I have irrefutable evidence that Americans have more stuff than they need, and spend more than necessary on (expensive) items.
The evidence is clear. Walk-in closets and garages stuffed while the cars are in the drive way are the culprits.
I grew up without a walk-in closet, my grandparent’s houses didn’t have walk-closets. In fact in our apartment with five people there were two regular closets. Today in our condo the two of us have three walk-ins filled to the rafters.

IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, you aren’t eager to spend down your investments. What fun is that? Aren’t you curious to see how big your portfolio could grow? Of course, you are.
After my wife and I are gone, my son will have dibs on the money we’ve amassed. We’ve set up a special needs trust to provide him with income when we’re no longer around. My son has no siblings, so we needed the trust to make sure he’s taken care of.

When it comes to managing my fund investments, Morningstar has been my crème de la creme for about 25 years.  It’s comprehensive, hugely informative and reasonably user friendly. It is one of the most responsible and ethical services around, periodically evaluating its usefulness both quantitatively and quantitatively.
Another thumbs up—Morningstar neatly complements Humble Dollar. It encompasses both traditional topics of personal finance like saving for retirement and sophisticated treatment of how to clear long-term investing hurdles like an unlucky sequence of returns.

Math was never my strong subject. In high school I never took algebra or anything beyond arithmetic- there is an archaic word for you. When I ventured into college many years later I had to take a non-credit course in algebra to get accepted. Years later calculus was required. I liked the course so much I took it twice. It didn’t matter that the professor barely spoke English. I didn’t understand her or the subject.
Here I am 55 years later and still looking for an occasion to use algebra or calculus.

I doubt there are any HumbleDollar readers who buy into the dozen notions listed below. But trust me: There are plenty of folks who do.
Trying to play financial coach to friends or family members? You’ve got your work cut out for you if:

They imagine they can achieve financial freedom without living well below their means.
They believe their car—or any other possession, for that matter—is an investment.
They think it’s easy to beat the stock market averages.

Every three years or so, I can’t resist the temptation to buy disposable razors at Costco. Given the disposables are about $1 each, they are about a third of the price of buying razor cartridges. About a week into the purchase, however, I am reminded why I prefer the cartridges. While more expensive, the cartridges provide a better shave and they last about 3 times as long. While the initial impression I get is that I am getting a bargain,

An earlier discussion on Forum nearly exhausted the debate on the percentage of pre-retirement income needed in retirement. I rarely win the argument, but I press on. 
First, my argument is not replacing income, but base salary. For me base salary was around 60% of total compensation. 
Second, being able to live on say, 50% replacement is easier the higher starting Income. After all, 50% of $300,000 a year is still a hefty amount. 50% of $80,000 working income not so much. 

FROM THE COLOSSEUM in Rome to the palace at Versailles, look around Europe and you’ll find artifacts of once-great empires. What happened to them?
Each faced its own challenges, but there was also a common theme: They had poor financial management and became overburdened by debt. That’s why a recent analysis in The Wall Street Journal—titled “Will Debt Sink the American Empire?”—is worth our attention.
In 2024, the federal government’s budget deficit will come in at $1.9 trillion.

What does it take to be “rich?”  Answering that question is nearly impossible. There are as many answers as Google sites, but after trying, I have settled on being in the top 10% of income and net worth at around $200,000 per year and $2,000,000. Most people think that’s rich.
Keep in mind you can meet the net worth goal even falling short on income. 
What got me thinking about this was reading various social media sites where individuals were complaining about their inability to be wealthy and displayed strong envy over those who were.

I’VE ALWAYS ASSUMED my financial life wasn’t so different from that of others—and that made writing personal-finance articles a whole lot easier. I, too, wanted to own a home, buy the right insurance, pay for the kids’ college, and amass enough for a long and comfortable retirement.
On top of that, I wasn’t some financial minority—a highly paid executive, or a successful business owner, or the recipient of a hefty inheritance. Instead, I was like most everybody else,

On Fidelity.com, under “viewpoints.retirement,” one currently finds a post titled “Create Income That Can Last a Lifetime” (https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/retirement/income-that-can-last-lifetime). At the end of that post, there is a note on “RMDs and annuities,” which states, in part, the following:
The SECURE Act 2.0 that went into effect in January 2023 allows IRA income annuity owners the choice to aggregate their income annuity with their other IRAs for the purposes of determining their required minimum distributions. If you are 73 and older,

Note: This is the third in my Forum series of previously written pieces that I never submitted to the editor for consideration. 
AN INTERNET ARTICLE I printed out over 15 years ago set the work-life balance standard for me. The article has been relegated to the dust bin of cyber space so I can’t link to it or even identify who wrote it. The author discusses a friend who “seems to have found the ultimate sweet spot in his career.”
The friend made a comfortable living working less than 40 hours a week.

IS A 55-PLUS community for you? Do you want to spend your later years surrounded by folks just like yourself—mostly crotchety, demanding old people?
I’m joking, of course. But am I exaggerating?

My wife Connie and I made the move from our New Jersey single-family home to a nearby 55-plus community six years ago. Like the idea of a 55-plus community? Here are some factors to consider.

First, a 55-plus community requires defining. There are several types and sizes,

This is a spinoff of Dick Quinn’s excellent rants post last week.  Bill Maher does a segment at the end of his show called “New Rules”.  It occurred to me that I have some societal rules of my own.  These would be self-enforcing (no citizens’ arrests please) but I am curious what you’d add to this list:
1.You may not look at your phone while driving, ever.  Not even at a red light!  If you need to look at your phone,

CEO pay is a hot topic. Actually we mostly use the term CEO incorrectly because the controversy is about some of the CEOs in the largest 500 companies, not the universe of CEOs. There is a big difference.
I read often that CEO pay drives health insurance premiums. That CEO pay raises the cost of a hamburger, that CEO pay takes from workers pay. 
I find the perceptions people hold of the relationship between CEO compensation and prices and people amazing.