THE OBBBA WAS SIGNED on July 4, 2025. There are a lot of different changes in various areas, including student loans, Medicaid, SNAP, etc
My goal is to focus on reviewing the Title VII – Finance, specifically focusing on Subtitle A – Tax.
There are many changes and my goal is to focus on the most important provisions impacting individuals and small business owners.
Let’s get into it:
Section 70101. Extension of the tax rates.

WHEN HUMBLEDOLLAR’S editor was The Wall Street Journal’s longtime personal-finance columnist and his children were little, he often joked that he had a special incentive to see them succeed financially.
“It would be a tad embarrassing,” Jonathan wrote, if his children “grew up to be financial ne’er-do-wells.” For that reason, he used his own home as a laboratory of sorts, testing strategies to help set his children on the right financial path.

WHEN MY TWO CHILDREN were ages nine and five, I opened Vanguard Group variable annuities for them. No, variable annuities aren’t my favorite investment. Far from it. Indeed, I don’t think they’re anybody’s favorite investment vehicle, unless you happen to be an insurance agent angling for a big commission.
Still, tax-deferred annuities differ from other retirement accounts in one crucial way: You don’t need earned income to fund the account. That means it’s possible to open a tax-deferred annuity for a toddler,

WHEN STEWART MOTT graduated college in 1961, he received $6 million from his father, an auto industry entrepreneur who was one of the founders of General Motors. On top of the $6 million, a family trust began paying Mott an annual stipend of $850,000.
That allowed Mott to spend his adult life pursuing a variety of eccentric endeavors. He funded research on extrasensory perception. Inside his Manhattan apartment, he built a 10,000-square-foot garden, along with a chicken coop.

I’M A HOUSEHOLD of one—in theory. True, one adult child lives rent-free in our family home in California. Her first full-time job’s wages are too low for her to afford an apartment in our expensive urban area.
I’m also paying college expenses for another daughter living on campus 80 miles away. She’s working part-time and will graduate this coming spring semester. With a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) degree, I hope she’ll find gainful full-time employment soon after.

IN WASHINGTON, 2025 is beginning to look a lot like 2017. Republicans again control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. But a key difference between then and now is that today the Republican majority in the House is far narrower.
This means more negotiation will be required, and agreement on a new tax bill may take months. In the meantime, here are some key areas that investors will want to keep an eye on.

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.

STOCKS, BONDS, CASH—and a house owned free and clear. For many, that’s the recipe for a financially successful retirement. Our homes represent a central pillar of middle-class status. With a paid-off mortgage, we have an affordable place to spend our old age.
Yet signing up for decades of house payments has become controversial for its high opportunity cost—what you give up to pay the mortgage. Has a home mortgage, with its long, slow road to payoff,

MY SON IS A FRESHMAN in high school, and I’m beginning to be more purposeful about his baseball aspirations. But after dropping $85 on a one-hour pitching lesson, I was wondering, was my money well spent?
My search for an answer began with the Netflix series Receiver. I tuned in to see football player George Kittle, a former University of Iowa Hawkeye and bigtime professional wrestling fan. Kittle was kind enough to send autographed memorabilia for a softball fundraiser we had a few years ago.

ONE SPRING DAY IN 2022, an elderly woman entered Paris’s Picasso Museum to see a new exhibit. Among the items on display was a decorative blue jacket, which was positioned on a wall next to a portrait of Picasso.
The woman liked the look of the jacket, so she took it down from its hook, put it in her bag and quietly walked out the front door. Only later did the museum discover the theft,

LIKE OTHER FOLLOWERS of HumbleDollar, I look forward to Jonathan’s Saturday articles. I have to admit that my interest has been heightened by his cancer diagnosis. Not many folks would have the courage to write about what’s going through their mind when they’re fighting for their life. We don’t often get this kind of insight into someone’s life.
Jonathan has probably received a lot of advice about treatment plans and the doctors he should see.

I SPENT MANY HOURS reading articles and books about retirement before I actually retired. I knew I’d retire eventually because of how often I found myself out of work. Studying retirement became one more thing I needed to do so I could be successful.
Under the category of retirement, grandparenting was a frequent subject. This is understandable since many retirees are or soon become grandparents.
My situation is different. My special-needs son will not get married or have kids.

I’M WRAPPING UP MY final big investment. Going into it, I knew it would lose money, unleash unwanted disruption and chew up time when it’s never been more precious—and yet I still went ahead.
As readers might recall, last year, Elaine and I remodeled the kitchen in our Philadelphia home. This year, we decided we’d revamp the upstairs bathroom, despite my cancer diagnosis and the forecast that I might live just 12 more months.

SIPPING MORNING coffee on the porch of my 40-year-old aluminum box in the Sonoran Desert, I’m pondering the cost of housing.
My affordable unit sits on cement piers at the end of a street within an age-restricted park, at the sparsely populated edge of Tucson. Few jobs exist nearby. Civic amenities are modest. Summer weather is challenging, with heat, thunderstorms and seasonal rattlesnakes. Still, these conditions have created a financially comfortable place for a retiree to live.

PEOPLE WHO KNOW ME say I’m sentimental, and they’re right. I like visiting places like my elementary school, the house where I grew up and my first home away from home. They bring back fond memories.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more nostalgic, and it isn’t just me. I heard that the ashes of my childhood friend Brian were spread over our grade school grounds. He must have had a touch of nostalgia,