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.

JOY DOESN’T COME easily to me. I tend to default toward melancholy, so I try to ensure my discretionary purchases bring as much happiness as possible.
Like many readers, I’m a firm believer that buying experiences sparks more joy than buying stuff. The dollars we’ve spent on family vacations, sporting events, church mission trips and, more recently, escape rooms—worth trying sometime—have created memories that’ll last a lifetime. Yet obviously not all of our discretionary money is spent on experiences.

I GOT CAUGHT UP IN some weird investment fads during the recent era of 0% interest rates. With cash investments and bonds yielding almost nothing, I instead sought to pad my investment returns by opening new brokerage accounts to snag promotion cash, and by dabbling in digital currencies and newfangled alternative investments.
Result? I ended up with far too many financial accounts—and it became a burden to keep track of everything. Just a year ago,

WHAT DO WALL STREET analysts, magazine editors, economists and academics have in common? They’ve all found it virtually impossible to make accurate market forecasts. That’s why Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle gave this advice to investors: When markets go haywire, “Don’t do something. Just stand there.”
Warren Buffett has given the same advice. In 2008, here’s how he explained it: “In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts;

AS FOLKS HURTLE toward retirement, they often wonder whether they’ve saved enough, debate when to claim Social Security and fret about how they’d pay for long-term care. Make no mistake: Such issues are hugely important.
But amid these financial musings, we should also spare a thought for four other questions:
How can I transform myself from a diligent saver to a happy spender? This sounds so easy, and yet many struggle with it,

WHEN I WAS ASSIGNED a high school essay on business morals, I asked my dad if he knew of any books on the topic.
“No, Stevie, I don’t. From what I’ve seen in New York real estate, it would be a very thin book.”
For more than 40 years, that cynical quip has haunted me, coloring my view of rental real estate. I’m not emotionally suited to being a landlord. But I wanted real estate as a stock market diversifier—and I was drawn to the benefits of combining rental income with stock market dividends.

IN MY LAST ARTICLE, I wrote about how Harvard and other colleges are offering programs to help growth-oriented retirees find new meaning and purpose. Having a sense of purpose improves our quality of life and provides a sense of well-being.
But most of us, including this writer, can’t afford Harvard’s program. That’s why I’m going to show you how to find your main reason for being within the comfort of your own home—using the ikigai method.

FINANCIAL FRAUD against Americans age 60 and older costs $3 billion a year, and the average loss per incident is $120,000, according to a 2020 study by the AARP Public Policy Institute. And scams against older Americans are increasing. The FBI reports that losses more than doubled from 2019 to 2021 and internet swindles against elderly victims rose 84% in 2022.
My wife was the target of a fraud and you may have been,

I RECENTLY LISTENED to an interesting Hidden Brain podcast discussing different ways of bringing about behavior change. The guest on the podcast was Loran Nordgren, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and coauthor of a book entitled The Human Element. The discussion centered on two related concepts: fuel and friction.
Fuel is the stuff we use to motivate ourselves and the people in our lives. It can be positive or negative.

IF MEDICARE’S A MAZE, its Part D drug plan is a maze within a maze, with no one good path and plenty of so-so choices, along with a couple of potential “gotchas.”

Until 2006, Medicare offered no coverage for outpatient drugs, so today’s situation—however imperfect—is certainly an improvement. It’ll improve even more for people with high drug costs in 2024 and 2025, as I’ll explain at the end of this article.

What if you have Medicare Advantage,

THE PROLIFIC MR. QUINN recently wrote that people who were irresponsible in one area of their life, such as failing to return shopping carts, also tend to be irresponsible in other areas, like managing their finances. He’s probably right. Still, I’ve had times when, even though I’m a “responsible person”—I’ve had a successful career, my kids lived to grow up, and so forth—I nonetheless had pockets of disorder in my life.
For me, the two biggest areas of chaos were managing money and maintaining a healthy diet and exercise regimen.

AS I WROTE THIS STORY, the word count kept climbing and climbing because it has more twists and turns than a detective novel. It was so long I was afraid no one would read it, not even my mother. So, here is a condensed version of what I wanted to say.
The hardest transition for some folks as they reach retirement is to go from a saver to a spender of what they’ve saved.

PEOPLE WHO INVEST in the stock market and people who bet on horses both hope to win. I expected the efficiency and behavioral finance factors that rule the stock market to have similar effects on horse betting. Instead, I found just the opposite.
The story begins 40 years ago. A few years after we were married, I suggested to my wife that we spend a day at the fabled Saratoga Race Course in Upstate New York and watch the thoroughbreds run.