A Cautionary Tale: What I Learned Trying to Leave an Employer-Sponsored Medicare Advantage Plan
This is the story of a friend I helped when she tried to move from her employer’s Group Medicare Advantage plan to Original Medicare and a Supplement. Her experience is a cautionary tale.
I want to share this story because I don’t want others to go through the stress, confusion, and sleepless nights that we did.
When I retired, the company I worked for offered my husband and I a Medicare Advantage plan ,along with a $50,000 Future Health Account credit. 

I work with US citizens scattered across ~26 countries, so I recently asked my go-to AI which U.S. investment firms handle expats the best. Here’s the short version on Schwab, Fidelity and Vanguard.
1. Charles Schwab — Best for U.S. Expats
Schwab is easily the most expat-friendly of the major brokerages. It allows U.S. citizens abroad to open and maintain accounts, including its dedicated Schwab International Account. Trading stocks and ETFs is usually unrestricted, customer service understands expat needs and the linked Schwab Bank makes moving money internationally simple.

I’ve a sore back and I’m a bit irritated at the moment, but not because of the lower back pain, but another more irritating pain, namely people. I spent today locked in combat with the leaves in our garden, a battle I was destined to lose, as four separate pedestrians felt compelled to inform me. There I was, hunched over, rake in hand, working the grass verge out front. This is where things got interesting, by which I really mean deeply irritating.

If you win a million dollars in a lottery, you will pay approximately $370,000 in federal taxes. An X post complained about the tax on such a windfall and said that we should tax billionaires the same way. 
Of course that is exactly what we do. Everyone is subject to the IRC and the same type of income is taxed the same way for all. I think billionaires get a bad rap. 
A 2021 study by economists from the Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Management and Budget,

This past week I received notice that my radiologist’s office experienced a “data security event”. Name, social security number, date of birth, driver’s license, incriminating pictures of my herniated lumbar disc, etc., could have been obtained. I’ve lost count of how many similar letters I, my spouse, and my children have received over the past years. For early ones, I took them up on their offer of one free year of credit monitoring. Several years ago,

From Benjamin Graham in 1972: “Any approach to moneymaking in the stock market which can be easily described and followed by a lot of people is by its terms too simple and too easy to last.”
 
Why wouldn’t this apply to indexing?

American social security advice is admirably clear, I’ll give you that. Delay Social Security until seventy to maximize your monthly benefit and create the ultimate hedge against outliving your savings. The maths is clear and unarguable, an eight percent per year, guaranteed return for every year you wait past your Full Retirement Age. It’s presented with such confidence, if only one’s life was such a tidy actuarial table.
But for millions of Americans, watching this from my perch in the UK,

I’m sure we could swap stories about working particularly hard at some point in our life. Feeling exhausted, worn out, temperamental and not performing at our best. In an ideal world we would avoid such stresses and strains, but in reality going “above and beyond” seems to be part of securing some financial stability, raising a family, buying a house, funding retirement, or whatever your financial goals might be.
But a recent local news article got me thinking about where each of us draws the line and says “enough”.

This is a thought exercise…
Suppose you are the son or daughter of a reasonably tech competent older person. They have asked you to step in to act on their behalf should they be unable to do so on their own. The would name you as primary on their Durable Power of Attorney. You have agreed and are in the process of trying to understand how your parent deals with their finances now.
In your research you have discovered the following information:
1) Your parent uses a variety of tech equipment to deal with finances.

IN APRIL 2005, art dealers Robert Simon and Alex Parish traveled to New Orleans to attend an auction. They were particularly interested in a work titled Salvator Mundi. The painting was in bad shape, having been neglected for years. But Simon and Parish ended up bidding on it and taking it home for $10,000.
After some restoration work, the pair succeeded in having it authenticated as a work of Leonardo da Vinci.

SECTION 415(D) OF the IRC requires the Secretary of the Treasury (IRS) to annually adjust limitations for cost-of-living increases. So, let’s dive into some of the changes:
 
401(k), 403(b), and Most 457 Plans:

For 2026, the 401(k)/403(b)/457(b) amount you can contribute is increasing from $23,500 to $24,500. If you are in a 24% marginal tax rate, that’s an additional $240 of federal taxes you can defer. If you are over age 50, the catch-up contributions are also increasing by $500,

Have I got a job for you.
As a boy I was into tropical fish. I had several tanks, I raised fish and tried to sell them – anything to make money.  At one point I had eight large tanks of fish. 
At 13 I wangled my way into a job after school and Saturday at a pet store for $5.00 a week and the occasional free fish.
After all these years I finally learned the money in tropical fish is not in the fish,

About  a year and half ago I posted the following article. (It benefited from the wonderful editing of Clements.)  Given investors will soon start receiving distributions from mutual funds, I thought I would repost it. The original post and comments can be found here.
I SOLD A MUTUAL FUND in my taxable account that was up an average 6% a year over the past 10 years—and ended up with a tax loss. That’s right,

I read this Morningstar article this morning. I thought I had posted it then. Although is not pertinent to me I know it is to other HD readers.
Until now, however, QCDs came with a thorny reporting headache. They were reported on IRS Form 1099-R as a regular distribution from an IRA, with no indication that the amount was a QCD.
Effective 2025, an IRA custodian may enter Code Y in Box 7 of Form 1099-R to show that the amount represents a QCD.

In my short time in this forum, I’ve noticed that we spend considerable time discussing both commendable and questionable decisions—our own and others’. Exploring these decisions humbly and methodically can be quite helpful. Models of behavior are one of the fundamental ways we learn ethics and good decision-making, and I’ve certainly gained wisdom from the stories many of you have shared.
This past Tuesday, while driving to CrossFit, I listened to a stimulating conversation on “The Rational Reminder Podcast”