The phone call from my 29-year-old daughter in London recently sparked a familiar parental concern. She and her partner were jetting home  not for a family visit, but to catch a Coldplay concert. My mind immediately did the mental math: flights, tickets… easily $500 per person. And then it hit me: this is the third major concert they’ve attended this year, on top of a holiday to the Canary Islands and my other daughter is at this very moment camping her way around Turkey and Greece.

Let’s all collectively do a real time experiment regarding my recent post/rant about the price of gas.   Facts :
1) Israel attacked Iran last night.
2) Refineries were NOT hit.
3) The Strait of Hormuz remains open
4) according to Google, it takes about 5-7 weeks for oil from the Middle East to arrive in the US
5) as I write this,  the price of oil has gone up 8.67 % since yesterday.
How long will it take,

We are starting to consider booking a trip for 2026. We would like to go outside the US, if possible.  Some of you have encouraged me to make a post asking advice about where to go, what to do, and other things we might need to know about traveling out of country. (We do already have our passports from when we took a cruise in 2019 when we paid off our house.)   So, HD friends,

When you were in your 20s and 30s, what did you dream of doing—and why weren’t those dreams realized? Here are four of the daydreams I had, but which remained just that:
Buy a sports car and drive across the country. This one got nixed by a host of factors—not enough vacation time, lack of money, the arrival of my first child at age 25. But truth be told, what seemed like a fun adventure slowly lost its allure,

Towards the bottom of Mr. Quinn’s lengthy thread on spreadsheets and budgets I mentioned that I expect to spend a bit under 1% of my portfolio this year. Dick said that he would feel nervous in that situation. I am not currently feeling nervous, but since that percentage will increase over time, maybe I should be. I thought I would ask my fellow contributors what they thought.
Some background: I agree with Dick in seeing my income as just Social Security,

It was some time in the 2000s, and I was at the outlets in Flemington, New Jersey. I stumbled upon a pair of black leather Cole Haan shoes priced at $75, marked down from $300. It was the only pair left, and the shoes happened to be my size. How could I possibly resist?
I hated those shoes. No matter how many times I wore the darned things—and, trust me, I didn’t give up easily—my feet screamed.

It has been written here and elsewhere that there is more value in using your money for experiences instead of buying stuff. I fully agree. 
Experiences with family and friends are most important especially as you get older, but beyond those, what experiences stand out for you? 
Most of our traveling was after we retired. We isolated funds for that purpose. While working, our travel was limited to business events, mostly employer paid. That’s how I had dinner at Mar-a-Lago Club.

In this weekend’s Barron’s, Jack Hough wrote that ‘…. shoppers say they’ll spend an average of $259.04 per person on Mother’s Day this year, up exactly $5 from last …”
Sadly, my mother died several years ago. But my wife and I have two children, and they are getting her a gift. However, I can promise you that total the pair spend on their mother won’t begin to approach $520+.
Does the average shopper really spend an average of $260 per person for their mother?

A few days ago Connie and I went to a unique NJ restaurant for a light dinner.
We each had a root beer, we shared a pastrami and turkey sandwich and one bowl of matzah ball soup. The bill was $108 before tip. Now you know why Harold’s NY Deli is unique. 
Have you concluded it is a upscale, white table cloth place or just a rip off? Now, the rest of the story. 
The sandwich is so large they give you six extra slices of bread to break it down.

While I was in Savannah last week, PBS was filming an episode of Antiques Roadshow, a show I’ve always enjoyed. On a lark, my girlfriend Patricia and I walked over and took a backstage tour with a woman who worked for Georgia Public Broadcasting. This is what we saw:
Hundreds of people who had won free tickets in an online lottery lined up at the entrance to the Georgia Railroad Museum. Most carried small items in tote bags.

A detour from personal finance to something more macro:
 
Isn’t it amazing (sarcasm intended) that the price of a barrel of oil has dropped from $ 72 to $ 59 over the past month, yet “shockingly” – sarcasm intended, again – the price of gasoline hasn’t budged in my area. It seems that the oil companies have no problem raising the price of gas IMMEDIATELY, whenever there is a hiccup in the Middle East, but they FORGET how to lower prices when the price of oil goes down !

If there is an antonym to HumbleDollar it surely must be in the form of a gift my wife just received from her niece. The gift is a bag. It’s a designer thing. From Paris. I googled the bag, and if you are interested you can buy one of your very own for about $4000.
My wife’s bag is actually a knock off, a counterfeit. The niece only paid 50 bucks. I couldn’t figure out how to post a picture,

Dan’s post ‘Insomnia and the Back of an Envelope’ motivated me to review our expenses.  Our top five categories are property taxes, home/car insurance, utilities, groceries, and healthcare premiums/deductibles.

Our home property taxes increased 23% from 2023 to 2025 while our home value increase 17%. The value of our ten-acre plot went down 1.6% from 2023 to 2024, but then increased 23.5% from 2024 to 2025 and property taxes increased by 30%.
Home insurance went up 46% from 2023 to 2025,

Five years ago I wrote a HD article titled Food for Thought. It was about all the food we waste and, of course the money as a result.
Yesterday I mentioned to Connie that we have things in our pantry and fridge we don’t even know we have. She was sure that was not the case. Today I pulled out a bag of candy and other goodies we had forgotten from Christmas. I’m assuming it’s from last Christmas but that is not a certainty. 

Suppose money were no object. If you could go anywhere in the world on your next trip, where would it be? If you could savor any experience, what would it be?