When we deploy our hard-earned dollars, we all have our financial reasons. But are we focusing on the right thing? Consider four examples:
Homes. When folks buy a home, they’ll often dwell on the potential price appreciation, the tax benefits and the advantages over renting. But I’d contend there are two reasons that are even more compelling: Buying a home locks in our housing costs and, with every monthly mortgage payment, forces us to save.

I’m not expecting readers to answer all eight of the thorny questions listed below. But I’d love to hear your thoughts on one or two.

What in your past or about your personality explains your investment risk tolerance?
What uses of money—giving it away, saving it, specific purchases—bring you the greatest joy?
Would you be okay financially if U.S. stocks had a 0% total return over the next 10 years?
If you’re still working, what would it take for you to leave the workforce with a sense of satisfaction?

IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, before the invention of the printing press, a strategy for remembering information was to build a so-called memory palace. The idea was to associate words with images. Even today, this is how participants in memory competitions can achieve feats like reciting a thousand digits of pi.
Similarly, when it comes to personal finance, I’ve found that certain images can help illustrate important concepts. These are the ones I rely on the most:
1.

My challenge to you: List your top financial mistakes. Not sure you want to invite the ridicule of others? To make everybody a little more comfortable, I’ll go first. Here are my top six:

When I started investing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I bought individual stocks and actively managed mutual funds. Admittedly, I went this route because it allowed this cash-strapped investor to get started in the financial markets with a few hundred dollars,

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.

A QUOTE OFTEN attributed to Mark Twain goes as follows: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
This certainly applies to personal finance, and it’s why it can be helpful to take a step back sometimes to revisit widely held notions—including these six.
1. Social Security. You may have heard of Social Security’s “earnings test,” which can reduce the size of monthly checks for those who continue working after claiming benefits.

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 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.

Regular HD readers know how old I am, but just for fun how about a trip down memory lane to a very different time. 

When I was a child an ice cream cone was a dime, a slice of pizza was $0.15. There were no malls. Where there are malls today, there were dairy and cattle farms.
When I was really young our milk was delivered by horse and wagon kept cool by blocks of ice. 

This is the time of year when financial writers dish out advice for the year ahead. But who wants another to-do list? Here are five things I won’t be doing in 2025:
Flying economy on international flights. Our 2024 trip to Ireland finally broke me. Sitting upright on an overnight transatlantic flight is just too much for my ailing body. I can manage economy on a daytime flight, but now find it pure misery when flying overnight.

IN THE FINANCIAL world, some topics are serious, others not so much. Since it’s the holiday season, it seems appropriate to look back at some of the past year’s lighter moments.
No joke. In 2019, artist Maurizio Cattelan unveiled a collection he called Comedian. The item that received the most attention: a sculpture that consisted only of a banana duct-taped to a wall. The banana gained fame when it sold at a Miami auction for $120,000.

At Thanksgiving, my son-in-law was asking me a number of financially related questions about retirement.  He’s about 10 years away from retirement, but he knew I retired last year, so it was fresh in my mind.  I created the following pre-retirement list for him to think about.  Update: The list has been updated based on comments from the HD community.
 HD Community:  Are there any financially-related things you did to prepare for retirement that aren’t listed below? 

In the past week I have received important notifications via email from two experts in their field that will impact your finances:
1) Phill Moeller who’s website is called Aging in America- is considered one of the the foremost authorities on Medicare writes:
Medicare announced that Part B monthly premiums would rise to $185.00 in 2025 from $174.70 this year – an increase of $10.30, or 5.9 percent. The annual Part B deductible, which most people must pay before their Medicare coverage begins,

WHEN HANNAH AND HENRY were children, I talked a lot about money. This was partly self-preservation: It would have been embarrassing if the kids of a personal-finance columnist grew up to be financial ne’er-do-wells.
Fortunately, they didn’t. Hannah and Henry are now in their 30s. Both have good financial habits, and today I typically don’t talk to them about money except when they have questions. Still, given my cancer diagnosis, perhaps a few final reminders are in order—13,

A 10 dollar investment in Berkshire-Hathaway in 1965 would now be worth about $ 500,000 large. Not bad. Or, to quote the late Bob Newhart, ” Oh boy.” ( no exclamation point)
A very financially unsophisticated  woman in New York worked for the same company for 67 years, never earning very high salaries, and when she passed away a few years ago, she had a net worth of almost ten million dollars. Long Term Capital Management had tremendous computers,