As I read through the comments and posts on HD I often see a comment related to a spouse’s employment/retirement. Is a two income family as common as it appears to be?
How does a dual income impact financial and retirement planning? Is it easier or more complicated? Are family finances viewed as one pool or separate?
Are there conflicts when one spouse retires while the other works?
Are financial/Investment decisions made by individual or as one portfolio?

We can all recite countless reasons for wanting money. It might be travel, sleeping well at night, early retirement, buying whatever we want or supporting our favorite charities. But if we were going to boil all this down to a single phrase that describes our key motivation, what would we choose?
Here are some possibilities:

To feel financially safe
To spend our days as we wish
To help others
To feel successful
To spend freely
To not worry about money
To leave a legacy
To demonstrate our success to others

There’s obvious overlap among some of these.

Recently, and spurred by the horrific fires in L.A., there’s been a lot of attention on home insurance, including skyrocketing premiums. Like many people, we have our home, auto, and umbrella policies with the same company, and have seen our premiums increase dramatically in the last few years.
I’ve occasionally heard mention, without much in the way of specifics, of a “longevity benefit” in staying with the same insurance company rather than constantly shopping around and switching.

DRIVING CROSSTOWN, my brother and I stopped at an onramp, where a man held a cardboard sign.
“Does anyone give these people money?” my brother asked, then immediately answered his own question by mentioning a friend who hands out bottles of water instead. “Anything helps,” read the man’s sign.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ve seen people pass $5 bills out the window.” A single dollar used to be enough for a panhandler to end his shift and shuffle off to the nearest mini-market.

 
I am not nor do I claim to be a skilled investor. I don’t analyze stocks, I don’t pay much attention to expense ratios, I don’t study trends or even read prospectuses. There is nothing I do that anyone else can’t do as well, probably better. 
That’s my point, investing for the future is possible for anyone at just about any income and skill level. In other words, there is no excuse. A minimal effort to learn the basics is sufficient. 

While there are thousands who have been following Jonathan’s columns and articles for decades, I started reading his articles only about a year and a half ago.
His articles influenced me to change my investing behavior. Now I am focused only on broad market ETFs and not reacting to frequent market gyrations. I am sure many of you have learned much from him and made changes to how you think about investing.
This goes beyond financial lessons.

I had my regularly scheduled doctor’s appointment for this quarter last week.  At the end of the appointment, my Primary Care Physician  informed me that she was closing her office on February 1st, 2025.  She gave me a document to give my new physician, so they could transfer my medical records, covering the last 10 years.
What has your experience been with issues like this?  I have to ask it has happened to other HD readers.

Many people are convinced that buying term life insurance is the best option from the standpoint of both affordability and coverage. However, I bought whole life insurance a long time ago. The agent represented MONY, and at the time MONY was a very highly rated insurance company. I got married (first time) in 1978. My employer at the time provided bare minimum benefits, and I thought insurance to protect my young wife, who was still in school,

Wanted to share a story. Our son started a new job at the first of the year that paid more than his last one. He got his first paycheck last week and the net amount was less than he expected. We talked about it and what the problem could be. He was not in a higher tax bracket.   I asked about W4 and he did need to adjust it. He also needed to get his taxable income down,

A recent post by Dick Quinn asked an important question in personal financial planning – “do we understand our risk tolerance”. The post linked to an investment risk tolerance assessment. I took the assessment twice and received a similar score each time – an average/moderate tolerance for investment risk. I’m wasn’t surprised by the score, especially now that I’m retired.
Risk tolerance describes our “psychological willingness to take on risk”. Although there are likely some inherent aspects to our risk tolerance,

The 34th Annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) from the Employee Benefit Research Institute provides interesting insight into many of the topics discussed in the Forum. About 1200 of both workers and retirees were surveyed. 
I’m always a bit suspicious of surveys, but there aren’t other ways to obtain an insight from individuals that I know of. 
It’s a mixed bag. 
Planning can be improved in several areas, Social Security is not well understood, while it remains a significant source of income.

“Hi, I’m Chris”. That’s how it all began in early 2002. My friend Dave and I were hanging out of a hole in the wall of my duplex, installing a new window. Chris was the good looking neighbor girl. She thought Dave and I were a couple, he was actually my best bud, living with me and providing his carpenter skills in lieu of rent during some hard times.
By the end of the year I and Chris were a couple,

WHEN I WAS a teenager in the 1960s, the popular expression was, “Do your own thing.” We baby boomers were supposed to reject our parents’ ways of thinking and do what we thought better. These better things included growing our hair long, wearing blue jeans, having beards, not wearing bras and making love, not war.
I liked this “do your own thing” way of thinking. But I also discovered that doing your own thing,

Physical strength is essential to making our way in this world. While we may not have to rally our muscles to subdue wild beasts or unruly neighbors, we do need them to accomplish our daily objectives. At a minimum, we have to muster the energy to get from bed to bathroom to breakfast table. Even if we make money with our minds, rather than our bodies, chances are we’ll need the stamina to sit up and manipulate a keyboard.

A sobering read (apologies, this article is behind a paywall hence I am not sure if I can reproduce the article here or attach the pdf)
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/health/retirement-community-bankruptcy.html