In honor of my late father’s birthday today, I’ve decided to post an article I wrote many months ago but never released to Jonathan for publication. 
MY FATHER’S FINANCES has some parallels to my own. Like me, he saved his end of year paystubs. Using an inflation calculator, I was able to compare his earnings to mine. He was an accountant who rose to the highest level of his company, while I was an engineer who topped off at senior staff level,

We have been discussing the value of a 60/40 investment portfolio in HD as a way to balance risk/reward over the long term.
A report I read today suggests an all-equity portfolio, with a focus on international stocks, could be the key to maximizing retirement wealth compared to  60/40 allocation or target-date funds. It says an all equities portfolio is the far better way to build the largest nest egg possible for retirement; to generate a larger paycheck in retirement;

How much should we rely on studies, surveys, academically-generated tools and guides? I’m not sure, but they are used by policy makers so I guess we should pay attention. 
However, that doesn’t mean they are meaningful in personal retirement planning- that is unless you are average or typical. I’m guessing HD readers know that, but just I case. 
Consider the Elder Index from the University of Massachusetts. According to their website:
“The Elder Index can be a powerful tool for state and local advocates and aging service providers to educate policymakers,

An exercise I find useful — certainly more useful than trying to predict the future — is to ask myself, what are the main risks to my portfolio? Sometimes we have more riding on one potential outcome, or at risk from another, than we realize.
The list of major risks is long, but higher-than-expected inflation and interest rates are pretty high up. Other than underweighting the mega-cap tech stocks for fear they will fall back to earth,

WHO OWNS TIME? WE speak of “my time” and “your time” as if it were a possession we hold in our hands. But we can’t stash it away for future use, nor can we trade or transfer our allotment to another person. Is it truly ours? For the moment, let’s say that it is.
Appraising time. How much do we value our time? Some days, we treat it as a precious commodity. On those days,

It’s that time of year – time to gather your records and prepare your 2024 tax return.  Many HD contributers are involved the IRS’ Voluntary income Tax Assistance (VITA) program,  helping to prepare free tax returns for qualifying individuals. This is an excellent program for lower income tax payers. The linked website has a tool for finding a local site. If you have family, friends, or neighbors who might benefit from this excellent program, please think about letting them know.

I read this article by Morningstar’s Christine Benz:
https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/youre-worried-about-long-term-care-expenses-lets-do-something-about-it
The article made me think that I don’t believe this topic that has been thoroughly vetted by HD participants. If you don’t have a long term care (LTC) policy how are you attacking the problem?
I must admit we have no specific plan to cover LTC expenses. I decided long ago that LTC premiums were not a good value. With the large increases in premiums over the years I think that was the right decision for us.

FORD MOTOR COMPANY introduced the world to the convertible hard top in 1957 with a car called the Skyliner. It was a marvel of engineering.
To retract, the Skyliner hard top first tilted up and away from the front windshield. Then the top folded in half overhead. The trunk lid opened wide. The folded hard top swung into the trunk, which then closed. All by flipping a single dashboard switch. You can see it in operation in this commercial featuring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

Hi HumbleDollar Community,
First of thanks to Jonathan and all of you for creating such a fantastic source of wisdom and practical advice. I am 53 and a novice investor (started very late ) with no residential property and semi-stable job. I have 2 young kids (got married late..) and plan to work till 64.
With the crazy housing market and bidding wars, I have been sitting on sidelines and getting priced out every year. I finally have come across a property in my town which I don’t want to leave (great schools) which I can afford.

Throughout my career, I’ve always worried about coming across as too much of a cheerleader for Vanguard Group. Still, it’s hard to argue that this morning’s press release is anything but good news: Vanguard announced fee reductions affecting 168 share classes across 87 funds. I imagine most HumbleDollar readers stand to benefit.
A few examples:

Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund-Admiral Shares drops from 0.05% to 0.04%
Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund-Investor Shares falls from 0.09% to 0.07%
Vanguard International High Dividend Yield Index Fund-Admiral Shares drops from 0.22% to 0.17%
Vanguard Total International Stock ETF declines from 0.08% to 0.05%
Vanguard Total World Stock ETF dips from 0.07% to 0.06%

A recent post by Dan Smith took a crack at evaluating at the often heard statement that we would all be better off if the FICA taxes we paid into the Social Security (SS) trust fund were instead invested in individual accounts. The idea is that by investing our payroll taxes in something like an S&P 500 fund, we would be better off at retirement. This strategy has the benefit of long-term compounding, since many of many us will work upwards of 50 years. 

We all have our own journey of discovering finance literacy. Some of us may be fortunate to be raised in a financial literate family, either immediate or extended one; while some of us may learn the hard and expensive way, by making financial mistakes.  I learn about being frugal and working hard to better our own life from my parents, who both never had the chance to finish middle school growing up in a rural area in China back in 1950’s.

As someone who is independent, I try to do as much around the house as I can. I don’t mean housework or laundry; I mean things like unclogging the toilet and putting up shelves. I try to stay as independent as possible to save money and so that I don’t have to be subjected to someone else’s time schedule.
But most of these require certain skills I’ve never learned. I haven’t used an electric snake, or a toilet auger. 

I was fed up with the people who claim we’d all be better off if an equivalent sum of money was deposited into private accounts instead of Social Security, so I set out to prove them wrong.
I deserve a slap on the back from my spreadsheet loving engineer friends. From my first year working in 1969 to retirement in 2022 I listed wages by year, SS payroll tax by year, and the growth after 54 years if invested in the S&P500,

MARVIN STEINBERG was a psychologist who founded the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. During his career, he made some uncomfortable observations about the behavior of stock market investors. In many cases, he felt, investors’ behavior veered awfully close to gambling.
This is the sort of observation that seems like it could be true, but it also seems difficult to quantify. That’s why a recent study by Morningstar analyst Jeffrey Ptak caught my eye.
Ptak wanted to examine investors’ experience with so-called thematic funds.