MOST OF US REACH a point in retirement where we think about downsizing. This happened most recently for us when my husband was replacing batteries in our smoke alarms. This required him to stand on a ladder and look up, triggering a bout of vertigo.

This and other elder episodes, happening as we try to perform simple, everyday tasks, caused us to rethink our ability to remain in our current home. We’re not decrepit yet,

MY AFFINITY FOR spreadsheets began in the late 1960s when I was a paperboy in Virginia Beach. I had a morning route for The Virginian-Pilot and an afternoon route for the now-defunct Ledger-Star. I used my Huffy bicycle with huge baskets front and back.
The business model was straightforward. I paid wholesale for the papers, and customers paid the retail price of 35 cents per week, or 55 cents if they also got the Sunday paper.

RACHAEL AND I WENT to Walmart the other day to stock up on dog food—and came away with a severe case of sticker shock.
We feed our two dogs a daily menu of dry food mixed into a delightful mash with a little canned wet food. Our go-to brands are Purina Dog Chow for the dry food and Pedigree Chopped Ground Dinner for the wet food.
The cost of the 40-pound bag of Purina dry food has barely budged.

WE JUST PURCHASED a new car. The whole buying process has been upended by the pandemic and today’s chip shortage, and we learned seven important lessons.
My wife and I view car buying as an unavoidable chore. We know financial experts recommend buying a car that’s a few years old, so someone else takes the big hit on the initial depreciation. We haven’t done that. We like to buy a new vehicle and keep it for 15 or 20 years.

I WAS A RABID football fan as a kid. I would sweep across our front lawn, fantasizing about the many and varied ways I would run to daylight for Hewlett High School. But when I finally got the chance, I lasted only a few practices. I hadn’t counted on all the bruises that came with the program.
So, too, was it with my brief stint as an independent investment advisor affiliated with a large discount broker.

DID YOU KNOW THAT more than 500 retired ballplayers aren’t receiving pensions for their time playing Major League Baseball? It’s true.
Today, the average salary per player is $3.7 million a year and even the last man on the bench receives a minimum salary of $700,000—and yet many old-timers are getting shafted by the sport they loved to play.
The story goes back more than four decades. During the 1980 Memorial Day weekend,

IN MY ONGOING EFFORT to reduce our accumulated stuff, I was trolling through our collection of old thumb drives to see what I should download, save or toss. Among them, I discovered the 258-page presentation from a two-day retirement course that my old employer sponsored in 2006.
I wondered how the advice had—17 years on—stood the test of time. As I reviewed it, I found some excellent suggestions and some that were lacking, though I hesitate to fault the presentation’s authors.

THERE’S SOMETHING ODD going on in the housing market. Mortgage rates are appreciably higher than they were a year ago, but home prices—on average—have yet to fall. As of the most recent reading, prices continue to rise on a year-over-year basis. It reminds me of the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote, who experiences a delayed reaction every time he runs off the edge of a cliff. It’s only after he looks down that he realizes he has a problem.

I SPENT NINE YEARS at English boarding schools. The food was beyond disgusting. The buildings were cold and drafty. I was constantly bullied. I would go as long as 14 weeks at a time without seeing my parents, who were based first in Bangladesh and then Washington, D.C.
But I also knew I was getting a good education, and I opted to stay when I had the chance to return home and go to the local U.S.

IT ALL STARTED WITH a purchase alert. With so much account hacking, we have alerts on our phones for every new purchase, so we can immediately respond if there’s an unauthorized transaction. What we didn’t know was that disputing charges can be so Kafkaesque.
My wife Jiab asked if I had just purchased anything online from Walmart. I had not. There were two suspect charges, each for about $50, simultaneously charged to our Chase and Capital One credit cards.

HAVE YOU THOUGHT about what made you the person you are—the way you think about money, life, your behaviors, your likes and dislikes? When I look at my own life, I can clearly see the impact of my childhood.

My mother and grandmother made a lot of my and my sister’s clothes. I recall those paper dress patterns all over the apartment. Is that why I dislike shopping for clothes? I’m happy to let my wife and daughter decide what I should wear.

I MADE A MAJOR change late in my career, leaving behind my job as a financial manager at a dying computer business. I knew I needed to change. If I didn’t, there was a good chance I’d soon be out of work.
My new job, however, wasn’t what I expected.
I’d been with the computer company since graduating college. I was in my mid-50s and smart enough financially to know I still needed more savings for a successful retirement.

YOU LOVE THEM LIKE family. You want them to have the best care possible. You have insurance for yourself, your family, your home, your car and your upcoming vacation. Why not for your pet?
One of our friends recently opted for pet insurance—after multiple trips to the vet, with more than 20 medications prescribed. Intrigued by the idea of pet insurance? Here are eight choices and what they offer:

Pets Best covers everything, including medications,

EVERYTHING I KNOW about managing money I learned in court. As part of my legal practice, I represent people involved in disputes over money or property. These can include claims against financial advisors for alleged misconduct, contested wills and trust disputes, and family members at odds over a family business.
These disputes can teach us important personal finance lessons. Here are four lessons—learned the hard way—from four cases my firm handled. All are based on an actual case,

WHEN I TOLD MY employer I was retiring, I received phone calls from coworkers I hadn’t heard from in years. One of them was Peter. We were hired about the same time.
Peter congratulated me, and said he’d be retiring too—if he’d joined the company’s pension plan. For some reason, like a few of my other coworkers, he never took advantage of the benefit, which required employees to make regular payroll contributions.
Peter did retire about five years later.