HOW MUCH DO WE PAY for Medicare? You might think that premiums would be fixed, like the prices on a restaurant menu. But instead, the correct answer is “it all depends”—on your income, which isn’t necessarily a good thing in our case.
It’s a fact of life: The more you make, the more you may have to pay for Medicare, the health insurance program for older Americans. Medicare calls its variable pricing system the income-related monthly adjustment amount,

I RECENTLY COMPLETED a course called England: From the Fall of Rome to the Norman Conquest. Before that was Books That Matter: The Federalist Papers. Okay, I’m a nerd, I’ll admit it.
Since I retired, I’ve looked for avenues to broaden and deepen my understanding of subjects that I was taught in high school and at the liberal arts college I attended. Back then, there were college courses,

I NEVER PLANNED TO retire at age 53. I wasn’t an early adopter of the FIRE, or financial independence-retire early, philosophy. In fact, I didn’t start saving seriously until my late 30s, when I left my first husband and finally realized that—unlike pensions in my native U.K.—my U.S. pension didn’t come with an annual cost-of-living adjustment.

Instead, three developments in the late 1990s led me to consider quitting. First, I was no longer enjoying my job.

I’VE DECIDED TO SELL some of my investments and buy a Bentley. The one I admire would cost about $300,000, including taxes and fees.
Just kidding. Besides, I couldn’t face my four children after such an indecent splurge, knowing that they’re dealing with high-deductible health plans, saving for college and socking away money for retirement—just like millions of other Americans.
While that Bentley purchase would be possible in theory, it would substantially reduce my assets,

THIS SIMPLE EQUATION is arguably the most important in personal finance: income – expenses = savings.
Think back to your early paychecks. Most of your after-tax salary likely went toward housing, food and maybe a few debt payments. For many of us, little was available to save each month for the first year or two of our working lives.
Then one day, on the last day of the month, there was money left over.

AS I MENTIONED IN an earlier article, I’ve been writing for HumbleDollar since 2017. Along the way, I set a personal goal of writing 100 articles, not counting the 36 shorter blog posts I’ve penned. This is my 99th article. I’m almost there.
It may not seem like a lofty goal to many people, but to me it’s been a challenge. After I wrote my first article, it took me a year to write another one.

IN 2014, AN INVESTOR asked Charlie Munger—Warren Buffett’s second-in-command—why he wasn’t investing in Apple. Munger responded that, “No matter what their financial statements showed,” he’d never have a high degree of confidence in the company. “It’s just too hard.”
Buffett agreed. But things changed. Today, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is Apple’s third-largest shareholder, with holdings valued at more than $150 billion.
What should we conclude from Buffett’s about-face? In recent weeks, I’ve referenced studies on market timing and trading.

MY PORTFOLIO HAS bounced back nicely from October 2022’s stock market low—and that’s a problem: I’ve learned over the decades that I’m not good at handling prosperity.
At issue is the question of when to rebalance my portfolio, in this case selling stocks and buying bonds to bring them back into line with my target percentages. Among experts, there’s no agreed-upon strategy, which is almost an invitation to bad behavior. We investors do better with hard-and-fast rules.

ON JUNE 15, THE NEWS was broken by The Oregonian of a massive hack at Oregon’s Department of Motor Vehicles, apparently leading to the theft of sensitive details about most of Oregon’s 3.5 million holders of a driver’s license or ID card. Incidents like this, along with the huge 2017 Equifax hack, give criminals cheap and easy access to key personal information that many organizations routinely use to verify our identities and screen our credit applications.

I HAVE WRITTEN THIS article about bourbon because, when HumbleDollar’s editor previously asked me to write about my travels, I thought, “Hey, if someone wants to pay me $60 to write about travel, I’m in. I’m hoping he’ll next suggest I write an article about drinking bourbon.”
Sadly, this site’s editor didn’t ask me to write about bourbon. But I went ahead anyway.
I “spiritually” came of age when I was 19 years old.

WOULDA, COULDA, SHOULDA are part of every retiree’s investment vocabulary. I’ve certainly had my share of bloopers.
Too often, we writers stand up here and pontificate about our exploits, leaving readers feeling they couldn’t possibly do the same. With an eye toward leveling the playing field, I thought I’d divulge two of my biggest blunders.
Error of commission. Using the royalties from her husband’s high school Spanish textbooks, my mother-in-law Rose began to accumulate municipal bonds in the late 1970s.

ONE RECENT TREND among newly minted retirees: unretirement. According to an AARP study, some 3% of retirees are back in the workforce one year later, taking on either fulltime or part-time jobs. Often, unretiring wasn’t part of the retiree’s original plan—but we shouldn’t assume it’s necessarily about needing money.
Starbucks’s Howard Schultz, quarterback Tom Brady and Disney’s Bob Iger are poster children for unretiring. Even our HumbleDollar world includes many examples of those who have reinvented,

MOST OF US HAVE TOO much stuff, and we’re apt to joke about it. But clutter, if allowed to spiral out of control, can turn into hoarding.

Hoarders are people who acquire an excessive number of items, some with little or no value, and yet they continue to add to their chaotic overflow. Unable to manage the clutter but unwilling to let any of it go, they become upset and anxious when others offer to help clear it up.

I FOUND OUT A YEAR ago that my Aunt Ina Lou, then aged 95, had designated me as her agent in her financial and medical powers of attorney. She also named me as executor of her estate and the trustee for her trust.
She wasn’t well and needed more help than her thoughtful neighbors could provide. Within months, my brother, my wife and I had our aunt settled in an assisted living facility near her townhome in Burke,

OUR FIVE KIDS SPENT a collective 24 years in college. All five have bachelor’s degrees, and three also have master’s degrees. The youngest graduated May 2023. Only one child qualified for non-merit aid—a $300 Pell grant.
My wife and I didn’t give them money for college. We don’t live near a major public university, so four of the five had to live on campus. Here’s what prepared them for college and how to pay for it.