I’VE BEEN REVIEWING my past writing on HumbleDollar, my own blog and social media. I notice I often throw out personal details, such as the second home we own, paying for our children’s college and our spending on travel. My intention isn’t to boast.

In fact, I don’t even think of myself as wealthy, though the statistics say my wife and I are above average. Perhaps that’s because what we have today was accumulated over 60 years,

A FEW YEARS AGO, I searched a government database of unclaimed assets—and was surprised to discover the state of Oregon owed me money. I submitted a claim and waited a few weeks.
A check for $86 arrived. The funds were from royalties I’d earned from a YouTube channel that I’d long since forgotten about.
It’s estimated that one out of 10 Americans has unclaimed property waiting for them. A variety of websites allow anyone to search databases filled with unclaimed property,

I’VE BEEN TRAINING dogs for nearly 30 years. I’ve won enough awards in dog competitions to wallpaper my office with rosette ribbons. My 15 minutes of fame also involved dogs. Almost 20 years ago, I appeared on an episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where one of my corgis happily demonstrated his ability to ride a skateboard.
Just as there are many ways to skin a cat, there are also many ways to train a dog.

MY 28-YEAR-OLD wanted to know how much to contribute to her retirement plan at work. As a father, this was a text that I loved to get.
In May 2020, we toasted Genevieve over Zoom when she graduated with a master’s degree in social work. Within a week, she’d landed a job helping children in foster care and their families. Now, nearly a year later, she was invited to join the retirement savings plan at work,

FRUGALITY GETS A BAD rap these days. It seems today’s standard advice is to “go ahead and buy your darn daily latte.” Instead, we’re told to worry about bigger financial issues.
That’s probably good advice. Small purchases here and there will likely boost our mood, while clipping coupons probably won’t move the net worth needle. Still, I’ve adopted a cheapskate practice that can be lucrative: brokerage firm retention bonuses.
To snag these bonuses, you typically need a sizable IRA or taxable account.

IT’S A TOPIC WHERE I always seem to be in the minority. The controversy: Should you save first and then spend what remains—or, instead, prepare a budget which then determines how much you can “afford” to save?

Budgets are scary and stressful. Go ahead, make a budget if you like. But if you conclude that you can’t afford to save, there’s no progress in that.

A Northwestern Mutual survey found that 49% of U.S.

THERE’S A LITERARY rite of passage that requires every financial blogger to write at least one article about free money. Far be it for me to break with this tradition.
Titling an article “free money” will catch most readers’ attention. After all, we all want something for nothing. You know what they say: “Money found is twice as sweet as money earned.” It’s also a topic that’s a bottomless well of ideas limited only by the creativity of the writer.

SAVE 30% OF INCOME? No way.
That’s been my reaction whenever I’ve read about people saving 30% or more. I look back and think about making monthly mortgage payments, raising four children, paying for college and trying to save something to supplement my pension. For my wife and me, a 30% savings rate simply wasn’t possible. Nevertheless, people do it.
To find out more, I asked folks on a Facebook retirement planning group, “How do you save 30%?” The responses boiled down to nine key factors.

EARLY IN MY CAREER, one of my mentors at work used to talk about “excess paychecks.” He was a single, senior engineer who lived frugally. Back then, the concept seemed ridiculous to me. But I’ve come to realize he was right: Most of us don’t need every dollar we’re paid for living expenses, so we should think carefully about where to stash the excess.
That notion came to mind recently when taking to a friend.

WE MOVED FROM INDIA to the U.S. in 2014 when my husband got a job with a Silicon Valley tech company—and we found ourselves living in one of the world’s most expensive places.
On top of that, when our daughter was born, I left the workforce for a few years to look after her, which meant we had a period when we lived on just one paycheck. Still, within five years of arriving in the U.S.,

THRIFTY. FRUGAL. CHEAP. Pick the adjective you favor, and you could apply it to me.
I’ve spent almost my entire adult life being financially careful. I haven’t carried a credit card balance or overdrawn my checking account since my early 20s. I was an early convert to low-cost index funds. When I worked at The Wall Street Journal and at Citigroup, I brought my breakfast and a thermos of coffee to the office every day,

I NEVER REALLY LIKED the vehicles that I owned. They were an unimpressive lot, including a Volkswagen Beetle, Mercury Capri, Toyota SR5 pickup, Toyota Camry and Ford Fusion. I would like to say they got me where I needed to go, but that wasn’t always the case. All the cars, except for the Camry, were unreliable, which would sometimes make my life stressful and difficult. Of course, keeping those cars for many years didn’t help.

ONCE UPON A TIME, I thought it was a little unseemly to pay a lot of attention to costs. My father grew up in a farm family with little money. He was the first to attend college and, indeed, went on to law school from there. He did well in his profession and, when I was growing up, we lived a comfortable—though far from luxurious—life.
Maybe because he’d spent his youth worried about money,