Make no mistake: Stocks are expensive, with the companies in the S&P 500-index currently at 28 times trailing 12-month reported earnings, offering a dividend yield of just 1.3% and sporting a Shiller price-earnings ratio of 37. All three metrics suggest stocks are pricey by historical standards.
Meanwhile, with far less risk, investors can collect 4.5% in annual interest with 10-year Treasury notes and an inflation-adjusted 2.1% with 10-year inflation-indexed Treasurys. Alternatively, for those who favor cash investments,

Hypothetically, say you lost your nerve and pulled you money out of the market because you thought it was obvious the entire economy was ready to collapse due to incredibly high valuations for both stocks and real estate and finally implementing tariffs, only to witness the market quickly recover. How would you get back in?
I suppose this person (not me, of course, since I am a long term index investor) would be best served using a dollar cost average,

I find the “liability matching” concept as outlined in Dr. Wad Pfau’s “Funded Ratio”  helpful based on our household-specific inputs I provide.  This analysis, while based on different inputs than those of Monte Carlo simulation, has given me another way to project whether we expect to have adequate financial resources for the remainder of mine and my spouse’s life.
I have used Mike Piper’s simplified funded ratio example spreadsheet to “run the numbers” using the following inputs for each year of our expected life spans:

1) Select a conservative,

This floated across my screen a couple of days ago.
Bill Bengen introduced the 4% rule in 1994.  It suggested that a one may safely withdraw 4% from a portfolio in the first year of retirement and it would be likely that portfolio would last for 30 years.
Bengen is publishing a new book A Richer Retirement: Supercharging the 4% Rule to Spend More and Enjoy More
In it he updates the rule but also provides a 55/45 model portfolio. 

On Friday, May 15,  I received the attached email Alert from the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility. The email topic, When a Practitioner Passes Away, is mostly focused directly at anyone subject to Circular 230 that practices before the IRS, typically attorneys, certified public accountants, enrolled agents and others who prepare tax returns for pay. I think it likely that every state also has their own additional laws and regulations regarding protection of your data.

After years of retirement planning, the day has indeed arrived—almost. I’ve recently become a part-timer, working just three days each week in the outpatient physical therapy clinic, plus one Saturday per month at the acute-care hospital. Though I may be just semi-retired, the load already feels a whole lot lighter.
How so? For starters, I’m focusing less on gaining more from my job. Oh, I’m still keen to treat patients. That’s what drew me to physical therapy in the first place.

It has been written here and elsewhere that there is more value in using your money for experiences instead of buying stuff. I fully agree. 
Experiences with family and friends are most important especially as you get older, but beyond those, what experiences stand out for you? 
Most of our traveling was after we retired. We isolated funds for that purpose. While working, our travel was limited to business events, mostly employer paid. That’s how I had dinner at Mar-a-Lago Club.

Great article in the WSJ about aging. I hope the link below is non paywall.
https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/americans-in-their-80s-and-90s-are-redefining-old-age-5f8ae8a6?st=JfYzbJ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

WHEN HUMBLEDOLLAR’S editor was The Wall Street Journal’s longtime personal-finance columnist and his children were little, he often joked that he had a special incentive to see them succeed financially.
“It would be a tad embarrassing,” Jonathan wrote, if his children “grew up to be financial ne’er-do-wells.” For that reason, he used his own home as a laboratory of sorts, testing strategies to help set his children on the right financial path.

I woke up this morning at 4, wide awake and couldn’t sleep. I laid there reading google news on my phone. Finally I got out of bed and made it out into the living room. It was pitch black outside, yet my path through the house was well illuminated by little, mostly blue lights. About 30 of them. Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, routers, scanners, label maker, alarm clocks, microwave, coffee maker, toaster oven, range, bathroom nightlights,

WHEN MY TWO CHILDREN were ages nine and five, I opened Vanguard Group variable annuities for them. No, variable annuities aren’t my favorite investment. Far from it. Indeed, I don’t think they’re anybody’s favorite investment vehicle, unless you happen to be an insurance agent angling for a big commission.
Still, tax-deferred annuities differ from other retirement accounts in one crucial way: You don’t need earned income to fund the account. That means it’s possible to open a tax-deferred annuity for a toddler,

Last month, I wrote about a spate of funerals my wife and I attended.  Since then, I recently found out that a close friend and colleague in his early 60s was diagnosed with a “butterfly glioblastoma,” a rare and aggressive form of brain tumor. It’s a recent diagnosis, and his treatment plan is being finalized. A few friends and I drove an hour and a half to take him out to lunch earlier in the week,

I want to thank Jonathan Clements for his article on allowances for children many years ago while I was raising my children. After reading the article I decided to give my two children age 13 and 5 at the time a monthly allowance. For this allowance they had to buy their own clothing. My daughter at age 13 was initially appalled at having to buy her own clothes. We did agree that we would buy big clothing items such as a.

I thought the IRS gifting rules were pretty straight forward and I understood them.  Any individual can give $19K (in 2025) to anyone else w neither a gift tax or reporting requirement.  Seems pretty clear.
Then I dug a little deeper online which was maybe a mistake and came up w some issues.
One was the IRS reference to “gift splitting” by spouses where one spouse can use the other spouses gift exemption to gift in excess of the $19K. 

Even though I’m retired now, I have certain routines to get me going every day. First, I make the coffee, then I peel an orange, and finally I curl up on my sofa with my coffee, orange and iPhone and read the latest posts that come into my inbox from Humble Dollar.
This week on two occasions, I didn’t receive my daily newsletter!  I finally went directly to the website and got caught up on all the recent posts that I may have missed.