MY FIRST PET WAS a timid pup called Precious, a moniker inspired by the cartoon character of the same name. My four-year-old self felt an affinity for the runt of the litter, so I quickly picked him out. That sweet, little dog had a nature true to his name. I don’t remember his fate but, in those days, pets ranged free in our little town, and I fear he may have met with some mishap.

WITH DECEMBER FAST approaching, it’s a good time to think about end-of-the-year financial planning. What steps might you take?
A popular strategy is to make charitable gifts, both to support good causes and reap a tax benefit. But before you start writing checks, take a moment to better understand your tax picture. Because of the complexity of tax forms, that’s often easier said than done. Still, you don’t need to decipher every number. Instead,

WE FLEW BACK TO the U.S. last week from Madrid, and were reunited with our car of 12 years. After selling our house in late 2022 and going nomadic, we had headed to Europe six months ago, opting to have our 2008 Lexus SUV professionally stored.
In an earlier article, I recounted the thought process behind this decision. Suffice it to say, we chose this option largely because we had no firm plans for when we’d need our car again,

I LIKE TO THINK OF myself as frugal, not cheap. The difference between these two is admittedly subtle—and, indeed, my wife insists that I straddle the line between them.
That brings me to my lifelong do-it-yourself approach to all things home-related. I abhor paying for services that I can do myself. But sometimes, I wish I were a little less frugal.
When we first moved to Texas, I tried saving money by doing my own yard work.

MY FATHER DIED WHEN I was 15 years old. My mother didn’t work outside the house, so we now had no money coming in. She eventually got a job as a receptionist in the local hospital’s X-ray department, but she only worked weekends and holidays. Meanwhile, by then, my older brother was married and out of the house, so he wasn’t affected by this change in our family’s financial circumstances.
As I saw it,

MY WIFE AND I BOUGHT a used hybrid Toyota RAV4 recently. We saw it at a dealership and bought it that day.
This wasn’t an impulse purchase. We knew it was time to replace my 10-year-old Subaru Forester, and we’d done research on hybrids and electric vehicles. Because the new car would be our distance traveling vehicle, and my occasional work transportation, we wanted the flexibility of a hybrid. In time, we’ll replace our second car with an electric vehicle for local driving.

STUDENT LOANS ARE a hot topic—one that’s fraught with confusion and complexity. Still, many borrowers should consider taking action this year. Want to get a better handle on what’s happening? Let’s start with three changes that have lately been in the spotlight:

Federal student loan payments, along with the interest charged, were paused from March 2020 to September 2023. That gave borrowers more than three years to make principal-only payments or, alternatively, to potentially accrue credit toward loan forgiveness without the need to make payments.

“AMORTIZATION, STEVIE, amortization. When I make a mortgage payment, part goes to the bank, the rest comes back to us.” My father’s cigar flailed as he patted his back pocket. “Listen to a man who worked his way up through the college of hard knocks. Don’t be a jerked-up kid.”
Wearing a sharkskin suit, charcoal shirt and wide red tie that preceded The Godfather’s Michael Corleone, my father confused talking about himself with teaching me.

WHEN I GRADUATED high school in the 1950s, I was age 17—and totally directionless. But living in New York City offered many opportunities, some of them right outside my front door.
At the time, the larger banks and insurance companies sent letters to recent graduates offering job interviews. I chose to accept an invitation from American Surety Co. I had no idea what a surety company did.
The venerable old company was housed in the second largest skyscraper in Manhattan—the American Surety Building at 100 Broadway in lower Manhattan,

WORK ON A HOUSING development began in early 2000 about a mile from where we lived. This was right around the time that my wife Lisa and I were starting to feel like we wanted some more room for our family. In addition, we were concerned about our current backyard. There was a swale—a shallow ditch—that ran the length of the yard, parallel to the house.
When we bought the house, there was grass in the base of the swale and nothing looked unusual.

WHEN I LAST REPORTED on our retirement journey, we’d decided to put our search for a second home on hold. Well, in the immortal words of Saturday Night Live’s Emily Litella, “Never mind.”
We looked at many properties in several communities earlier this year, but we didn’t find anything we wanted to purchase. We decided on a cooling-off period, while we pondered what our next step should be. We kept a casual eye on properties coming up for sale,

NO ONE SCHEDULES when the car battery is going to die.
Monday morning arrives after a full weekend. Bleary-eyed, I roll out of bed, make a steaming cup of coffee, and pull up the latest HumbleDollar articles on my iPad. My wife rushes past, gives me a quick peck on the cheek, and leaves to drive to her study group.
And then I hear the groan. Alas, the car won’t start. No power,

ALASKA FINALLY HIT the top of our bucket list. A number of friends had made the trip and returned with glowing reports of the scenery, wildlife and fresh seafood. Vicky and I each had our own No. 1 reason for the trip: She wanted to see whales, and I wanted to see the Northern Lights.
Alaska’s Inside Passage is often the destination for travelers headed to the 49th state. There’s a wide variety of ships that ply those waters,

WHEN I WAS BORN IN Iowa in 1973, my parents were renters—and they didn’t become homeowners until eight years later. Looking back, I can see that it would have been hard for them to buy a house. When my dad started at the factory where he worked for more than 30 years, it didn’t pay the best.
But as Bandag, the retread company he worked for, began to prosper under its founder Roy James Carver,

AS I PREPARE FOR retirement, I’ve been reminded that I should “retire into something,” that I should use my anticipated free time for a meaningful purpose. During the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that—for me—one of those “somethings” is to care for “the farm,” 200 acres of rolling countryside in western Tennessee. This discovery has been both surprising and delightful for me, and has led to a reconnection with the farm and, through that reconnection,