MY MOST SUCCESSFUL investment is one that I tried to throw in the trash.
I own 126 shares of Anthem, a large health insurance company. I believe I got my shares on April 30, 2002. That’s when Anthem bought Trigon, a small insurer based in Virginia that my family used for health insurance.
In 1996, Trigon began the process of converting from a policyholder-owned company into a stockholder-owned company. It went public in 1997.

APRIL IS FINANCIAL Literacy Month. If that doesn’t excite you, imagine how your children feel.
Still, consider this an opportunity to begin or reinforce your kids’ financial education. Many of my students told me one of their parents was into “finance,” but when I asked how the parent handled the family money, students would just shrug and say that was all they knew.
Children don’t like a straight-up lesson, especially from a parent. The trick is to make it seem casual and as blended into everyday life—theirs,

MY KIDS THINK I’M cheap. I tell them, “If I’m so cheap, why don’t I have more money in the bank?”
I learned to be thrifty at the knees of my father and grandfather. During this time of high inflation, they provide me with examples to be emulated. Grandpa never owned a car and kept a vegetable garden into his 80s. He built a loom to weave small rugs made from rags, and then sold them to friends,

WHAT ARE THE MOST important financial notions? For me, the answers are “compounding” and “financial independence.”
Albert Einstein purportedly called compounding the eighth wonder of the world. Warren Buffett has said that the power of compound interest played an important role in his success. But what I’ve learned is that compounding doesn’t just apply to our finances. It can also be used to improve our health, our relationships and our mastery of whatever topic we choose.

I WROTE AN ARTICLE last month about five financial lessons I learned at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Clown College. But Clown College didn’t just offer financial lessons—it also offered valuable life lessons.
It was a topic I used to discuss with my students. For the last 16 years of my career, I taught college accounting courses. I encouraged the students to lead lives of reflection and learn from their experiences. I would share a short PowerPoint presentation,

I RECALL PAYDAY IN 1961, when I was at my first job. There was a paymaster who would deliver our paychecks. At break time, we would be off to the nearest bank to cash our checks. I deposited most of mine in a savings account, plus $2 in my Christmas Club account. But many of my fellow workers took the whole check in cash.

I always thought taking cash was a bit risky. I once got up the nerve to ask a few friends why they took cash.

WITH THE RELEASE of March’s Consumer Price Index, we now know that a risk-free investment yielding 9.6% will be available as of May 2. I’m speaking, of course, about Series I savings bonds from the U.S. Treasury, which have lately been all the rage. To take advantage, all you need to do is open an account at TreasuryDirect.gov. Last year, it took me all of 10 minutes to open my account.
I first wrote about I bonds back in October 2021.

THIS IS MY FOURTH year serving in AARP Foundation’s TaxAide program. I prepare federal and state tax returns three days a week for a mixture of retirees and lower-income citizens.
Each week, I see clients who are baffled by the complexity of our tax code. Many have been paying hundreds of dollars to commercial preparers because they’re afraid of making a mistake.
And no wonder. The federal tax code has myriad twists and turns that can confound the average taxpayer.

EXPERIENCED INVESTORS know that the stock market and the economy sometimes diverge. Early 2020 offered a stark example: Even as the economy was still contracting rapidly, stocks started bouncing back.
But right now, many areas of the stock market are doing about what you’d expect. After all the efforts by the Federal Reserve and Congress to prop up the economy over the past two years, rising inflation is front and center, along with rising interest rates. 

MANY FINANCIAL questions have clear answers. Does it make sense to engage in day trading? Probably not. Should you invest everything in bitcoin? I wouldn’t recommend it. Is it smart to carry a big credit card balance? It’s hard to think of a good reason.

Many other financial questions, though, might seem to have clear answers. But upon closer examination, they actually fall into the “it depends” category. Below are six such questions:

1.

I WAS OFFERED a “free retirement review” by Carlson Financial a year ago. The review would—among other things—”help me answer the five biggest questions I have about retirement.” I didn’t realize I had only five questions. Still, I decided a financial review might be in order.
I then forwarded an uncomfortable amount of personal information, financial statements and tax returns to a man I’d never met. Scott seemed like a nice enough guy, but hey,

SINCE EARLY JANUARY, this site has published a series of essays every Saturday, each from a different HumbleDollar writer. The theme: my money journey. The essays, 30 in all, will appear in a book of the same name, which will be published by Harriman House in March 2023. With this blog post, you get a sneak peak at the book’s cover.
As you might imagine, the book has meant a lot of work for the writers involved—and a ton of editing for me,

WHEN I RETIRED 10 years ago, I need to replace my biweekly paycheck. Because I was retiring early, and there would be no pension or Social Security for many years, my goal was to use savings to create a synthetic paycheck.
During my final few years of work, I prepared by channeling most of my paycheck into both taxable and tax-deferred accounts. My pay was much higher than what I needed for living expenses.

I LEARNED SOMETHING new while preparing a tax return recently for a widowed senior citizen. I volunteer for AARP Foundation’s TaxAide program. A widow in her mid-70s had received her 2021 required minimum distribution (RMD) from her IRA—and it consisted entirely of Exxon Mobil stock.
Her account’s custodian, instead of selling the stock and distributing cash, gave her the actual shares. This had never happened to her before, and she hadn’t requested it. Why did the custodian do it?

MY WIFE AND I PAID just $234 in federal income taxes on 2021 adjusted gross income of $98,370, giving us an effective tax rate of less than 1%.
How did we end up paying so little? It all started with my October 2020 layoff. I was age 57 and had, until then, enjoyed a 34-year newspaper career. One of my immediate concerns: getting health insurance coverage.
That turned out to be easy in 2021.