MY FATHER DIED WHEN I was 15 years old. My mother didn’t work outside the house, so we now had no money coming in. She eventually got a job as a receptionist in the local hospital’s X-ray department, but she only worked weekends and holidays. Meanwhile, by then, my older brother was married and out of the house, so he wasn’t affected by this change in our family’s financial circumstances.
As I saw it,

I WAS BORN ON THIS day in 1943. Today, I must acknowledge being old. I remember, years ago, scanning the obituaries and checking the age at death. Seventy-five seemed like a good run. Not anymore it doesn’t.

At age 40, I gave up the occasional pipe and vowed, if I made it to 80, I’d take it up again. That’s not going to happen. Not smoking may be a factor in getting this far.

STEIN’S LAW STATES that, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” It’s named for Herbert Stein, an economist who was influential in the 1970s and served as chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors.
Stein first made this comment when he saw government debt growing to what he felt was an unsustainable level. While half-joking in the way he put it, Stein was making a serious observation: Trends rarely last forever.

HERE’S SOMETHING that’ll surprise exactly zero readers: I’m a planner. Even though I haven’t yet fully retired, I’m already worrying about how short the active part of my retirement will be.
For this, I blame my fellow HumbleDollar writers, as well as those who post comments. Many folks who are active on the site are older than me, and they’ve given me a sneak peek at what lies ahead. One thing I’ve learned: At some point between age 75 and 80,

WHEN I WAS GROWING up, my father would drag me to his office in lower Manhattan a couple of Saturdays each month. He always claimed it was to teach me “the value of a dollar.”
He was raised below the poverty line, and felt my mother spoiled me and that I needed to learn what it meant to work. I now realize he was right, but back then I thought he just wanted an audience who he could then impress with his business exploits.

MY WIFE AND I BOUGHT a used hybrid Toyota RAV4 recently. We saw it at a dealership and bought it that day.
This wasn’t an impulse purchase. We knew it was time to replace my 10-year-old Subaru Forester, and we’d done research on hybrids and electric vehicles. Because the new car would be our distance traveling vehicle, and my occasional work transportation, we wanted the flexibility of a hybrid. In time, we’ll replace our second car with an electric vehicle for local driving.

STUDENT LOANS ARE a hot topic—one that’s fraught with confusion and complexity. Still, many borrowers should consider taking action this year. Want to get a better handle on what’s happening? Let’s start with three changes that have lately been in the spotlight:

Federal student loan payments, along with the interest charged, were paused from March 2020 to September 2023. That gave borrowers more than three years to make principal-only payments or, alternatively, to potentially accrue credit toward loan forgiveness without the need to make payments.

MY DAD LIVED TO BE age 92 and my mom is going strong at 95. I was involved with my father’s care as he struggled with dementia, and I continue to assist my mother, who still lives independently.
Helping an elderly family member? Here are 16 important lessons that I’ve learned.
1. Don’t be blind. My dad started developing dementia five years before his cognitive ability totally fell off a cliff. No one in the family wanted to recognize his deterioration,

I RECENTLY FINISHED reading the second edition of William Bernstein’s The Four Pillars of Investing—twice. This new edition is a significant rewrite of the first edition that was published in 2002. Even if you’ve read the first edition, reading the second edition is worth your time.
Though I’ve read most of the books written by well-known investment luminaries familiar to HumbleDollar readers, there were still pearls of wisdom I gathered from this second edition.

HOW DO YOU COMPETE in an investment contest when you’re a firm believer that investors can’t consistently beat the market averages? That was my dilemma several years ago.
A school not far from where I taught was given money by an alumnus to endow the St. Louis Area Collegiate Investment Contest. All colleges and universities in the area are invited to participate in the competition, which is held regularly. Each is given a hypothetical $1 million and asked to select 20 value stocks.

WHEN I WAS NINE years old, I managed a diversified portfolio—and yet I knew nothing of stocks and bonds. My primary asset classes matched those of my peers: coins, baseball cards and stamps.
Rather than a brokerage firm, we had the Koin Korner, a fairly large store in our nearby shopping mall that sold coins, stamps and a few other collectibles. And instead of following the gyrations of the stock market in The Wall Street Journal,

“I ALWAYS MADE EVERY team I tried out for,” lamented a college freshman after failing to make the lacrosse team.
I tried to make him feel better. “I never made any teams,” I said.
His reply: “You’re used to failing. I’m not.”
That response took me by surprise. But I thought about it, and realized he was right. I had struggled all my life in academics, sports, socializing and with the opposite sex. I was getting used to others around me always being better.

A KEY CONUNDRUM FOR investors: On the one hand, the data on tactical trading are clear. Frequent portfolio shifts are a bad idea and can damage returns. On the other hand, we shouldn’t be so wedded to the status quo that we’re unwilling to ever make a change.
With this conundrum in mind, it was notable when investor and author Howard Marks declared a “sea change” in the investment landscape and recommended that investors revamp their portfolios.

I’VE LONG THOUGHT that my life has gotten better as I’ve grown older. At age 72, I can honestly say the past few years have been the best time of my life. I’ve never been this happy.
But I’m beginning to believe that my best years may soon be behind me. Maybe from here on things will trend in the other direction—because what makes me happy might be hard to hold on to as I age.

MY FIRST ACT IN retirement was to turn off my phone at night. The second was to change my socks. More about the socks in a moment.
I’m an Episcopal priest. My decades of fulltime active service were spent leading several parishes. Upon retirement, turning off my phone at night meant I was no longer readying myself for emergencies and crises. My wife—and our children in the early years—would no longer have me leaving suddenly because something awful was unfolding in the lives of others.