Note: I’m still cleaning out my old ‘never submitted’ article file. Here’s #4. And yes, my OCD compels me to keep track of the numbers.  
FRUGALITY IS WORN like a badge of honor among many of us in the HumbleDollar tribe. I am happy to include myself in that club. Even if we no longer have a pressing need to be so frugal, we get a kick out of it. I’ve written several articles on the theme.

This past week, Costco announced that it would raise its base membership fee from $60 to $65 effective September 1. Executive members will see their fees increase from $120 to $130. Prior to this announcement, fees had not changed since 2017.
In order to justify the cost of the membership, members need to extract value from Costco in excess of the fee they pay. What are your tips for making the most of your membership? Or what do you avoid that’s better to purchase somewhere else?

A NEW TYPE OF MUTUAL fund has captured investors’ attention. Known as buffer funds, they’re so appealing that one industry analyst has referred to them as “candy.” Why? As The Wall Street Journal describes them, buffer funds offer investors “the chance to chase stock returns while also protecting against a potential market slide”—a seemingly ideal combination, especially for those in or near retirement.
But funds like this are complicated—they rely on options strategies.

Like many of you I have read Jonathan writings  from WSJ to Humble Dollar . I have been content to just enjoy reading without comment. After Jonathan health news and his  hopes Humble Dollar will continue I decided to get off the sidelines and have started to add my 2 cents worth (which is only worth about half a cent these days) on some of the posts. This is my first post. What first got you interested in investing?

Yesterday I read a recent blog post on a retirement planning site. The headline read “ Can You Live Happily in Retirement With Just 66% of Your Work Income? (Yes! Most Do)“
As you can image, that caught my eye. I went to the source of the survey at T Rowe Price. Here is what the survey said in part. 
“Living on less: Nearly three years into retirement, retirees report living on 66% of their pre-retirement income on average.

Last week as Hurricane Beryl approached our Texas storage unit, the company notified us that the office would be closed until further notice, a sensible precaution to let staff stay home to ride out the storm.
Beryl came through on July 8. The office is still closed, with apparently no one working from home. The area has also been without power since the storm, which means that our climate controlled unit is, well – not. 
So,

TODAY’S FINANCIAL lesson: We can manage risk—but terrible stuff can still happen. This thought, of course, was prompted by my recent cancer diagnosis. But the notion is also all too relevant to money management.
But let’s start with health matters. In 1995, I began training for my first marathon, which I ran in May 1996 in Pittsburgh and finished in just under three hours. Ever since, I’ve been a bit of an exercise nut.

In two previous posts (“The Morningstar Experience” and “Your Morningstar Freebee”), we looked at how readers considering investment in a Vanguard fund can consult the helpful information in Morningstar’s esteemed advisory service. We demonstrated how they might consult this resource to monitor their investments and evaluate their performance. Today, we’ll illustrate how to decide whether the holdings of the fund meet the reader’s objective. Once again, the fund examined is Vanguard’s Small-Cap ETF (symbol VB, or VSMAX for the mutual fund alternative).

In 1975 the Social Security COLA was 8%, in 1979 9.9%, 1980 14.3% and 1981 11.2% reflecting soaring inflation. I project 2025 will be 2.3% or less if inflation keeps falling. 
During the oil embargo in 1974 gasoline jumped 35% a gallon in one year to $0.53 a gallon equivalent $3.36 in 2024 – if you could get gas then. As of July 8 the average US price a gallon was $3.608 with significant variations by state and individual station –

My mother received an email today from “Social Security Administration”  warning of “Important Changes to Access Your Social Security Account!”
It states that “soon you will no longer be able to sign into your online Social Security account using your username and password.” It goes on to say in the future, only a Login.gov or ID.me.account, and ends with a big button that says “Sign In to Your Account.”
I suspect this is bogus. Has anyone else received a similar email?

What happened to HumbleDollar’s articles? They’re still here, just farther down the homepage. As I prep the site for a future without me, I’m shifting the focus away from new articles and to the Forum, where writers and readers can post their thoughts directly to the site without my involvement. That said, I monitor all Forum posts—as well as other comments on the site—to make sure nothing untoward ends up on HumbleDollar.

Jonathan’s series of AI generated financial articles was not the most popular with many HD readers. Others of us found the experiment quite interesting. Although there were a few major duds in the series, there also were computer generated articles that could have easily passed undetected on Yahoo Finance. This year, I’ve started using AI to assist me in my encore career as an engineer in the nuclear power industry. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how helpful my AI assistant can be at times.

On other financial sites, you’ll find folks bragging about the hot stocks they own and the prescient market calls they made. But here at HumbleDollar, we favor a different sort of boasting.
Instead of trumpeting their market savvy, HumbleDollar writers and commenters are often looking to signal their financial prudence. How do they do that? Here are eight of my favorite HumbleDollar boasts:

How quickly folks paid off their mortgage.

As I finish this article, I’m sitting in an Airbnb in an older community undergoing a renaissance, nestled between a small mountain and my family’s favorite little city. Atop the mountain, my daughter is attending a three-day “get acquainted” gathering at the college perched there, while my wife and I hang out and practice being a couple again.
Across the room, my wife is catching up on her reading. Freedom from home or family duties feels like a vacation to her,

Time and again I hear that a retired couple lives “comfortably.” I often wonder what that means. Of course it is quite relative not unlike defining living paycheck to paycheck. 
My AI companion came up with this simple definition. 
“Living comfortably means financial security to cover essentials without stress, and a lifestyle you enjoy. It’s not about excess, but having what you need and freedom to do what matters to you.”
That leaves the relative definition of “need.”