IF THERE WAS ANYONE who should have been emotionally unprepared to retire, it was me. In the years immediately before, I was at the top of my career. I’d been promoted to vice president. I had virtual total control over my job. I was recognized by nearly every employee because of my extensive employee benefits communications and the fact that I’d negotiated benefits for decades. I was among the few who routinely met with the company’s chairman.

THERE ARE MANY virtues, but one of the rarest is persistence in following through. In our complicated world, often you can’t get something done on the first go. Instead, you have to revisit the task, sometimes more than once. This is true not just of financial decisions but also many other aspects of our lives.
In fact, if you’re trying to get folks to do something, often their first defense is to stall—because they know that,

AS YOU MIGHT GUESS, my favorite Seinfeld episode is “The Stock Tip.” It starts with a conversation between George and Jerry.

“My friend Simons knows this guy Wilkenson,” George says. “He made a fortune in the stock market. Now he’s got this new thing.” George goes on to explain that Wilkenson has millions invested in a company called Centrax.

He urges Jerry to invest along with him, though the details are thin.

I LET MY EMPLOYER know last week that I’m leaving. It’s a strange feeling to think I’ll soon be saying goodbye to the daily routine I’ve followed for more than two decades.
When I began working at the college, I was 31 years old. If I wore my blonde hair up in a ponytail, I was often mistaken for a student. But working at a college provides a unique perspective on aging. Every year,

AS INTEREST RATES head higher, where should bond investors turn?
A lot of ink has been devoted to Series I savings bonds—for good reason. The initial yield, which applies to bonds bought through April, is north of 7%. Come May 1, it might go even higher if the inflation rate continues to climb. The recent energy price surge wasn’t fully reflected in February’s Consumer Price Index, so the coming months’ reports could be even more alarming.

THERE ARE TWO THINGS that Americans loathe paying: taxes and health care costs. When those two come together, watch out.
That brings us to IRMAA, short for income-related monthly adjustment amount, the steeper Medicare premiums paid by retirees with high incomes. Those who pay IRMAA are often livid about the extra cost.
I looked up my Social Security records. Over my working career, I paid $98,062 in Medicare taxes and my employer paid $97,735,

WE NEEDED MONEY to close on a new home. The mortgage process progressed smoothly—until the underwriters suddenly rejected the property right before closing. To get together the money needed to close, my wife and I had to resort to loan sharks—ourselves.
We borrowed from our IRAs. The rules allow tax-free distributions for either a 60-day rollover to a new IRA or reinvestment back into the same IRA. When we called Vanguard Group to execute our “rollovers,” the phone reps were well-versed on this short-term,

I HATE LOOKING AT life through the lens of taxation. But at this time of year, it’s hard to avoid.
I’ve been doing my own taxes for more than four decades. But this year represents a new milestone in my tax return preparation career. We moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey at the end of March 2021, so I’ve had to prepare 2021 tax returns for both states. Although I’d researched New Jersey’s tax code and made an estimate of what the differences would cost,

IN A RECENT BLOG post, I mentioned a coworker’s Lexus. One commenter—none other than fellow HumbleDollar contributor Dick Quinn—noted that, while “there is no logical reason” the coworker needed a Lexus, he might have motivations I didn’t know about.
I didn’t mean to imply my coworker had made an imprudent choice. I spent my career working with engineers and scientists. As a group, we were well paid. We could afford pretty much anything we wanted—just not everything we wanted.

WHEN I PURCHASED a house in Portland, Oregon, in 2018 for $375,000, my plan was to stay in it for four years. By 2022, if everything went according to schedule, I’d be set to retire from my fulltime job. Then I’d sell the house, and my husband and I would move to Arizona, where we’d purchased a second home in 2019.
Conventional wisdom suggests that homeowners should plan on remaining put for at least five to seven years to come out ahead on a home purchase.

I RECEIVED A GREAT education at Northwestern University in the 1980s. But the school’s commitment to excellence seems to have fallen short when it comes to the 403(b) retirement savings plan for teachers and staff.
Northwestern’s plan offers a generous 5% match and more than 400 investment choices, according to court filings. The lengthy list contained some clunkers, though, such as retail-class mutual funds when the plan could have offered lower-cost institutional shares instead.

FINANCIAL MARKETS are full of indicators and data relationships from which we tease conclusions. Few signals grab our attention more than an inverted yield curve and its habit of showing up before recessions. But is this signal still accurate in predicting economic trouble?
When U.S. Treasury bond yields are plotted on a graph, they normally have an upward slope, with short-term yields generally lower than longer-term yields. That makes sense: Lenders demand a higher rate for 30-year loans than 10-year loans because their money is at risk for longer.

MY IN-LAWS AND MY mother all moved into continuing care retirement communities after giving up their homes. My in-laws were not yet 70 when they moved in and my mother was age 75. They lived in two different communities about a 45-minute drive from one another.
Both communities provided excellent care, but had differing levels of service and had different ways of being paid. I’ve garnered further insights as a volunteer board member for a third continuing care retirement community (CCRC),

INDEX FUND INVESTORS can take a victory lap each time the Standard & Poor’s Index Versus Active (SPIVA) scorecard is published. The results, while they don’t change much, underscore how futile it is to try to pick winning fund managers. The year-end 2021 report concludes what so many of us already know. Still, it’s helpful to be reminded, so we don’t get lured in by the latest hot investment narrative.
The 2021 numbers reveal a dreadful year for investment managers.

I RECENTLY STUMBLED on a way to save a significant sum on my home and auto insurance. While I knew that insurance companies use credit scores in setting premiums, I didn’t know about a policy option that could be turned to our advantage.
Our home, auto and umbrella policies are with Safeco, which is part of Liberty Mutual. I don’t know if this option is available with other insurers, although Liberty Mutual has many subsidiaries and I would guess it may be available with them.