I have recently paid attention to calls for help by retirees seeking ways to support a needy child who is, for medical or mental reason, unable to manage to live independently without ongoing financial support. I resonate with such worry, which mirrors mine.

Naturally, I keep a warm heart for all my extended family members despite occasional differential preferences for some over others. My children, nieces and nephews follow the current US economy into a K-shaped future: some with up-sloping prospects,

WHAT WAS THE road to outstanding investment performance in 2025? For the first time in a long time, it wasn’t Apple, Amazon or Nvidia. It was gold. Delivering its best performance in 45 years, gold rose nearly 65%. Despite these impressive gains, however, I still don’t see gold as a great investment. 
Why not?
The most fundamental problem, in my view, is that gold lacks intrinsic value. Unlike traditional investments such as stocks, bonds and real estate,

MANY PEOPLE FOCUS on building wealth through asset allocation and investment choices. Far fewer think about asset protection. In my opinion, protecting wealth is just as important as building it, especially since decades of disciplined saving and investing can be undone in one unfortunate event.
In this article, I wanted to discuss some of the strategies and tips that I’ve learned, and implemented in my personal finance journey.
Quick disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer,

I’ve been thinking of writing this post for a while, and my early morning scroll through recent Forum posts finally pushed me to it. When I author a post, I try to go back to it every so often and reply to comments. That was something Jonathan hoped for from the authors he published. In going through the thread of a post I made a few days ago, I noticed that one or two people had systematically downvoted every comment I made,

Man, I’m neck-deep in wedding season right now. I’ve got two biological daughters, but thanks to life’s plot twists, three other young women have adopted me as their surrogate dad. I bought a wedding dress for one of them this past spring, she looked absolutely stunning, by the way.
Now one of my actual daughters just dropped a wedding date on me, and my other two surrogate daughters are also marching down the aisle. The damage?

Currently our rental income exceeds 100% of our discretionary and non-discretionary annual expenses.  We are at the mercy of higher tax brackets and Irmma. I am 2 years from RMD’s, my spouse is 3 years away.  Should the market simply stay flat our RMD’s (both) will cover 100% of our annual expenses. We have been very fortunate.
Our IRA’s are in. Index funds, spread across large and small in an 84/16 stock/bond mix. Stocks are 46/38 between domestic and foreign in an approx 2/3 large cap and 1/3 smaller cap for both.

The advice I keep seeing says that you can safely withdraw 4% a year (adjusted for inflation) from a 60-40 portfolio over 30 years. This is all well and good, if your portfolio is 60-40 and you start withdrawing at age 70 – or 65 if you are more pessimistic about your longevity. I have always planned based on living to 100, without really hoping to make it that long, so this advice would have worked if I had started drawing on my portfolio at 70.

There are three topics of vital importance to nearly everyone that at the same time are near the top of the list to be criticized and misunderstood by nearly everyone. (taxes are at the top).
Health insurance
Social Security
Electric and Gas utilities 
I spent by whole career working for a utility and at the same time designing and managing health insurance plans. I study Social Security and may be one of five Americans in the US who reads the annual trustee report.

I enjoy tasting new beers, and today there are some very good ones on the shelves. Still, it hasn’t always been this way.  Some time in the nascent days of the micro-brewery craze, I recall my boss, the owner of the beer distributor, commenting that it was as if the tiny brewers were having a contest to see who could make the lousiest tasting beer. 
I think that there’s an analogy that can be made between the abundance of micro-breweries and myriad financial products in that not all of them leave a good taste in my mouth. 

Recently I was reading a finance article and it mentioned occasionally utilizing Roth funds to stay within a targeted maximum tax bracket. Also I believe someone recently commented about having a small amount of bonds in a Roth account to limit to some degree the volatility. If everything in the future goes as hoped the Roth funds will be inherited by our children decades from now
Both of these points got be thinking (maybe perseverating) on what to do with my wife’s Roth account.

I’ve been doing some consulting work with my former business again. This time, I’m helping the new owners navigate the fun of year-end tax reporting using the IT systems that had grown organically over the years, systems that made perfect sense to me but turned out to be anything but straightforward for them. What I could do almost on autopilot required careful explanation and documentation beyond what I’d already provided. It seems my “logical” system only made sense to me.

I was watching YouTube the other day when an ad popped up for a financial advisory firm. Normally I skip ads, but this one caught my attention. The advisor opened by saying something that sounded reassuring:
“We only get paid if your portfolio increases in value.”
At first glance, that sounds fair—even noble. But let’s slow down and be clear about what’s really being said.
First, the market usually goes up
Historically,

“The riskiness of an investment is not measured by beta but rather by the probability—the reasoned probability—of that investment causing its owner a loss of purchasing-power over his contemplated holding period. Assets can fluctuate greatly in price and not be risky as long as they are reasonably certain to deliver increased purchasing power over their holding period. And a non-fluctuating asset can be laden with risk.” — Warren Buffett, in his 2011 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter.

2025 was a stellar year for investors. “The S&P 500 finished the year with an 18% gain, achieving a ‘three-peat’ of double digit annual returns.” Investors who didn’t bail were rewarded.
We have a larger cash/bond allocation, about 55% stocks. The stocks do the heavy lifting while the cash/bonds provides some drag, but we are thoughtful about where we park it. The conventional thinking is that idle money is inefficient. It does not compound. But we like the flexibility cash provides.

And now, as Monty Python might say, “For something completely different….”
Given the recent discussion as to which topics are, and are not, appropriate for HD’s realm of finance and retirement, let me first give my defense of an article on the mundane topic of grocery shopping. It’s really pretty simple: For us at least, our weekly expenditures at our friendly local HEB are one of our most substantial fixed costs, probably around $8000 – $10,000 every year.