I MOVED FROM LONDON to New York City in 1986, when I was age 23. That’s when my financial education truly began.
I’d previously studied economics for three years and spent a year writing about the international financial markets for Euromoney magazine. Still, I knew almost nothing about investing, insurance, homeownership and other topics crucial to managing a household’s finances.
I’ve learned a ton since, and the focus of that education keeps changing,

It’s Friday, I drove 5-1/2.hours yesterday to get to my happy place – yeah, Cape Cod. We are here for a few days. 
It’s very quiet, silent is a good word and it snowed an inch or so last night. 
But as I sit here, I’m thinking what do we have to do today? Yesterday before leaving NJ there was a doctors appointment. Today there is nothing, I feel like there should be something to do,

This is not intended to be a political post. Indeed, I could easily have written these words four years ago, when Republicans were fretting over Joe Biden’s election.
Political partisans often freak out when their favored party loses at the ballot box, prompting them to take rash financial actions. But with Donald Trump set to return to the Oval Office on Monday, I’d advise sitting on your hands. The fact is, presidents are not omnipotent—and can face swift punishment if their actions unnerve the population.

TWELVE PERCENT. THIS is a pivotal number in my financial life.
What does it refer to? Is it the average annual return on my investments? I wish. Is it the percentage of my pre-tax income that I dedicate to retirement savings? No. That number, including pension and 403(b) contributions, is closer to 25%.
Instead, that 12% is the slice of my pre-tax income reserved for housing. When picking a place to live, I’m a cheapskate.

Youth is not making the scene the way it used to.  It has been said that baby boomers will redefine the concept and process of aging.  America is growing older. “ Gerontology, the science of aging, is a booming field because so many of us are outlasting the biblical span of “three score and ten”. So writes James Chappel, author of “Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age.”
Our population is aging. This not only brings challenges to the elderly,

MANY FINANCIAL planners say you shouldn’t look at your investment portfolio too often because it may prompt you to make poor decisions based on short-term stock market performance. I try to follow this advice, even though it would be easy for me to take a peek, because we have almost all our money with Vanguard Group.
Ever since we consolidated our investments, I’ve noticed a change in my wife’s attitude toward money: Rachel is more willing to spend.

I just read an interesting article by Christine Benz of Morningstar. Each year at this time she takes a look at major financial firms projections for future market returns.
Although I don’t pay any attention to year end individuals’ market prognostications this article did catch my eye. She found that these financial firms have reduced their return expectations for US stocks. Every firm in her survey is expecting higher returns from non-US stocks than domestic over the next 10 years,

WHEN I ATTENDED Sunday school as a child, I was taught that God is always watching over me. It was a frightening notion, but one I grew accustomed to. My mother would often remind me to “watch your Ps and Qs,” though I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. Nonetheless, I understood the importance of behaving properly.
Today, it seems we have a different form of surveillance. As George Orwell so aptly depicted in his book 1984,

I’m a long-time lurker/reader and a first-time forum poster. I wanted to share something interesting that I recently discovered with Mike Piper’s very helpful Open Social Security (OSS) tool that seems worth sharing.
As discussed numerous times in Humble Dollar articles and posts, the typical optimal timing for a couple filing for Social Security is to have the higher earning spouse wait until 70 and the lower earning spouse to file at 62. While there are definitely exceptions to this,

$244,750 or $87,572 take your pick.
The Vanguard 2024 How America Saves report, says those number are the average and median 401k balances among their 401k participants aged 55 to 64. 
For those folks time is running out.
Is there a valid excuse for that level of savings? Rarely. 
What are people thinking? Consider that many, perhaps most, of these folks have an employer match as well. 
I maintain that we humans have a serious flaw in our ability to plan and act with the future in mind.

I was recently informed that I will be a non-spousal beneficiary of an Inherited Roth IRA.  My understanding is that I will have no required RMDs, but will be required to empty the account by the end of a ten-year period. I will have no need for these funds for that period so I will let them remain untouched until I’m required to take a total withdrawal.  But how should they best be invested over that ten-year certain period?

I retired from my 38-year career as an electrical engineer with the country’s largest operator of nuclear power plants on September 5, 2023. I’d often dreamed about having an enjoyable encore career, and a week after retirement I began working part-time as a Chief Engineer in a consulting firm with a few hundred employees. The job has largely been true to my dream. In the roughly 16 months since I retired from full-time work, my wife Lisa and I have undergone many changes related to our financial lives.

MICHAEL BURRY IS a hedge fund manager who gained fame betting against the housing market in 2008. When that market collapsed, Burry made a fortune, and that cemented his reputation as a market seer. Burry was later portrayed as the central character in Michael Lewis’s The Big Short.
But in the years since, Burry’s predictions haven’t turned out as well. Five years ago, he spooked index-fund investors when he argued that they might have trouble accessing their funds.

This is a thought exercise.
Suppose that you owned a home in Pacific Palisades, or Altadena that was destroyed by one of the wildfires. You have been through a very tough time. The fires are out, and after reporting your loss, you are waiting to hear from the company adjuster. You have a big decision to make……Will you rebuild?
Our little housing area here in the PNW has about 2000 single family homes. The first ones were built in 1976,

I am not an economist and even they often don’t agree, but shouldn’t we be concerned about the Country’s deficit and debt?  
Nobody I know likes taxes, but does debt and growing interest payments present a greater risk? Federal interest payments are over one trillion dollars a year – that is a million, million by the way. 
I sometimes think, can we get to the point where nobody, not even another country wants to invest in the US?