I bumped into a friend a few months ago. I knew he’d retired about two years prior, and since I was just on the cusp of doing so, I steered the conversation toward how he was enjoying himself.
As we talked, he revealed he was pretty stressed out and far too busy to enjoy himself. Surprised by this confession, I pressed him for the reason.
It turns out, being good with his hands, he had always fancied having a go at picture framing and purchased some equipment for this endeavor.

OVER THE JULY FOURTH weekend, a friend asked me what I thought about the new financial instrument known as a “stock token.” Developed by the online broker Robinhood, a stock token is designed for investors to buy stakes in private companies such as OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT. It’s a novel concept because private company investments are typically inaccessible to individual investors.
Despite the appeal, I urged caution. Why? These tokens may not perform as expected because they aren’t the same as actual equity in a company.

I noticed that in the post by Dick Quinn – beyond-fees-is-using-a-financial-advisor-advisable , couple of folks had mentioned having flat-fee advisors. I see that it is lot easier to find advisors that charge a % of the assets under management but one that I am not fond of.
Have read mixed reviews about FACET, have found two sites that have flat-fee FAs

https://www.flatfeeadvisors.org/
https://saragrillo.com/2022/03/14/flat-fee-financial-advisors/

Are there other resources that one can look up?
Part of the “holistic”

This has nothing to do with finance, but I thought it was highly fascinating and that you would find it interesting.
Thinking about AI and LLMs after authoring one of the articles and reading the other, I copied four of my Humble Dollar posts into Google Gemini and asked for a profile of the author. It was unbelievably accurate about my education, lifestyle, age, lifestyle choices, financial standing and general personality type and outlook on life… really spooky and slightly alarming.

LAST YEAR, I fouled up my Pennsylvania EZ Pass account. I bought a used car in Maine and forgot to add it to my EZ Pass account. Much later, when I got back up to Maine this Memorial Day, my post office box was bulging with dunning notices from Pennsylvania, New York, Maine and Delaware.
For most of a year, I had driven from Washington D.C. to Maine blissfully unaware that my EZ Pass transponder wasn’t paying a cent.

On July 4th, the president signed a significant new tax and spending bill into law. The text of the bill runs to almost 900 pages and affects nearly every corner of the tax code, including personal, business and estate tax rules.
Below I summarize the provisions I see as most relevant to financial planning. It’s important to note that many of the provisions are retroactive to the beginning of 2025.
The formal name of the law is the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and it is,

I’ve been dabbling in AI.  Began using precursor “Expert Systems” about 20 years ago, but the new apps are more generalized and interesting. I’m aware of the limitations and anyone who wants to use something like Gemini or ChatGPT should also be aware. They can (and do) generate false information with apparent confidence. This can deceive users. Such disinformation has been given the name “hallucination” or “confabulation” by AI experts. Interesting names for inaccuracy.
However, using precise prompts seems to improve the response.

Suzie and I had a delicious meal last night – slow-roasted chicken, stacked on a bed of buttery Irish champ with a Bailey’s Cream-infused peppercorn sauce, very tasty! Top-quality restaurant fare. But the thing was, I made it from scratch.
I’ve always, for as long as I can remember, had a passion for cooking. It’s one of my favourite activities and brings me immense personal satisfaction seeing people enjoy the food I’ve created. Now that I am retired,

The Washington Post has an article on yet another effort to cut taxes for the wealthy. This time it is stepping up the cost basis for capital gains to account for inflation. You’d think they’d at least wait for the dust to settle from the recent give away.
I don’t know whether the article is behind the pay wall, it’s not giving me an option to share it so I did a straight copy.

I’ve been thinking about family dynamics and how they affect financial decisions, and this will be the first of several posts on various applications of this topic.
This first one is a hard one to talk about: It’s family estrangement, specifically a family member(s) going “no contact” with or otherwise walking away from other family member(s). It’s not as unusual as you might think–there is growing research on the topic, and some estimate that more than 30% of American families have an estranged family member.

There was a discussion recently on HD about the costs/benefit of a financial advisor.
I have more questions. Who needs a financial advisor and why? I have looked up the pros and cons and certainly a case can be made for using an advisor, but not always. 
I have never used an advisor, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be better off if I did.  I asked at Fidelity, but the fee percentage – I think it was 1% a few years ago –

John Yeigh posted excellent information yesterday entitled Roth Conversion Opportunities Extended
Despite my feeling that I am fairly well conversed in this matter I still read everything I can, assuming correctly, that I don’t know everything. When reading the article below:
https://humbledollar.com/2023/01/securing-lower-taxes/
This line struck me:
Take earlier IRA distributions and invest that money in a taxable account. Subsequent gains would be taxed at lower capital gains tax rates. If held until death, the investments could receive a step-up in basis and pass income-tax-free to heirs.

There’s a debate ongoing in the UK at the moment around a cash-only tax-advantaged account, and if the benefit should be reduced from a yearly £20,000 deposit allowance to £4,000. This is with the aim of making people favor equity-based, tax-advantaged accounts to enhance returns. Very UK specific, but it got me thinking once again about the general idea of holding cash as a defensive asset in your portfolio for sequence of returns (SOR) risk when in retirement.

More than 13 months ago, I was given 12 months to live.
I like to think I took my diagnosis in stride. I moved quickly to simplify my financial affairs, toss unwanted possessions, get new estate-planning documents and change HumbleDollar’s direction so the site could live on after my death.
I also focused on getting the most out of each day. Partly, that meant taking some special trips and spending more time with family.

I’ve been at my holiday home for 10 days now, feeling relaxed and enjoying myself. It’s the first ‘holiday’ since retirement. What piqued my interest, though, is a subtle but distinct difference: this break feels less intense, is probably the word, than vacations I took while still working. It’s not the same kind of escape. Has anyone else noticed this after retirement?