An article in Employee Benefits News paints a dim picture of retirement. One that may reflect the real world beyond the HumbleDollar community.
Here again we are relying on a survey so who knows how accurate, but I bet worrying and anxiety over money in retirement is not uncommon. Can you imagine retiring with no clue about the viability of your finances?
It says retirees are struggling to make their savings stretch.
According to Schroder’s 2025 U.S.

Are doctors overpaid?
That’s a tricky question for several reasons. Getting good data is hard and mostly based on surveys, there are variations across the country and among specialists plus few doctors work a 40 hour week. 
If you are a patient and your doctor provides life saving care, I suspect what they earn doesn’t matter, it wouldn’t to me. In any case, chances are you aren’t paying the bill yourself. 
After looking at the data from several sources,

When we deploy our hard-earned dollars, we all have our financial reasons. But are we focusing on the right thing? Consider four examples:
Homes. When folks buy a home, they’ll often dwell on the potential price appreciation, the tax benefits and the advantages over renting. But I’d contend there are two reasons that are even more compelling: Buying a home locks in our housing costs and, with every monthly mortgage payment, forces us to save.

I’m 58 and my wife is 56. We’ve been planning our retirement with care and intention for years—no debt, solid retirement savings, a well-diversified portfolio, and a liability-matching plan (LMP) that covers us until Medicare kicks in. We’ve talked through our priorities, run the numbers, and built our plan together. The core approach to our plan was heavily influenced by Bill Bernstein and Wade Pfau’s writing and we are content with a good funded ratio.
One thing we agreed on early: when one of us loses or leaves work,

Another great link from Mike Piper’s Oblivious Investor newsletter is this interview on the Bogleheads Podcast:
https://bogleheads.podbean.com/e/episode-82-jonathan-clements-jason-zweig-and-christine-benz-are-special-guests-on-this-podcast-host-rick-ferri/

I receive Mike Piper’s Oblivious Investor newsletter. Today I saw the above interesting title of an article he linked to
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2025/05/19/revealing-question-personal-investing-how-warren-buffett-helps-answer
The question was: What is the lowest risk-free, after-tax, after-inflation rate of return you would accept in order to forgo all other investment opportunities for the rest of your life?1
Although the article itself was waaaay too technical for my pion mind, my knee jerk answer was 2%. I’m not greedy.

At age 74, I like to think our retirement is pretty much set in stone. Most of the big health and financial decisions—Medicare, Social Security, Roth conversions—have already been made. But there’s one concern I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: how will Rachel and I get the help we need if we can no longer take care of ourselves?
Our family is spread out across the country, and we have no plans to move closer to them.

I know nothing about buying gold or in any way holding it in a portfolio. TV is full of ads to buy gold coins. If you buy them, how do you sell them and to who?
Anyone have any words of wisdom about buying gold in any form?
Is gold a viable investment for most people?

In tracking how your investments are doing, there are several ways to measure performance, but they don’t all tell the same story:

Simple Average Return
CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate)
TWR (Time-Weighted Return)
IRR (Internal Rate of Return / Dollar-Weighted Return)

Each method offers something different depending on the context, lump sum vs. ongoing contributions, investor vs. fund manager perspective, etc.
1. Which return metric do you personally rely on most and why (IRR, CAGR, etc.)?

As a calming influence, here’s the latest about moving averages. The S&P 500 closed May with a monthly gain of 6.2%, the largest since November 2023.   However, Morningstar published an article today “Has the Stock Market Reached Peak Optimism on Tariffs? – Strategists say equities have already priced in the good news on tariffs as the trade war grinds on.” I’ll periodically post if I become aware of changes of merit. [Currently posting an update via comments at the end of the month].

My first encounter with Jonathan was at an annual client appreciation event in Hershey, PA hosted by my in-laws’ financial advisor, Tim Decker. My wife Lisa and I attended as guests of her parents. The snacks served were nothing special, but the evening was still very worthwhile. Tim gave an “state of the union” update for his many clients in attendance and then turned the microphone over to Jonathan for the keynote presentation.
I can’t recall any details from Jonathan’s talk that night a decade ago but I remember finding it quite interesting.

When you were in your 20s and 30s, what did you dream of doing—and why weren’t those dreams realized? Here are four of the daydreams I had, but which remained just that:
Buy a sports car and drive across the country. This one got nixed by a host of factors—not enough vacation time, lack of money, the arrival of my first child at age 25. But truth be told, what seemed like a fun adventure slowly lost its allure,

I’ve been investing since the early 1980s. I have a business degree and took investing classes. A close friend of my parents wrote the first investing book I read at age 10, called Stock Market ABC by Joanne K. Friedlander and Jean Neal, published in 1969 and given to me on my 10th birthday in April of that year. This started my interest in investing. I also have a background in technology, going back to 1982.

BITCOIN HIT A NEW high last week, topping $112,000. Over the past 12 months, it’s climbed an impressive 55%.
What’s driving this gain, and what should you make of it? I believe there are three key factors. Two are new. One is not.
The first factor was a policy change last year. The federal government approved the launch of new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that offer easier and more direct access to bitcoin. Following this rule change,

I always thought the glowing stories of FIRE folks were a bit dodgy. Much of the time they aren’t even retired in the traditional sense. Sometimes they go too far sharing their acquired wisdom for cash.
I followed one blogger for several years. She shared her frugal ways, extreme in my view like buying her two-year olds shoes in a second hand thrift shop. She wrote a book, gained a lot of publicity, was featured in news articles and gave advice.