I BEGAN TRYING TO figure out the laws related to retirement and employee benefits after the enactment of ERISA in 1974. I spent endless hours over many years in lawyers’ offices in Washington, D.C., as each new law or regulation came along.

TEFRA, DEFRA and COBRA are but a few of the many laws that now confound Americans. I bet most people think COBRA was only about health insurance. In fact, it’s the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.

WHEN I FIRST LOOKED at the issue of portfolio withdrawals more than two decades ago, many financial experts suggested retirees follow a simple strategy: spend taxable account money first, traditional retirement accounts next and Roth accounts last. That way, you’d squeeze more years of tax-deferred growth out of your traditional retirement accounts, and even more out of your tax-free Roth.
If only things were so simple today.
Why have portfolio withdrawals become more complicated?

DON’T LET PREDICTIONS cloud your thinking. When my husband and I first started investing, that was the wisest advice we received. You know the sort of predictions I’m talking about: “It’ll be a bad year for the stock market, so you should pull all your money out,” or “bitcoin is going through the roof, so stock up now.”
Last year, I decided to make a note of some of the predictions I read, and put them in my followup file for the beginning of this year.

“DOES MONEY BUY happiness?” That’s one of the questions in HumbleDollar’s Forum section. I hesitate to say that happiness is a commodity we can buy. But studies—and many people’s personal experiences—suggest a lack of money can bring on unhappiness.
A recent paper, “Financial Stress and Depression in Adults” by researchers at the University of Birmingham in England, supports this conclusion. The researchers reviewed 40 studies examining the relationship between depression and financial stress,

JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS, I had a call scheduled with a financial planning client to discuss investment and tax strategies, with an eye to making sure everything was squared away before year-end.
This client is a retired executive who was successful because of her attention to detail. Her retirement is no different. She’s savvy and loves to get into the weeds of financial planning. As a financial nerd, that’s fine with me.
Naturally, given her personality,

I GREW UP IN a blue-collar family. When money was tight, one strategy my dad used to improve the situation was simple but effective. Overtime, time-and-a-half and double-time were all terms I heard frequently throughout my childhood.

In this Iowa factory town, those words can still be regularly heard at the taverns, bowling alley and family get-togethers. Overtime is the gift that can make a low-paying factory job worthwhile. Time-and-a-half turns that $12 job into a far more palatable $18 an hour,

I BEGAN WRITING for HumbleDollar in early 2020. As a market junkie, but one who’s also deeply curious about personal finance, I was already a regular reader of the site.
Since then, I’ve contributed roughly 140 pieces. My articles and blog posts often focus on the financial markets and long-term investing, with a nod toward the financial independence movement. What do my 10 favorite posts have in common? They’re mostly focused on macro trends and my own financial journey.

I GRADUATED FROM college in 2007, shortly before the economy was brought to its knees by the Great Recession. I worked in asset management for Macerich (symbol: MAC), a publicly traded real estate investment trust. During the panic, the company’s share price plunged from $92 to $5.
There was fear in the markets. You might even say mass hysteria. Our executives were mostly miserable because their stock options were underwater. Waves of layoffs ensued.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA told Vanity Fair, “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
He believed that spending mental energy to make an inconsequential decision about clothes early in the day might lead to a bad decision on a consequential matter for the country later in the day.

IF YOU’RE A HISTORY buff, you know how difficult life was during the 1930s. In our modern American world of plenty, it can be hard to appreciate what life was like during that period. The Great Depression, as it was later dubbed, was a time of incredible strife and struggle.
Today, we have an unemployment rate of less than 4%. During the 1930s, it reached 25% in the U.S. Think about that. A quarter of the country was looking for work to feed their family,

I’M ANNOYED BY THE financial independence-retire early movement, otherwise known as FIRE. Most annoying are the FIRE bloggers who present their fantasy world of radically early retirement, but don’t like to be questioned, challenged or criticized. As if I’d ever do that.

FIRE folks typically have a few things in common. They were high-income earners before “retiring” and their households usually had two incomes. They’re willing—indeed eager—to embrace a frugal, nontraditional lifestyle, sometimes outside the U.S.

WHAT DO BEN FRANKLIN, Charles Darwin and David Cassidy all have in common? All have advised us not to waste life’s precious time.
Almost everything about money translates into time. Money can buy us time—either more free time or more time spent on higher-value activities. Money can purchase a nicer house or car, a luxury vacation, greater financial support for our children, fun toys or experiences, reduced financial stress—and, eventually, a comfortable retirement. The financial independence-retire early,

I’VE BEEN ENGAGING IN the same end-of-the-year ritual for decades. Right after Christmas, I take a day or two—preferably away from home—to reflect, pray, meditate and write in my journal about the past year and the year that lies ahead.

It’s a time for me to think about what I’ve done, what I haven’t done and what I hope to do in the new year. In this review, I include my financial, spiritual, emotional and physical lives.

LAST WEEK, I TALKED about Carveth Read, the English philosopher who’s famous for saying, “It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.” This, in my view, is one of the most important ideas in personal finance.
My focus last week was on the “vaguely right” part of Read’s statement. But what about the second part—the importance of not being “exactly wrong”? Below are seven situations in which trying to be exactly right might,

I’M AN 81-YEAR-OLD retired radiologist. Early in my medical career, I realized my stock broker was managing my account for his benefit, not mine. I fired him and took charge of managing my own investments.
Today, I have four granddaughters who are starting to invest. Over the years, as I learned more about personal finance, I put together a 130-page financial notebook. My granddaughters probably don’t want to read my lengthy notes, so I decided to put together a one-page summary.