I’M REASONABLY certain that Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has a long-lost section where he details the 10th Ring of Hell: being a landlord. I’ve done so twice and, despite the glorification seen on HGTV and heard on BiggerPockets podcasts, I found no joy in either experience. Selling those properties felt better than I can possibly describe.
Being a remote landlord may be the worst of all worlds. Getting an 8 p.m. phone call to fix a broken toilet is annoying.

WHEN I STARTED MY sales and marketing career, one of the first mantras I learned was, “You have to spend money to make money.” Salespeople like me would always be asking the company to spend more—on commissions, product development and support.

The bean counters, as we called them, would always respond by telling us how tight the budget was and how we needed to cut expenses. Especially those expenses they didn’t think we needed,

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE to earn a guaranteed 6.7% or more on your money without taking any risk? Although it sounds too good to be true, that’s exactly the opportunity that will be offered on Nov. 1. The investment? Series I savings bonds.
I bonds are 30-year bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury, which are available to anyone who opens a free TreasuryDirect account. These bonds are the quintessential risk-free asset. Backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S.

IN SPAIN, “CHAPUZA” means something botched because of inattention or sloppy work. We learned the word when repairmen rewired the buzzers in our apartment building. They finished the work quickly so they’d be done in a single day. At 2 a.m. that night, we discovered the job was chapuza when our neighbor kept buzzing our apartment—because the buzzer had been mislabeled.
Chapuza can be found everywhere. Back in the U.S., we hired a highly recommended electrician to do major work on our home.

CAST YOUR MIND BACK 10 years—to Oct. 3, 2011. There was a fire-sale on Wall Street. Two months earlier, brinksmanship on Capitol Hill had culminated in Standard & Poor’s first-ever downgrade of the U.S. government. Meanwhile, Greece was on the verge of collapse, prompting the European Central Bank to take extreme measures to combat the region’s debt debacle.
It was a scary time. But—as is so often the case—the dire stories on financial television marked the beginning of a great period for long-term investors.

FINANCIAL PLANNING is, for the most part, straightforward. You want to save enough for the future and then avoid a shortfall by investing those savings wisely. Pretty much every other topic in the world of personal finance—from asset allocation to paying taxes to safe withdrawal rates—can be viewed through the lens of those two overall goals.
But there’s one topic that isn’t straightforward at all, and that’s philanthropy. It’s not straightforward because it runs counter to those two fundamental goals.

I BOUGHT A CONDO a few months back and have spent the past two months moving in. If I’d moved in before I retired, the process would have lasted no more than a month. But as I’m now retired and my time is virtually unlimited, I am merely halfway through the move-in process and type this sitting at a portable camp table.
While the move-in has been slow, it’s lightyears faster than the process of meeting the neighbors.

DURING THE FIRST FEW months of the pandemic, my almost-daily trips to the gym ceased. I was home more of the time and snacking became a habit. I found myself five pounds heavier than I’d been a year earlier. Knowing that, at age 54, my metabolism isn’t quite as vigorous as it once was, I took action. I started a ketogenic diet and quickly dropped the extra weight.
As we contemplate growing older, much of our time and energy is spent planning the financial aspects of our retirement years.

WE ALL TEND TO VIEW our money as a series of distinct financial buckets. Economists consider such “mental accounting” to be irrational, and perhaps it is. But it’s also mighty useful. Consider some recent articles from HumbleDollar’s writers:

Bill Ehart talked about the separate savings accounts he has for financial emergencies, a new car and his daughter’s wedding. Sure, it would be simpler and perhaps more rational to have a single savings account.

IN DECEMBER 2020, my wife got an infection at the site of an old root canal. The dentist initially thought it could be treated with medication. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, so an extraction and implant were planned.

The process took several visits and several bills, with the charges accumulating along the way. Some of this pain could have been relieved by a modest dental plan that I had from my former employer. That was not to be,

WHEN I WAS IN HIGH school, I had a summer job at a machine shop. My job was to deburr large cutting tools known as end mills. I would take a penny and run it over the cutting edge of the tool to smooth it out. Once I finished my job, the tools were sent to another facility for the next operation.
There was a young man in his 20s named Max whose job was to load these heavy boxes of tools onto a truck and transport them to the other facility,

IN JULY 2020, I rolled over my old 401(k) to an IRA. Between maxing out my 401(k) contributions for many years and strong investment performance, the balance was significant.
I initially invested half the money in a combination of stock market index funds and a bond market ETF. For the remaining balance, I set up an automatic investment plan that invested a modest amount in stock index funds every two weeks. While long-run market returns argued for investing all the money in stocks right away,

IT’S BEEN A MONTH since I dropped off my twins at college, one east, one west. Each has a debit card for an account with the credit union here in our hometown. One has downloaded the credit union’s mobile app. Both are already developing their own ideas and strategies for managing college life on a shoestring budget.
I got them their debit cards some time ago. I also opened a teen account for their brother,

NEWS OF ENTREPRENEUR Peter Thiel’s $5 billion Roth account, which was funded with PayPal stock, has motivated Congress to look at restricting the growth and size of Roth accounts.
There’s talk of limiting Roth account balances to $5 million or $10 million. There are also proposals to limit both backdoor IRA conversions and so-called mega-backdoor conversions. The latter involves funding a nondeductible 401(k) and then immediately converting the money to a Roth. There’s even discussion of not allowing high-income workers to convert traditional IRAs to Roth accounts.

AMERICANS ARE a generous people. They gave $471 billion to charity in 2020, according to Giving USA. Of that sum, 69% was contributed by individuals like you and me, as opposed to foundations or corporations, plus another 9% took the form of bequests.
Are you charitably inclined? Donor-advised funds can offer a tax-efficient way to make financial gifts, allowing folks to fund their own giving foundation and then direct money to charities for years to come.