WE USUALLY HAVE Chinese food every Wednesday. It’s our weekly night out for dinner. While waiting outside our favorite restaurant for a table, I heard my wife call out, “Hey, Doe, our table is ready.” That’s what my wife calls me. It’s my new name. She used to call me Dodo. Now, she’s shortened it to Doe.
How did this nickname come about? One day, I called myself a dodo for a silly mistake I’d made.

I SPENT ALMOST 43 years either on active duty or in the reserves for the Navy and Army. Yes, I’ve been around.
The following is my list of the top 17 items—including some pertinent financial details—that might surprise those who have never served in the military.
No. 1: Our primary mission is not to fight wars. Instead, it’s to be so big, so bad, so mean, so well equipped, so well trained and so well led that any potential enemy in its right mind wouldn’t want to fight us.

“CLEAN YOUR PLATE.” “You’ll eat what’s for dinner and like it.” “There are children starving in Africa.”

Those are lines I often heard as a child. I guess my parents weren’t aware of hunger in the U.S.—or the long-term damage to our waistlines and health that such clean-your-plate advice could have.

Still, at least we weren’t squandering food, which is a big problem these days. Each year, 80 million tons of food are wasted in the U.S.

I’VE NEVER RENTED TO cats. The opportunity came my way recently via an email from my property manager. An elderly couple was interested in renting our flagship duplex, which would become available in August.
The prospects were smitten by the location near their church and grandchildren, and they seemed like a landlord’s dream. No undergraduate mayhem and no complaints from neighbors about beer cans strewn on the front lawn. They were also likely long-term renters,

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE of life? Is it to die with as much money as possible or, as magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes was quoted as saying, “He who dies with the most toys, wins”? An intriguing and provocative book, Die With Zero, says no.
The book’s author is Bill Perkins, a successful energy trader. In it, he argues that the purpose of life is to accumulate as many fulfilling experiences as possible,

NO QUESTION, MANAGING an investment portfolio is tricky. On the one hand, you want stock market exposure to help drive your portfolio’s performance. But on the other, it’s agonizing when the market drops 30% or 50%—or more—as it’s done on several occasions.
How can investors strike the right balance? Like most things in personal finance, there isn’t one right answer. In general, investors can choose one of five approaches when building a portfolio.
1.

THERE ARE ALL KINDS of financial talents that seem desirable. Who wouldn’t want a knack for finding undervalued stocks, identifying star fund managers, and figuring out which way the stock and bond markets are headed? The problem: While some folks may briefly appear to possess these talents, it usually turns out that their apparent prescience was nothing more than dumb luck.
Where does that leave us? Forget the obvious but elusive financial superpowers, and focus on those that—with a little work—are available to all of us.

DRIVE A BEATER. That’s what my coworker Neil admonished us to do. He explained that this was a key strategy on the path to financial freedom. Neil, as you might recall from one of my earlier articles, was the colleague who warned about the perils of funding a 401(k) plan.
All you really need is something to get you from point A to point B, Neil said, and consistently spending money on expensive cars simply meant you’d be forced to stay in the workforce longer.

IT’S BEEN A YEAR since New Jersey banned all plastic bags from grocery stores, and yet I’m still wandering into our local store without my reusable bags. You would think I’d have gotten the memo by now.

I used to keep the bags in the trunk of my car—but out of sight, out of mind. As a visual reminder, I now keep them inside my car on the passenger side. But they might as well still be in the trunk.

“WHERE’S THE QUALIFIED charitable distribution on Mom’s tax return?” Mom had never before executed a qualified charitable distribution, or QCD. Her tax return was 41 pages, and we weren’t sure where to find it.
There was a long pause. “I forgot your mom had made QCDs as I prepared her return,” allowed her tax preparer. “I’ll need to recalculate her taxes.”
A QCD can be a tax-efficient way to donate money for those who are charitably inclined—but only if it’s correctly documented on your tax return.

DON’T CONFUSE THREATS to your happiness with financial threats.
For instance, it would be devastating if one of your children died at a young age, and no doubt that’s why some folks buy life insurance on their children’s lives. But while the death of a child is a threat to your happiness, is it a threat to your finances? It’s terrible to say it, but just the opposite is true: You’d probably be better off financially.

MY WIFE HAS PLANS for retirement. Travel plans. For too many years, she’s lived a mostly travel-free life. We’ve logged just a few short excursions to hither and yon.
Yes, there have been reasons for this dearth of travel that were largely beyond our control. But her biggest obstacle has been—and continues to be—me. I’m mostly a homebody, and I’ve been reluctant to change my ways.
My wife didn’t choose to love traveling. Rather,

ONE OF THE MORE challenging changes that comes with retirement is the loss of your employer’s health care benefits—and I’m not just talking about regular health insurance. Two other benefits that employers commonly provide are dental and vision coverage.
Traditional Medicare doesn’t cover common dental procedures, such as cleanings, fillings, extractions, dentures, dental plates and other dental devices. Medicare also doesn’t cover the cost of eyeglasses, lenses or contacts, which many of us were used to obtaining using our employer’s vision coverage.

I’VE SEEN FINANCIAL advisors do great work and I’ve seen them do poor work. Which brings me to my late father’s experience.
Dad was a heck of a small businessman. Starting in 1956, he and his partner sold and serviced radios, televisions, appliances and furniture. Forty years later, he sold the business to four of my brothers.
By the mid-1960s, Dad had accumulated what was for him a small fortune. This was the time of the stock market’s so-called go-go years.

MY CONTENTION: ONE of the most egregious parts of the tax code is the stealth tax on Social Security benefits.
To be sure, if your income is low enough, your benefits won’t be taxed. But around 56% of retired Americans pay taxes on up to 85% of their Social Security benefits. And the number grows each year. Incomes rise, if only because of inflation-driven increases, and yet the thresholds for taxing benefits have never been adjusted for inflation or wage growth.