When it comes to Social Security we hear:
Congress stole the trust fund and never paid it back
I paid taxes and thus paid for my own benefits 
If we didn’t pay benefits to people not eligible, there would not be a problem.
Social Security is a scam, a Ponzi scheme. 
Why doesn’t the trust earn interest?
Health insurance misinformation is even worse:
I feel like health insurance should be free, like it is in other places.

On 12/02/2025 the IRS issued Notice 2025-68 which is a notice of intent to issue regulations with respect to section 530A Trump accounts that will become active no sooner than July 4, 2026, one year after the signing of the legislation  commonly referred to as OBBBA. Thus the IRS is in the very early stages of the writing of the tax rules as this 44 page notice is not proposed regulations or final regulations but largely a question and answer format of IRS preliminary thinking and intent to propose regulations providing guidance.

Jonathan used to chastise me for saying that I thought a good goal for retirement income was to replace 100% of base pay or salary- excluding overtime and any form of bonuses. 
I was making a suggestion, opinion, not suggesting a requirement because given most people don’t reach that goal, it is obviously not required even while desirable. 
However, that’s the way Connie and I live. In fact, between my pension and our combined social security,

A just published article in the Harvard Gazette touches on many of the concerns brought up by HD posters and commenters in recent months. It consists of an interview with John Y. Campbell, an economics professor and co-author, with Tarun Ramadorai, of a new book: Fixed: Why Personal Finance is Broken and How to Make it Work for Everyone. The article treats why it is currently so hard to save for retirement, how the complexity of the financial system fosters inequality,

Vanguard has announced it will be offering an annuity option to 401k plan sponsors next year. It will allow the participant nearing retirement to elect a portion of their account to be an annuity payment.
Let’s hope plan sponsors add the option
A steady income stream and still keep investments. I have been advocating for this for years.
HALLELUJAH ‼️‼️‼️

I was catching up with one of my former employees recently, someone who’d been critical to my business for years. She left a few weeks after I sold the company and has moved into a senior managerial role elsewhere. As we were wrapping up our conversation, she laughed and said she had to get back to being a productive member of society. Then she headed off to work.
It was meant as a joke, obviously. But it stuck with me.

MY RETIREMENT HAS been wonderful so far. Honestly, sometimes I have to stop and remind myself how lucky I am. Rachel and I have our health and enjoy each other’s company, which is not always true when a couple retires. However, there are four things that concern me as I reach my mid-70s.
Loneliness
I tried calling Mark, my old high school friend, a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t heard from him.

Although well past retirement age, I was always gadget oriented and fascinated by the evolution of consumer electronics. For the past several years, I have been working part-time at a national retail electronics chain advising customers how to buy computers, printers and digital cameras. With the introduction of artificial intelligence in computers, I wanted to point out a few features in the new computers for anyone thinking about replacing an older unit or who has not been in the market for a while.
 

This morning on the elevator Connie and I were commiserating with a friend, a fellow octogenarian, we exchanged the normal pleasantries-how are you, how’s it going, what’s new, how are you feeling? “Can’t complain” was the standard answer.
But then he said … “they lied to us, where are the Golden Years?”
Have we been duped by advertising? “Golden years” refers to the later years of life, typically retirement-originally in the context of age 65,

Yesterday an involuntary chuckle escaped my mouth. I hadn’t entirely lost the plot and descended into madness—I happened to be thinking about my financial arrangements for the first few years of my recent retirement and in retrospect, I found them amusing.
On Humble Dollar we all, I assume, like to think of ourselves as rational and reasonably “on the ball” when it comes to our retirement portfolio and finances. One of my choices makes me question my right to claim the same ability.

I’m gifting a Wall Street Journal article on the share of AI company debt in the bond market. Just as AI is becoming an ever-growing share of the S&P500, it is becoming a bigger share of the bond market. I have already shifted money from the S&P500 to the rest of the market, and to an international fund, now I’m wondering whether I should do the same for bonds.
Since my asset allocation is 50% stocks,

I’ll go to with the basics, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But if you look at the popular rhetoric on social media and from several senior advocacy groups, you will see “we” deserve more, we earned it, we paid our dues. “We” being seniors, the elderly.
I don’t feel that way at all. I don’t want to see more resources diverted to those of us who were fortunate to achieve those age designations, especially at the expense of the younger generation,

As a younger reader not of traditional retirement age, I am interested in learning more about the financial subscriptions HD readers are willing (or would recommend to others) to pay for such as financial periodicals, journalism, software, etc. For example, I have enjoyed for years Wall Street Journal and some Bloomberg journalism. I didn’t find Kiplinger subscriptions to be of value to me. There have been some discussion threads that mentioned free retirement calculation software that I appreciated.

Drleftys comment on a recent thread about retirement anxiety got me thinking: Dana isn’t alone in this. Why does the early”golden age” so often feel more like free-fall, and what can we do about it?
For decades, you’ve been sold the vision: retirement is the ultimate prize. A perpetual vacation where the most stressful decision is whether the day starts with a third cup of coffee or a walk in the park. But for many who actually arrive there,

In a couple of weeks I’ll turn 85. As far as my financial acumen goes, I owe a lot to my Dad. Back in the 40’s he was already investing in the Market and he also did his own taxes as well as those of our neighbors where I grew up in the Bronx. He and my Mom managed to actually save some money even though he never made the big bucks. The secret was to live within your means and to spend your money wisely
With those lessons in mind,