FROM AN EARLY AGE, whenever I heard the word “stock,” it was said with a derisive tone. My father hadn’t owned any shares, but the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression still hit him hard. He wasn’t able to find steady work until after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Given its effect on our family, my father had a pathological disdain for the market that was, inadvertently, passed on to me. Without being aware of it,

MY WIFE AND I JUST finished watching the Netflix documentary Live to 100, which I highly recommend. The four-part series focuses on Dan Buettner’s study of pockets of people around the world who achieve amazing longevity, including many residents who live to age 100 and beyond.
The seven longevity locations include Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, California. These locations of long-lived people have been labeled “blue zones” based on the seminal demographic work on Sardinia by Giovanni Mario Pes,

AS I READ ARTICLES and comments on HumbleDollar, I see concerns about taxes, Medicare, Social Security, health care costs, college, inflation, investing—and the anxiety caused by the complexity of it all. I also see very different views on what’s earned and deserved. In some ways, it’s about what we consider fair.

I suspect the HumbleDollar community is more aware and more involved in their overall financial life than the majority of Americans,

DON’T BE TOO IMPRESSED with the magnificent chandelier hanging from the ceiling or the tastefully furnished lobby. A nursing home is a nursing home. It’s not the best answer, but sometimes it’s the only answer.

Mom grew very frail when she entered her 90s. She’d already been diagnosed with late onset Alzheimer’s. At age 91, she fell and broke her right hip and shoulder. At 93, she broke her left hip and, at 95,

BACK IN THE 1980s, Michael Milken earned notoriety as “the junk bond king.” With his swagger—and his toupee—Milken was an outsized personality in a normally staid industry. But that was four decades ago. It may have been the last time that bonds were truly interesting.
On most days, bonds are about as dull a topic in finance as you can find. But here’s the challenge for investors: While bonds might be boring, they’re important—and they can be tricky.

I’M DOING RELATIVELY well—and therein lies the problem. No, it isn’t the “doing well” part that’s the issue. Rather, the problem lies with that all-corrupting word “relatively.”
We’re constantly reminded of how we stack up against others. Early in life, that can be useful. If we aren’t cut out to be professional athletes, effective leaders, academic stars or market-beating investors—this last one would include almost all of us—it’s good to find that out, so we don’t spend countless years pursuing goals we’re unlikely to achieve.

FULL OF PROMISES AND plans, we start retirement in our 60s. It surprises me when people reach age 65 and say, “I don’t feel old.” That’s because, at 65, we aren’t.
We’re still in our go-go years. We still have the time and energy to conquer the world, visit new places, experience new adventures. The 70s, by contrast, are the slow-go years. Maybe we need replacement parts, to slather on Bengay, to load up on Advil.

I’M NOT A MARKET addict. How can I be so sure? Because, on many occasions, I’ve been able to stop myself from trading excessively. Still, in July, the stars aligned to make me susceptible to another relapse.
A reluctant traveler at best, I was persuaded to accompany my wife Alberta to a 14-day writers’ conference in Upstate New York. I’m a confirmed introvert, so I groove on alone time. But 10 hours every day—while Alberta attended the conference—proved to be a challenge.

THE SUMMER AFTER MY sophomore year at Virginia Tech, I had an internship with Frito-Lay, working in its computer applications department at the company’s research headquarters in Irving, Texas. One of the programs I had to learn was VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers. This was my introduction to spreadsheets, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Sometimes, I joke with my family that I live the data-driven life—not to be confused with Rick Warren’s purpose-driven life.

I BOUGHT AN EXPENSIVE new water heater last year for my house in Maine. The old heater had a ring of rust at the bottom, and I was spurred to act by an $800 rebate offered by the state of Maine, which was contingent on buying a heat pump water heater. The new water heater draws its heat from the surrounding air, and is two-to-three times more efficient than my earlier model.
I filled out a rebate form at the appliance store counter.

I’VE BEEN SAVING almost my entire adult life. Early on, three books put me on the path to financial success, helping me to reevaluate how I was living.
The first was The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. This introduced me to the concept that small, automated savings could lead to big results, thanks to compounding over long periods. Albert Einstein reportedly said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it,

WORD ON THE STREET is that, if you want to use money to make yourself happy, you should buy experiences rather than things.
In principle, I couldn’t agree more.
There is, however, one kind of experience that I see touted both in the media and on social media that I don’t think reflects money well spent: the expensive family vacation to a distant destination. This status-symbol experience, complete with selfies at ritzy hotels, is supposedly designed to create priceless memories.

SMART GUYS CAN DO some really dumb things. Those dumb things include behavior that seems logical, but is often a sign of addiction.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines addiction as “a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects.” Addictions come in many flavors. Some are benign, some more malignant. Many involve repeating a pattern or behavior in hopes of achieving a different outcome.

EVERY DAY, I READ about the Federal Reserve’s thinking on interest rates—increase, hold, decrease—and the possible impact on the economy. But what about the impact on savers?
As someone who has most of his non-stock monies invested in taxable certificates of deposit, high-yield savings accounts and money market funds, I have a different criterion for the right interest rate: It’s the rate that would give me and other risk-averse savers a modest real return of perhaps 1% a year,

SAMURAI WERE EMPLOYED by feudal lords in Japan. They were skilled in the art of combat and highly trained—the best of the best.
A ronin—meaning a “drifter” or “wanderer”—was a samurai who’d left his clan, usually when his master died. Upon leaving, he was free to use his skills to seek similar employment elsewhere or even to choose a completely different profession. A ronin then relied entirely on himself and his skills to get by.