WHEN PLANNING OUR early retirement, I realized that getting and paying for health insurance for my wife and me would be our biggest financial challenge.
Before 2010’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) took effect in 2014, we talked to an insurance agent who gathered our medical histories and submitted them to insurers for consideration. Despite two major surgeries, I was deemed insurable. My wife, due to a congenital condition that had never caused a problem but might,

SUPPLY AND DEMAND are pretty simple concepts. We all understand them, and they play a large role in our everyday lives. The cost of the items we purchase rests, in large part, on how these two key economic factors interact.
As life gets back to normal, we’re watching this play out in real time. Demand is rising and supply can’t keep up, driving prices higher. We’ll be seeing this in airline tickets, and not just because of skyrocketing oil prices.

IS IT JUST ME OR HAS dealing with health insurance companies become more confusing and frustrating? Trying to figure out who to speak to feels like that classic Abbott and Costello comedy routine, “Who’s on first?”
My wife retired last July. For the previous four years, we’d used her employer-provided medical benefits and now we needed to shop for coverage. Under my old employer’s pension plan, pension-eligible employees like me—who retired prior to beginning Medicare—were eligible to sign up for one of the company’s medical plans.

WHEN I PURCHASED a house in Portland, Oregon, in 2018 for $375,000, my plan was to stay in it for four years. By 2022, if everything went according to schedule, I’d be set to retire from my fulltime job. Then I’d sell the house, and my husband and I would move to Arizona, where we’d purchased a second home in 2019.
Conventional wisdom suggests that homeowners should plan on remaining put for at least five to seven years to come out ahead on a home purchase.

A FEW YEARS AGO, I fulfilled a lifelong dream and traveled around the world. It was fascinating to see how people lived, worked and—more important—ate.
I sampled the cuisine of every country I visited. There was goulash in Hungary, hummus in Israel and escargot in France. In each location, I tried to learn how to ask for “the bill, please” in the local language. It’s “kérem a számlát” in Budapest, “חשבון בבקשה” in Tel Aviv (pronounced “khesh-bon be-va-ka-sha”),

MY WIFE AND I ARE blessed with 11 grandchildren and two step-grandchildren. They range in age from six to 18. Amazingly, as we get older, they’ve gotten older, too. We’re fortunate that all of our family is no more than an hour and a quarter’s drive away.

How I miss the days when they were delighted to play with Pa. We went to parks, to playgrounds, to see koi in a pond. We made sandcastles,

WHEN I STOPPED AT CVS the other day to pick up a new charging cable for my iPhone, I was reminded just how woefully out of fashion I am.
The young lady behind the counter handed me a box from the rack and watched as I took the cable out to make sure it was the right one. I guessed her to be in her early 20s. She was wearing a pair of those huge loopy earrings that you could jump hoops through out in the parking lot.

I LEARNED A LOT about finance and life from my uncle. He was an early investment advisor and published a book on wealth management. Even though he was not a registered investment advisor or a Certified Financial Planner, our family proudly extolled his ideas when I was growing up.
My family first introduced me to my uncle’s doctrines when I was a child of five or six. I had been given a small piggybank to store my life’s savings.

FOR 10 YEARS, MY WIFE and I have given each of our four children $5,000 to $6,000 per year for them to put in their respective Roth IRAs. So far, we have given each of them about $60,000.
They were amazed a few years ago when their investment gains for that year exceeded our annual contribution. Today, their Roth accounts are now each worth about $125,000, so their cumulative growth—about $65,000—now exceeds our total contributions.

IN MY COLLEGE DAYS, a roommate taught me something about bargaining. He was a clothes horse, a rarity among college students then and, for all I know, still today. When he was feeling down, his best medicine was to take a stroll down the Drag, as Guadalupe Street in front of the University of Texas is known, and buy a new shirt.
In those days, there were several small mom-and-pop haberdashers on the Drag,

I NOTICED AN AD from a discount airline the other week for a ticket from Cincinnati to Fort Lauderdale for $76 roundtrip. Folks, you can’t drive between those two cities for $76. The same carrier was advertising a bunch of other roundtrip tickets with similar prices.
Crazy cheap.
I get questioned all the time: Are these airlines safe? Do they have good pilots? Are their jets kept in good mechanical condition? Are they as safe to fly as American Airlines—my old employer—or Delta or United?

OUR FOUR CHILDREN are adopted.
After we’d been married several years, we were dismayed that my wife hadn’t conceived. Through testing, we found that we were both essentially infertile. As one doctor put it, “It’s good you are married to each other.” We decided not to pursue surrogacy, in vitro fertilization or similar options.
I thought our life was on an even keel until one day my wife asked, “When you get to be 65,

I’M FASCINATED BY frugality. Being frugal is not the same as being cheap, though—based on what I read about some people who claim frugality—it sounds to me like they are indeed being cheap.

We’re told frugality adds to the quality of life, that it creates a less stressful, less materialistic existence. Being frugal is fine, but living frugally because it’s a necessity—especially in retirement—not so much. Is a minimalist lifestyle all that satisfying?

I think being frugal is a misnomer.

THIS IS NOT MY favorite topic. But it’s a necessary one these days—when a seemingly endless number of companies and individuals are intent on separating us from our money. Some of them will use any means, fair or foul.
I’m going to share a story about a longtime friend whose kindness and generous nature were used against him when he was vulnerable. As much as anyone I’ve ever known, my friend—I’ll call him Bill—was a gentle man and a gentleman.

IN THE EARLY 1990s, my employer—an aerospace manufacturer—sent a small group of employees to Winnipeg, Canada, to help set up a production line. We were chosen because of our familiarity with the product involved.
The company provided us with a furnished apartment, a rental car and $40 a day for food. They flew us back home every two weeks, so we could take care of personal business. I’d fly to Los Angeles on Friday and return to Winnipeg on Monday.