MY FAVORITE NOVEL by Jules Verne is Around the World in 80 Days, which I first read as a child. It was published in 1872, and documented Phileas Fogg’s attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days.
The book has been made into a play, six movies and a half-dozen television series, including a recent entertaining PBS series. The Three Stooges even released a feature film version in 1963.
The Wikipedia entry for the novel lists 10 real-life attempts to replicate the fictional journey.

REMEMBER THE OLD sayings that “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” and “the carpenter’s house is falling down”? That’s how I felt last month as I frantically tried to enroll in Medicare.
My 65th birthday was in early September. Medicare has an initial enrollment period that lasts seven months. It starts three months before you turn age 65, includes your birth month, and ends three months after the month you turn 65. Suppose you were born on Sept.

I RECENTLY LISTENED to a podcast during which the speakers lamented the death of a colleague who was in his 30s. They mentioned a GoFundMe campaign to assist his family, so I assume the deceased had no life insurance. According to LIMRA, which collects data on the life insurance industry, less than 50% of millennials have individual life insurance.
There are two major types of life insurance: term and whole life. Term insurance is intended to cover a specific period,

WHEN I WAS A KID, I remember being puzzled by all the newspaper stories devoted to a recession. First, the articles said that one might be ahead. Then they said it had arrived. Immediately afterward, the stories shifted to, “Is the recession lifting?”
The same loop is starting in my newsfeed now, with daily stories asking if a recession is ahead. It’s a definite maybe, according to the experts, but it hasn’t arrived yet.

FOR MORE THAN 30 years, my primary hobby has been training dogs. I’ve trained my own dogs, winning multiple performance titles along the way. I’ve also devoted years to coaching dogs, and their owners, as part of a dog sports team. I’ve spent thousands of hours—and thousands of dollars—attending dog competitions.
My husband shares my passion for dog training. He spent nearly three years training one of our German shepherds to be a member of a canine search and rescue team.

WITH THE FINANCIAL markets down sharply, this is a great time to fund a Roth IRA, with its promise of tax-free growth. But the rules can be tricky.
The basics: You place part of your after-tax earned income in a Roth, invest it and—ideally—just leave it to grow. As long as the money stays there until you reach age 59½, and you wait at least five years, you can tap the account without owing a dime in taxes.

AS INFLATION continues to run hot, wage gains for the bottom quartile of income earners are almost keeping pace with consumer prices. Meanwhile, checking account balances for this group remain more than 50% above pre-pandemic levels.
Is everything A-okay? Of course not. Still, I’d argue that many Americans have positioned themselves well to weather an economic downturn. Another sign: Average credit scores are much improved from, say, the mid-2000s, when families were loading up on debt and speculators were snatching up houses only to flip them months later.

WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL, corporate executives often visited for guest lectures. Two of these presentations still stand out in my mind.
The first was the CEO of a company then called Flextronics—now simply Flex. It’s a contract manufacturer that assembles products for other companies. Apple, for example, doesn’t have factories of its own and instead relies on outsourcers like Flex to build its products, usually in Asia.
You might wonder why a presentation like this would be memorable.

FIVE YEARS AGO, I realized I’d spent my adult life doing something that was totally unnecessary—drying my hair with a hair dryer. I’m not sure why I got into the habit, but one day I realized it made zero difference to my appearance. I’m not saying using a hair dryer is a bad use of time for others. But for me, it was a minute or so each day that was completely wasted.
And it isn’t just the hair dryer that I’ve ditched.

WE RECEIVE A LOT of criticism over our adult life, most of which we ignore. Are we being defensive and stubborn—or is something else going on?
Criticism implies we should change our behavior in some way, but sometimes that change comes with costs that outweigh the benefits. Consider the three main forms of criticism:
Manipulative criticism. This is perhaps the most prevalent form of criticism. The goal is to promote a change in our behavior,

AT LOOSE ENDS DURING the summer of 1967, when I was between college graduation and the start of my psychology training, I chanced upon a book by Sheldon Jacobs. An early advocate of no-load mutual fund investing, Jacobs’s book and his subsequent No-Load Fund Investor newsletter provided my market mantra until exchange-traded index funds (ETFs) started taking off circa 2000.
Buying directly from the fund company, and thereby bypassing brokers and their upfront 8.5% commission,

I’M TOO EMBARRASSED to reveal how long it took my wife and me to prepare our wills. We knew this important task was near the top of almost every financial “to do” list—a list that, it seems, we’ve spent our adult lives slowly working our way through.
We’d discussed the details of our wills, including the crucial decision of who would care for our minor child in the event both of us died. Despite this,

LIFE IS THE ULTIMATE juggling act. We need to balance work, family, hobbies, friends, money and passions. All play and no work won’t keep the electricity on—but all work and no play will make Jack a crummy dad. To do both, we must have balance.
Balance can be observed in all areas of life. Grass needs water to grow, but too much and it’ll drown. Difficult experiences are hard, but often they make us stronger and wiser.

BEN FRANKLIN WROTE the most popular personal finance text of the 18th century. Originally published in 1758 as an essay in his Poor Richard’s Almanack, it became a perennial bestseller when printed separately under the title The Way to Wealth.
You can read the 1810 version printed in London at no charge, thanks to Project Gutenberg. I assign it to students in my behavioral economics class, and it sparks a discussion about whether thrift and hard work are still the routes to financial security.

MY HUSBAND AND I CAN now say we survived our first Arizona summer. When we moved from Portland, Oregon, to Phoenix, we weren’t sure how we’d cope with the abundant sunshine. There was also another unknown: How much would it cost to keep our home comfortable when the temperature outside soared?
We heard stories about residents in our retirement community paying upward of $350 a month for electricity during the summer season. Since we’re living on a fixed income,