had ever dreamed possible.