I’VE BEEN WORKING from home for nearly two months. Many friends and coworkers are tired of the lockdown. I seem to be an oddball: I feel happier and less stressed.
I’m not oblivious to the reality of today’s pandemic. As I write this, my uncle abroad is facing a hard time getting urgent medical care. Millions of others across the globe are also suffering.
Against such a gloomy backdrop, I feel almost guilty in seeing a positive side to the lockdown.

FOLLOWING MY husband’s death, I went from feeling prosperous to precarious in the space of a few short months. For decades, I’d had something extra in hand, beyond the minimum sum necessary to keep going. That sense of prosperity was now gone.
This wasn’t just my imagination. Studies have found that widows are significantly less wealthy than their married counterparts. One academic article notes, “The death of a spouse is an event that may precipitate a large decline in wealth.” Similarly,

ONE OF MY GOALS for 2020: develop a plan for doing Roth IRA conversions over the next 10 years. Once the money is out of traditional IRAs and in a Roth, it’ll grow tax-free. Problem is, the conversion means taking a tax hit today.
So why am I interested? There are several reasons: lowering lifetime taxes for my wife and me, creating the flexibility to manage future tax bills and leaving a tax-free inheritance to our children.

I DON’T THINK I CAN do it. I know it’s the patriotic thing to do—support our local businesses. But I don’t see myself visiting local restaurants, movie theaters or department stores for a quite a while.
After they lift the stay-at-home order, I’m not rushing out to my favorite restaurant and ordering a grilled chicken avocado wrap with a kale salad. I don’t care if the waiter is wearing a protective mask and gloves,

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has made the past two months feel like a cruel rollercoaster ride, with sharp drops in the stock market, businesses closing and millions displaced from their jobs. The overall mood has been unsettling, to say the least.
Want a little more financial certainty? There are steps we can take that’ll give us greater control over our life, both in the short and long term. For me, I’ve gained comfort from revisiting my living expenses.

IN MID-MARCH, I WENT into lockdown with optimistic thoughts. Perhaps it would give me time to perfect my Spanish, master classical guitar, write more blog posts, start online courses and even begin the book that Jim and I often discuss writing together.
I’ve accomplished none of my grand plans. Instead, I’ve been consumed by reading COVID-19 news. I’ve slept poorly and eaten too much. I remain perpetually exhausted. I struggle to focus and lack creativity.

RETIREMENT IS BEING rethought: Playing lots of tennis, golf or bridge, while living modestly so we don’t run out of money, might have been an acceptable plan when lives were shorter.
Now, the early go-go years of life’s “fourth quarter” can last two decades, especially if we retire early. A life of pure leisure may not be financially possible—and it might even be a bad idea mentally, emotionally and physically. As we look beyond the current uncertainty of the coronavirus,

I JUST CAME ACROSS a magazine article from the B.C. era—before coronavirus. The article, which appeared in a popular personal finance magazine, described a certain type of bond investment. The writeup was well researched and balanced, including a discussion of various risks.
In fact, the author raised the possibility of an economic downturn. How did he assess that prospect? “Recession, as always, is a risk,” he wrote, “but where’s the recession? Not seeing it,

INVESTING IS A GAME of subtraction—and I’m not talking about this year’s stock market decline.
Wall Street sells the fantasy of market-beating returns, using it to seduce investors into adding new stocks and funds to their holdings. Result? Performance-chasing investors cobble together badly diversified portfolios that they imagine will beat the market, while overlooking the hefty costs that Wall Street charges. This is a strategy that’s almost guaranteed to make heaps of money—for brokerage firms and money managers.

IN EVERY CRISIS, good people do great things and bad people, well, they do some really, really bad things. This article is about protecting yourself from the bad people. Never in my career have I seen so many scams in motion all at once.
Crooks tend to step up their game at times of crisis: Stress, change and misinformation make for the perfect backdrop, as they try to separate you from your money. Here’s a rundown of six current scams,

I LIKE TO THINK my husband and I were savvy and careful when planning our estate. Yet anybody can make an occasional dumb mistake. That brings me to my next surprise in settling my husband’s affairs—and it came with an unfortunate legal bill.
As a couple, we’d established a revocable living trust at a young age, when death was a strictly theoretical idea. The trust eliminated the need for our estate to go through probate,

IT’S 4:45 A.M. AND another day quarantined at home. Even though I have nowhere to go, I still get up early. It’s one of my favorite times of the day. This is when I go downstairs to the kitchen, make myself a cup of tea, toast some raisin bread and read about what’s happening in the world.
Later, Rachel and I will go for a walk and then have breakfast together. This is how we now lead our lives—sequestered in the house—away from friends and family.

BEING STUCK AT HOME lends itself to some less-than-healthy habits, including binge watching TV, snacking at all hours and ignoring daily hygiene. One of the most tempting activities: online shopping.
I’m not normally a shopper, but even I can be lured by the thought of that daily delivery. Amazon, FedEx and UPS trucks go up and down my street all day long. With my older grandsons quarantined in California, buying and shipping a small treat to them—and then seeing their expressions of excitement via Zoom—is priceless.

THE GREAT RECESSION and accompanying stock market plunge didn’t seem so bad to me. At the time, I was a 20-year-old college student with a little money in a Roth IRA that I’d opened and funded since my high school days. Sure, it was no fun losing half my investment account, but it wasn’t a lot of money—at least compared to today.
In the years since, I’ve fallen squarely into the super-saver category, socking away a large portion of my income.

TO STAVE OFF the financial impact of COVID-19, the government has unleashed an unprecedented array of stimulus programs, tax law changes and other incentives to encourage economic activity. Result: There’s a slew of financial planning opportunities that can benefit almost all of us. Here are nine of them:
1. Refinance your debts. With the Federal Reserve’s recent rate cut, interest rates are now at their lowest level since 2008. These lower rates will take time to filter through the lending system,