I OUTLINED 10 REASONS everybody should have an estate plan in a 2018 article—and what was true then remains true today, especially for those whose assets could be subject to estate taxes.
Under today’s rules, the federal estate tax applies to individuals with assets over $12.9 million. That might sound like a high number. But in 2026, the limit is set to be cut in half. In addition, many states impose their own estate tax,

MY PARENTS WERE products of the Great Depression. Dad was the frugal one. He was also a pack rat. He’d save pieces of wood for that shelf that he would build “someday.” For years, those pieces sat under the ping-pong table in the basement.
One night, Mom dragged the wood out to the street for the garbage collector to haul away. Later that night, Dad dragged the pieces back into the basement. Mom was the type to get rid of things that were no longer needed.

ONE OF THE CLEARER mandates for a Christian such as myself is to help the poor. Jesus said the poor “will always be with you.” It doesn’t take amazing powers of observation to see that he was correct. There are lots of ways to help the poor, with churches and thousands of worthy charitable institutions working to address the causes and effects of poverty.
Many years ago, I became acquainted with a large Christian organization called Compassion International.

I DON’T FIT THE USUAL profile of a HumbleDollar reader. I don’t have what I’d consider a high net worth, nor am I a college graduate. Still, I hope my story shows it’s possible to reinvent yourself.
Around 1920, my dad’s family moved—with few belongings but a willingness to work—from Tennessee to northwestern Ohio. My dad met my mom while working at Hostess Bakery, and he later worked at Willys-Overland, welding together Jeeps during World War II.

I GOT MARRIED IN 1980 at age 22. After 29 years of marriage, my wife and I went through a contentious divorce in 2009 and 2010. We’d grown apart and, during our last few years of marriage, discussed parting ways.
I moved out of our marital home of 16 years into an apartment. It was strange to be living by myself again. I was 51 at the time.
While adjusting to my new reality,

WHEN I WAS AGE SEVEN or eight, I had a glass piggybank where I saved all the small change that came my way. I loved the sight of all this money that I could save or spend as I pleased.  

One day, my mom needed to go to the grocery store for some bread and found she didn’t have enough cash. She asked to borrow from my almost-full bank. I gave the money to her,

“YOUR CHECKING ACCOUNT balance is low.” It’s an alert none of us wants to receive, especially if we’ve just been paid. But that was the message that a friend—let’s call him Ron—got recently. A hacker had gained control of his account and started bleeding it dry.
Ron, it turns out, was lucky to have received that alert. Another friend—let’s call him Arthur—received no such alert when his account was also taken over by hackers this summer.

MY FATHER HAD FOUR brothers: Bob, Jack, Don and Dick. Born in 1918, Dad was the oldest. Bob was next, born the following year. Jack came along in 1922 and Don in 1926. Dick, born in 1931, brought up the rear.
I never met my Uncle Bob. By the time I was born, he and his wife lived more than 1,000 miles away, and my parents were never close to them. Uncle Don was my favorite.

SHOULD A REASONABLE real estate buyer expect the multiple listing service (MLS) to provide a reasonable description of the property being purchased? What if it doesn’t?
All the previous times I’ve purchased real estate, the MLS accurately described the property I was buying. I realized that disclosures were also provided by the seller, and those specified the finer points of what was being purchased. Still, I’d come to expect a certain amount of integrity from the MLS listing itself.

I’M NOT SOMEONE WHO enjoys spending money on luxury travel. I’d never pay cash for a business class airline ticket or a hotel suite. Nonetheless, on a recent trip to Spain with my husband, we flew business class and had suites in all four hotels we stayed at.
We also visited lounges in every airport before our flights, had access to executive lounges at two hotels where we could get free meals, snacks and cocktails,

I THOUGHT I HAD a pretty good handle on health savings accounts, or HSAs. My wife and I contributed to HSAs over the decade before we retired. The money we accumulated has come in handy in the early years of retirement. I’ve also written several articles extolling their virtues.
But I recently learned that we missed an opportunity to further fund these accounts, while simultaneously reducing future required minimum distributions. The trick is to do a rollover from an IRA to an HSA.

I BEGAN MY FIRST JOB out of college 38 years ago. A newly minted electrical engineer, I was assigned by Philadelphia Electric Company to work at its Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta, Pennsylvania. As a young child, I had visited the Peach Bottom Unit 1 Visitor Center, never anticipating that I’d someday return to the site as an employee.
My concentration in college was power engineering, so I fully expected to be working in the transmission and distribution side of the electric power business.

IN THE CENTER OF the Maine village where I spend my summer, a few residents live in a makeshift encampment. It consists of four popup trailers—the kind towed by cars—plus some cars, dilapidated lobster boats and a couple of pup tents, one containing children’s toys.
The residents live without running water, so they bring it to the site in gallon jugs. Their laundry hangs on clotheslines strung between trees and a lobster boat. The site looks forlorn and temporary,

WE USUALLY HAVE Chinese food every Wednesday. It’s our weekly night out for dinner. While waiting outside our favorite restaurant for a table, I heard my wife call out, “Hey, Doe, our table is ready.” That’s what my wife calls me. It’s my new name. She used to call me Dodo. Now, she’s shortened it to Doe.
How did this nickname come about? One day, I called myself a dodo for a silly mistake I’d made.

“CLEAN YOUR PLATE.” “You’ll eat what’s for dinner and like it.” “There are children starving in Africa.”

Those are lines I often heard as a child. I guess my parents weren’t aware of hunger in the U.S.—or the long-term damage to our waistlines and health that such clean-your-plate advice could have.

Still, at least we weren’t squandering food, which is a big problem these days. Each year, 80 million tons of food are wasted in the U.S.