Last night after dinner, I went for a cycle. When at our holiday home, it’s one of my favourite routes: it goes along behind sand dunes on a wooden boardwalk until reaching the Giant’s Causeway. From there, it’s a push up onto the cliff-top paths. After a few miles, there’s a steep descent with cliffs on one side and a field with cows on the other. I normally dismount and carefully walk my bike down, but I decided to freewheel while on my bike.

It’s been almost 4 months since I began account transfers to Fidelity.

I began on March 3 with a $500 deposit to open a joint cash management account. I also ordered and soon received a stack of free checks. (For the benefit of Gen Z and some Millenial readers, checks are little pieces of paper that grandparents use instead of cash).
Next came the money market account transfer from an existing firm, which I call our disaster fund. 

Okay, my level of financial and retirement simplicity is not for everyone. I get it, people want details, they like to analyze, to plan and project the future. But tracking every penny spent? Hey, if that makes you happy and you feel better, go for it.
I try to cover all the bases too, I want to be prepared for the vicissitudes of life as FDR said about Social Security. For me that boils down to big picture stuff.

I’m betting that a large number of fellow HumbleDollarians have never heard of a podcast called Down the Middle (Down the Middle Archives | Creative Planning).  It is a pod hosted by our fearless founder Jonathan Clements and co-hosted by Peter Mallouk of Creative Planning. You can find it on Apple or anywhere podcasts are found.
It’s released only once a month at the beginning of the month. It’s one of the pods I most look forward to. 

Well, I tried to stay up until midnight to pop a cork, but it just wasn’t happening. So today I woke up as a retired person!  If you’ve read my articles from 2024 on the topic, you know this didn’t sneak up on me.
My road through the logistics of retiring from two university systems and applying for Medicare went…somewhat smoothly. I was pretty meticulous in my preparation. I attended webinars for both systems last year and put the application dates on my calendar.

My wife, Suzie, and I have just uncovered the biggest financial oversight mistake we’ve probably made in a very long time.
Since entering retirement, we have been reorganizing our everyday finances, including consolidating our two separate current accounts (a checking a/c without a checkbook) into one for the majority of our recurring bills. During this process, we realized we were paying for three mobile phone plans, two coming from my wife’s account. It turns out Suzie had always assumed my plan was taken from her account.

I was reading an interesting article by Kristine Hayes, a contributor to Humble Dollar a few weeks ago. In it, she discussed her introverted nature. Since then, a thought’s been developing in my mind: Could an introvert have a distinct advantage when accumulating wealth for retirement and an above-average chance of enjoying a successful retirement?
I consider myself, for want of a better description, a “closet introvert.” While many people who know me genuinely think of me as the “life and soul of the party,”

I’m excited this morning! Why the excitement, you may ask? It stems from the fact that, for the very first time, my wife Suzie and I are decamping to our holiday home in Portballintrae, a small coastal village on the North Coast of Ireland, for the next three months. This is only possible because we’re now both retired, allowing us to fully utilize the home we purchased six years ago. As we’ve been organizing for departure,

The 4th of July, my anniversary, my birthday, and Christmas light up my year, but Easter might just be my favorite day of the year. On a monthly basis, though, payday steals the show—that spark of adrenaline when dollars hit my bank account is hard to beat. Four times a year, dividend paydays bring a similar thrill, maybe even more. This is why I’m hooked on dividends.
Dividends have trade-offs, but their potential to grow over time makes them irresistible.

IN A RECENT INTERVIEW, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a leader in artificial intelligence, grabbed headlines. Amodei argued that the next generation of AI systems could replace half of entry-level jobs and drive up the unemployment rate to 20%. All of this could occur in the next five years, he said.
Recent data seem to support these glum predictions. Mark Zuckerberg said AI will be as capable as a mid-level programmer by the end of this year.

I was sitting on the deck of my holiday home, enjoying the morning sunshine and breakfast, when a deep rumble announced the arrival of an expensive, sporty car. It was my neighbour. He’s a very nice man in his 40s who always dresses impeccably, with two well-turned-out kids and an immaculate wife – to all intents and purposes, a family living the dream.
Contrast that with me: I drive a seven-year-old SUV with 70,000 miles on the clock,

Recently, on the Saving and Gifting thread, I listed the organizations I support: “a reading service for the blind, the local hospice, Planned Parenthood, public radio and TV, and the [retirement] community’s benevolent fund”, to which I should have added Royal Oak, the US affiliate of the National Trust. I added that “having grown up in what some Americans no doubt consider a Socialist country [UK], I consider charity to be the job of the government,

Callie’s 5 mind blowing facts!
I’ve always liked these kind of facts/research. Hope you do too!

I’ve been working to educate myself on the US pension system, particularly the retirement decumulation landscape. It’s a challenging endeavor, but through diligent research, I’m slowly grasping the essentials. From an outsider’s viewpoint, the complexity that various US administrations have introduced into this system is striking. As a UK citizen, I find several aspects particularly perplexing:
The Sheer Number and Variety of Retirement Accounts: In the UK, it’s largely about defined contribution and defined benefit pensions,

There is a Boglehead Conference in October.  Has anybody attended previous conferences? I’m considering attending and I’d appreciate your hearing about your experience. Did you find it valuable?
Thanks,
Jackie