The Congressional Budget Office (OMB), the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) all use quite sophisticated forms of a spreadsheet and they all come up with different projections for debt, deficits, GDP and inflation, etc. … because they use different assumptions. 
See, I told you so, those darn spreadsheets will find any answer you like.😱😁

I’ve always had a deep fascination with maths, and recently, thanks to my retirement and the freedom of time it’s given me, I’ve been conducting a bit of “self-educating” on the topic of actuarial science. During this process, I discovered a little-known but fascinating historical character named John Graunt.
He was a 17th-century cloth seller from London who had a very strange hobby. Before starting his workday, he liked to study the Bills of Mortality, which were weekly records compiled by parish clerks,

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, Congress passed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act—GENIUS, for short. This sounds obscure, but it’s a story worth following. The GENIUS Act’s purpose is to promote the growth of—and to regulate—a new type of financial instrument known as a stablecoin.
What’s a stablecoin? It’s similar to a cryptocurrency but differs in one important way: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have exhibited wide price swings. That makes them interesting to investors but less-than-useful as currencies for everyday transactions.

In a recent Morningstar article, the author pointed out a few things.
“It feels like the economy has gone through three cycles in the past six years. The future looks very messy and uncertain, yet there’s no shortage of pundits that claim to know what will happen tomorrow.
But predicting the short-term direction of the economy has always been that way. ….
The media and investors alike are subject to recency bias: the tendency to place more emphasis on recent news and events than on older circumstances.

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday 8/7 to allow 401(k) participants to invest in private  assets.
The directive instructs the Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission to draft guidance for defined-contribution plans to incorporate private-market investments, including private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, real estate, and possibly gold and crypto.
Plan sponsors are not required to offer these investments-and I hope they don’t. This is a bad, short-sighted idea.

That’s all we need in 401k plans,

I’m grappling with crypto at the moment. I’ve opened an account with eToro with a plan to make a $20,000 investment/gamble with the simple idea of leaving it for the next 10years to see what happens. I personally don’t recommend this unless you’re happy to lose your shirt.
With crypto in my mind I was interested to read an article this morning about how your President Trump has just signed an executive order that could change things up.

I just read an excellent synopsis of continuing care retirement communities on the Morningstar website. I figured since this a frequently addressed topic on the HumbleDollar this article may be helpful for some. I have already bookmarked it for myself for future reference.
https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/is-continuing-care-retirement-community-right-you?utm_source=eloqua&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningDigest&utm_content=None_66051&utm_id=34267

A NEW TARIFF REGIME takes effect today. If the costs are passed along to buyers, the price of cars, orange juice, clothing and Swiss chocolates could increase, possibly dramatically.
I dealt with price shocks earlier this year. It gives me some insight into how we might behave if prices rise suddenly. Although I could have afforded the higher prices, the strong emotional impact made me highly adaptive. The price shock mobilized me to take action, even though it was only over a dollar or two.

So much of what we do in life involves money, and yet the vast majority of these transactions quickly disappear from our memory. What sticks? Here are nine of my most vivid money memories.
1. My older brothers—who are identical twins—and I were regulars at the local community pool, starting when I was age four. Our parents or our au pair would throw pennies into the pool, and we’d dive in and fish them out.
How much were these pennies worth?

Does the larger societal era from your childhood influence your financial outlook as an adult and beyond into retirement? This question came to mind while I was responding to a comment by bbbobbins on an article I’d posted to The Humble Dollar forum.
For example, my childhood was set against the immediate backdrop of social and civil unrest in my local community in Ireland. This was compounded by the overarching global tension of superpower rivalry during the Cold War,

My past writing on HD and numerous comments have made it clear my retirement is unique in that I have a good pension that together with our combined Social Security exceeds my working base salary the day before I retired. It also has been noted that my pension has given us a financial advantage by not being solely dependent on investments income. It’s all true.
But I have noticed that many people on HD are from couples with working spouses,

It would be nice to hear more from HD readers who have been there and done that. And to answer the question, “Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently?”

Glancing at the clock on the sunroom wall, I noticed it was 10:23, and the postman had just dropped a parcel at the door. I thought about going to investigate this mystery delivery but decided the second coffee was much more appealing. Anyway, my seat was comfy, the sun was kissing my skin and I didn’t have anything pressing to do until playing tennis at one o’clock this afternoon. Plenty of time to make a light breakfast,

Are you definitely sure I can’t tempt you?” my friend asked for the last time as we finished our phone conversation. Once again, I replied in the negative before a few pleasant closing words and then hanging up.
Thinking back on our chat, I realized this was the fourth invitation to various activities I’ve turned down in the last few months. The invitations ranged from an opportunity to provide tax reporting services for an old friend at a decent billable rate to this most recent inquiry today to play doubles together in a badminton league come September.

Although I have been retired over 15 years, I still receive employee benefit questions from a few employees and retirees of my old company. Sadly, many of those questions reflect the person not paying attention to their own situation, not planning, and thus putting themselves and family at risk.
Here is an example of a message I received recently.
“I retired in 2011 after around 35 years in Operations and Maintenance. I still stand confused on two things,