JUST A FEW MONTHS ago, I wrote about my housing plans. Those plans included waiting until I was closer to retirement age before purchasing a home. Having spent the past five years as a renter, I assumed I’d keep renting until I was ready to leave fulltime work behind.
Living in a relatively inexpensive apartment complex came with a few benefits. It allowed me to invest a large part of my income in various retirement accounts.

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT you, but there are things I wish I had learned when I was young—say, at the ripe old age of three or four. I wish I had learned another language. I wish I had started the violin. I wish someone had taught me math and not just how to count to 10.
I believe we can learn all these things and more at a very early age. Why? Because we are human sponges when we’re children.

I WILL NEVER FORGET that New Year’s Day nearly two decades ago. My life changed forever in a matter of minutes. I received in lightning bolt fashion the devastating news that my wife of nearly 40 years was filing for divorce. Looking back, I should have seen it coming. But at the time, I was totally unprepared. I didn’t know it then, but I was part of the initial wave of “gray divorces.”
No football bowl games that New Year’s Day.

USING HIS CONTACTS and connections, our son landed an interview with a New York City health-care system. He was hired as a business analyst and started work in August 2016.
Along with his roommate—also a graduate from the University of Pennsylvania—our son chose to live in Jersey City, N.J., because it’s cheaper than Manhattan, plus his roommate’s job required that he split time between Newark, N.J., and Manhattan. The rent on their 600-square-foot apartment was $2,500,

GETTING INTO COLLEGE is a complicated business—and it doesn’t get less so once your teenager is accepted. There are countless financial challenges and discussions related to tuition, ongoing expenses, buying books, transportation and more. For us, all the logistics were a little more involved, because our son decided to attend the University of Pennsylvania, away from our home state of North Carolina.
In addition to the “big stuff,” we wanted to make sure our son was successful managing his everyday finances.

IF YOU READ ARTICLES about adding your children to your credit cards as authorized users, there will often be experts quoted, offering all kinds of dire warnings. They’ll say you need to make sure your child is responsible and won’t go on some crazy shopping spree.
We had no reason to think our son would do that—but we also didn’t see any reason to take the risk and put temptation in his wallet.
As I mentioned in my previous article,

WE’VE ALL HEARD the expression, “the house always wins.” Does it? The evidence suggests that some casino players can consistently come out ahead. Hard to believe? Pick a casino game that has a definite element of skill and a low house “edge,” and you, too, can be paid to play a game you enjoy. I know what I’m talking about: I have enjoyed free vacations at the expense of casinos for almost two decades.

SOME OF MY CLIENTS incur hefty medical expenses for themselves and family members. I tell them not to expect too much help from the IRS when it comes to deducting such expenses—unless the costs are well into five figures.
To deduct medical costs, taxpayers have to forego the standard deduction and instead itemize on Schedule A of Form 1040. Their expenses also have to be for bills that aren’t covered by insurance or reimbursed by employers.

UNTIL OUR SON TURNED 15, most of our financial education efforts focused on having conversations about money, but in different buying contexts. How we decide on food purchases. How much we budget for clothes. Why we use credit cards. What a credit card bill looks like. The consumer research we do before making a major purchase.
We figured no one conversation would stick, but the knowledge and the ideas would create a general understanding over time.

AT 75 YEARS OLD, I find myself living paycheck-to-paycheck. I now understand how that feels and how it can happen. But you can put away the violin: It’s only temporary.
Being fiscally conservative, I don’t like being in debt or having unpaid bills. I even pay credit cards before they are due—or I used to. Until a month ago, I paid all my bills, with considerable money left over at the end of each month.

THESE BEING THE TIMES they are, I frequently field queries from clients who are asked for loans by relatives or friends. These would-be borrowers plead their inability to come up with the down payments for homes or who want to launch “can’t fail” business ventures. Suppose, as so often happens, the loans go sour and the borrowers’ last messages mention their entry into witness protection programs.
I remind wannabe lenders who intend to stake friends or relatives to familiarize themselves beforehand with long-standing tax rules.

AROUND THE TIME of my birthday each year, I request a copy of my Social Security Statement. This year, as l reviewed my report, I realized many life stories lie behind the numbers that appear in my earnings record.
The first year I had taxable earnings was 1985, the year I graduated high school. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour and my annual income that year was $861. My earnings over the following seven years were meager,

IT WAS 90 DEGREES—and we were the unfortunate owners of a broken, 18-year-old heat pump. After evaluating our system, one heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) contractor recommended replacement at a cost of $7,472.
Reluctant to spend that chunk of change, we opted for a second opinion. Company No. 2 spent an hour and a half at our house, changed out a capacitor, added refrigerant and treated the system with “stop-leak,” all for $837.99.

TWO DECADES AGO, I read an article in The Atlantic magazine about building a home bank for small children. But this wasn’t a bank that would sit on a shelf or table. Its home was in an Excel spreadsheet—with a phenomenal interest rate of 300%.
If real, that kind of return would end the debate on index vs. actively managed funds. Fortunately for banks and mutual funds, the Belwick Bank—named after the street we live on—only had one customer: our four-year-old son and his weekly allowance of $1.

I HAVE A CLIENT I’ll call Irene. She became a widow in April when husband Henry died.
Like most married couples, they held title to their home in joint ownership with the right of survivorship. In plainer language, this means that co-owner Henry’s death results in his loss of all ownership in their dwelling. Surviving co-owner Irene automatically acquires all ownership in it.
Irene is uncertain what to do with her highly appreciated home.