PAUL NEWMAN WAS BEST known as an actor, but he was also passionate about auto racing. He took his hobby seriously, improved his driving skills and won many races, including on his “home track” at Lime Rock, Connecticut.
His wife, actress Joanne Woodward, supported her husband’s auto racing career, but also worried about him. She bought him a Rolex watch to wear when he raced. To personalize the gift, she had an inscription added to the back.

A FEW MONTHS AGO, my wife and I were searching for an exciting diversion on a Saturday evening. It didn’t take long to agree on the perfect experience—logging onto SSA.gov to check out our estimated Social Security benefits.
What’s so thrilling about that? Like many people, Social Security will comprise a key component of our retirement income. Even now, those future funds exert a strong influence on our plans.
Background. I’ll turn age 62 this month and still work full-time.

FOR A FEW YEARS early in my career, I was an internal revenue agent for the IRS. I audited the tax returns of small businessmen, drug dealers, doctors, lawyers, a professional basketball player and everybody in between.
That was 43 years ago, when the IRS was much bigger relative to the population. One result: A larger percentage of the population were subjected to audits.
I saw and heard a lot. Some people would put dogs,

MOST READERS HAVE likely graduated from the vacations of their youth, where they saved a few dollars by sleeping on a friend’s hand-me-down couch. Still, some of my fondest travel memories were shaped by such frugal accommodation.
I once traveled cross-country on a summer camp trip with 48 other teens, touring the greater U.S. in a converted Greyhound bus. It was an eye-opener, visiting such heralded landmarks as the Statue of Liberty and the St.

I RECENTLY STUMBLED on a retirement planning blog listing the top 10 regrets of retirees. Planning for health care costs was among the things that people wish they’d handled differently.
The site had this suggestion: “Before you retire, you should get a reasonable estimate of your health care costs and make sure you can afford them. Medicare does not cover everything and most people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket health care expenses in retirement—not even including funding a long-term-care need.”
This statement is scary—and very misleading.

“I NEVER MEMORIZE anything I can look up.” Albert Einstein, it seems, said this or something similar. I first heard the quote in my freshman physics class. The teacher asked a student to recite a formula. The student’s response: “I never memorize anything I can look up.”
I’ve adopted the same philosophy. My wife loves to point out that I don’t remember the names of streets in our neighborhood. But I don’t need to know them.

IN NEW ORLEANS, a lagniappe refers to a small gift or bonus—like receiving 13 items for the price of 12, or a so-called baker’s dozen. Today, credit card points are a popular form of lagniappe, delivering a modest bonus every time you spend. But many other lagniappes are also readily available:
Banking. If you’ve ever paid a fee to use an ATM, Charles Schwab Bank’s checking account is worth a look. You can use any bank’s ATMs and,

MONEY IS A TOOL. But a tool for what? We might imagine it’s simply a way to purchase the goods and services we need or want. But in truth, there are all kinds of things that money can do for us—some worthy, some not so much.
Want to use your wealth more wisely? I think all of us should spend time pondering what money represents to us, how we use it and why we like to have it.

FOR THE PAST FOUR years, I’ve been dealing with both a revocable and irrevocable trust that my parents created decades ago. In 2020, I knew little about trusts, and my elderly parents weren’t willing or able to share much information with me. In retrospect, I don’t think they fully understood the details of either trust, instead relying on attorneys and financial advisors.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot about trusts. I’ve come to feel they’re unnecessarily complicated and allow unscrupulous advisors to take advantage of well-intentioned,

DURING THE PANDEMIC, I started devoting more time to retirement planning. But I had more questions than answers. I called a friend who was a financial planner.
“Retirement planning is confusing,” I told him. “I have a lot of questions.”
He laughed and said, “The answer is money. What’s the question?”
While his answer was humorous, it reflected what most retirees already know: Money is crucial for a good retirement. While it isn’t the only thing you need for a happy retirement,

KEY PROVISIONS IN 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will expire in 2026 unless Congress steps in. That means folks have a two-year window to prepare.
What’s at stake? Income-tax rates will increase for many taxpayers. This creates an incentive to boost income over the next few years by, say, undertaking Roth conversions to shrink traditional retirement accounts and thereby lowering future required minimum distributions.
The sunsetting of key TCJA provisions would also cut the threshold for federal estate taxes in half,

MY SON AND I WALK the streets of our town, so my son can pick up trash and recyclables. He’s obsessive-compulsive about trash. He impulsively picks it up even if he isn’t wearing gloves or doesn’t have his grabber available. To reduce this behavior, he and I go out daily looking for trash, so he feels there’s less trash out there.
We do find trash, but we also find things that I wouldn’t classify as trash.

THIS IS MY FIRST contribution to HumbleDollar. It may well be my last, for I am no longer old. Rather, I’m ancient and on my way to being archaic.
The vicissitudes of investing are behind me. I now invest for fun, for the data analysis, for following the impact of macro world events on economies, for the thrill of the market rollercoaster, for the intellectual challenge, for the exercise of discipline,

I KNOW FOLKS WHO consider their income to be the best measure of their wealth. Income, however, doesn’t gauge whether you’re making headway toward financial independence.
What does? My financial statement provides everything I need to measure my progress. At the end of each December, I gather the dollar amounts for my assets and liabilities, and assemble the details on a spreadsheet that compares my current standing with prior years. If you’re inspired to do the same,

THIS ISN’T ANOTHER article about dreaming of retirement. Rather, it’s about dreaming in retirement.
I retired in 2017 after practicing criminal law in central Texas for almost four decades. It could be stressful at times. Before that, there were long years in college and law school.
College was relatively easygoing and enjoyable in the laid-back Austin of the 1970s, plus my major was sociology—a world apart from those in pre-med,