Financial success is driven by good savings habits—and for that we need low fixed living costs.
I spent 20 years in a house that was far less expensive than I could afford. This isn’t a strategy I recommend, because I never much liked the house. Still, it came with a huge silver lining: The modest monthly house payments allowed me to save great gobs of money.
My sense is that most folks aren’t naturally inclined to save.

My wife Suzie has been organising a hen party for our daughter, nothing spectacular, just a group of girls heading into the big smoke for a candle-making course, followed by dinner and a cocktail bar. Because there were quite a few people attending, all three venues required small deposits, which my wife happily paid. All told, the combined deposit came to around $100 per person.
Most of the group are around our daughter’s age: very late twenties through to mid-thirties.

Geoffrey Schmidt is a CPA and retirement planning expert with a YouTube channel called HolySchmidt. 
In a recent video “The Map is Wrong” he analyzed the five best and worst states to retire and challenged the idea that the best choice was states with no income tax. He based his analysis on median home values and retiree incomes. 
He used the estimated combined spending on property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes and property insurance.  When added together the results showed no income tax is sometimes a misleading criteria,

Yesterday, I got an email from State Farm asking me to choose a payment method for my dividend. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was a scam, but it’s legit.
Apparently, State Farm is issuing a one-time $5 billion cashback dividend to customers who had a qualifying auto policy in 2025, with percentages ranging from 4% to 10%.
If you received an email with a Dividend ID and PIN, you can easily check how much you can get.

This is from a survey of only 240 people from WalletHub August 2026, but still, the results are not optimistic. 
For example, 43% of those surveyed believe it is not realistic for the average American to expect to retire comfortably. “Not realistic?” How do HD readers feel about that?

Pension preference: 7 in 10 people believe a pension is better than a 401(k).  Understandable, but for most workers this is not practical because you need to be a participant in a pension plan (generally one employer) for decades to generate a significant retirement income and the average tenure with one employer is only 4-6 years +-
Americans worry about retirement: More than 1 in 3 Americans are not confident that they will have enough money to retire.

I recently watched the music video for Dimash Qudaibergen’s Love’s Not Over Yet. It tells the story of a man who becomes so consumed by work and the pursuit of success that he gradually loses sight of the people he is supposedly working so hard for.
As I watched, I felt an uncomfortable sense of recognition.
Many years ago, while building a landscape business with my twin brother, Nick, I became that man. The business was successful,

I received a monthly newsletter from Andy Panko today, dated 9/1/2026, titled “How to move to a new state…tax compliantly”.
I think it is well written and a good read for anyone who commutes into another state to work, has multiple residences in different states or has adopted a RV or snowbird  lifestyle.
Andy’s article is focused on state level inheritance and estate taxes. The article references a 8/7/2026 WSJ article which summarizes a Connecticut estate tax case where the taxpayer’s estate and the State of Connecticut do not currently agree upon the taxpayer’s domicile at his 2015 death.

I left my unhappy home in 1999 with my clothing, my hi-fi, the Omega watch given to my dad when he retired in 1980 and little else. Storage space in my new life was not an issue I had to concern myself with. 
I was still in pretty good shape three years later when I met Chris. If there’s a polar opposite word for a person who hoards, that word would describe Chris, at least in 2002.

THE OPEN KITCHEN restaurant has been a fixture in Charlotte, North Carolina for 75 years. The restaurant has an old-time feel, with memorabilia, including menus from years gone by, lining its walls. Those old menus provided David Enna, a financial journalist, with a laboratory for examining the effects of inflation.
What did Enna find? The oldest menu on display is from 1963. To state the obvious, today’s prices make those from the 1960s look quaint.

THE CHOICE BETWEEN a traditional retirement account or a Roth is a frequent topic on HumbleDollar. The choice is generally framed as a choice between paying taxes up front (a Roth), or deferring taxes until withdrawal (traditional). I thought it would be interesting to evaluate a real-life example of how this choice might work out.
In December of 2016 my wife and I had an opportunity to each open a Roth IRA. My wife took a partial sabbatical that year,

The title is a comment in response to my post on credit card use, including:
“I think it can be summarized, in most cases, as poor financial planning and irresponsible behavior.” 
Which I stand by 100%. 
As a reminder, Haughty describes an attitude of blatant superiority, arrogance, or disdain toward others, often characterized by a belief that one is inherently better, more refined, or of higher status.
I think that’s a bit unfair. 
After working from age 18 to 67 (mostly dealing with people) and reaching 83 years old one tends to become a tad cynical,

It’s 72 degrees and sunny as I write this, but September is nearly upon us, and I’ve been making inquiries for the supply and delivery of one cord of kiln-dried hardwood for our two log burner stoves. This year, the price is coming in around $1,000, and yes, firewood runs at a steep premium here in Ireland. As with everything, the price keeps rising every year. Inflation in action.
But here’s the thing: I don’t need to buy the wood.

The first time I sat down for dinner with Joey’s family in the Philippines, I did what I had always done at a restaurant: I picked up the menu and started deciding what I wanted to eat. I soon realized I had it all wrong. Nobody was ordering their dinner. Dishes were being chosen for the table, passed around and shared by everyone.
It was a small moment, but I didn’t forget it. In the years since,

In response to a recent rant of mine that “The Rent is too Damn High” a commenter responded that “Many customers have no idea what makes up [contractor] prices.” I had to respect this guy, as not too many civilians side with the contractor.
After a recent interaction with a cobbler, who humbly calls himself “The Shoe Master,” I’ve now realize that most business owners don’t provide pricing details as they have no idea how they came up with the price in the first place.

Americans spend $250 billion a year on credit card interest. That is one quarter of the trillion dollars spent annually on the national debt. Both are a considerable waste of money and will likely lead to not so good outcomes. 
Why do people use credit cards as they do? Some claim it is necessary for living expenses, some just overspend, some may be subject to various pressures like keeping up with the Jones’s, still others make no provision for emergency funds and get trapped in debt.