IF YOU ARE IN a relationship and decide to move in together, you may want to take things slowly—at least when it comes to your finances.
Rent a place you could afford on your own. That way, if the relationship doesn’t pan out, you won’t be saddled with a lease neither of you can afford.
Divide up financial responsibilities. Before moving in together, decide how you’ll split the bills and who will be responsible for paying them.

THE MATH IS BRUTALLY simple: Before costs, investors collectively earn the market’s performance. After costs, they must earn less. In fact, investors collectively trail the market averages by an amount equal to the investment costs they incur. Some folks may get lucky and beat the averages. But the vast majority won’t.
What to do? You might focus on capturing the market’s return at the lowest possible cost—by purchasing market-tracking index funds. Index funds buy many or all of the securities that make up a market index in an effort to match that index’s performance.

IF INTEREST RATES have fallen since you took out your fixed-rate mortgage, you may find it’s worth refinancing, which involves swapping your current mortgage for one with a lower interest rate. But check that it really is worthwhile.
To that end, you need to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Let’s say you have had your current 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for six years, so what you now effectively have is a 24-year loan. If you refinance and replace that 24-year loan with a new 30-year loan,

HERE AT HumbleDollar, we think money is sort of like health. It’s only when you’re sick that you realize how great it is to feel healthy. Similarly, it’s only when you don’t have enough money that you realize how great it is to be on a solid financial footing. More money may not make you happier—but not having money could make you extremely unhappy.
What does this mean for your personal finances? You want to get to the point where money isn’t something you worry about.

ASK FOLKS WHETHER money buys happiness and they almost always respond with a resounding “yes.” And the research suggests that they’re right—but maybe not to the degree they imagine.
If you lift people out of poverty, you can greatly improve their level of happiness. But from there, gains come more slowly, and it can take large sums of money to make someone measurably happier. A big reason is the hedonic treadmill: We quickly adapt to material improvements in our life.

YES, THE MIDLIFE crisis is a real phenomenon. It seems happiness through life may be U-shaped. According to some—though not all—studies, most of us start our adult life feeling pretty happy. But things deteriorate through our 30s, we often hit bottom in our 40s and then our happiness rebounds from there. In fact, our later years can be among the happiest times in our life.
What’s going on here? It may be that our 40s are relatively unhappy because we’re under substantial stress as we juggle children and work responsibilities,

HOW CAN WE SQUEEZE more satisfaction out of our time and money? Here are 11 insights from the academic literature:

Spend time with friends and family. Throw a party. Go out to dinner with friends. Fly across the country to see your children or grandchildren. Join family and friends in volunteering for a local charity. Happiness research suggests a robust network of friends and family can be a huge source of happiness.
Devote yourself to work and hobbies that you find challenging,

PONDER THE MAJOR purchases you’ve made over the past five years. You might have bought a new house or car, purchased furniture for the living room or remodeled the kitchen. In all likelihood, you eagerly anticipated these expenditures. You imagined how great it would be to take delivery of the new car or to have a spanking new kitchen. You thought about how these purchases would make your life so much better.
And sure enough,

LOOKING TO TRIM your spending? It’s hard to offer blanket recommendations. We all have different financial priorities, so a painless budget cut for one person might be wrenching for somebody else. Instead, you might mull four major spending categories—and think about which cuts would bother you least.
Major fixed costs. We’re talking here about houses and cars. Both involve big financial commitments, so changing course can be costly. For instance, you could probably save big bucks by trading down to a smaller home or a less desirable neighborhood.

IF YOU FIND IT TOUGH to save, the reason may not be lavish spending. Instead, there could be another explanation: Maybe your fixed monthly costs are too high, leaving you with little financial breathing room.
The biggest culprit is likely to be your mortgage or rent payment. For instance, if you live in a major city, it can be hard to find reasonably priced housing, even if you opt for a small place or a less desirable neighborhood.

IT IS A RETIREE’S worst nightmare: Your stocks are hammered by a market crash. Your bonds are battered by rising interest rates. Yes, you have your dividends and interest. But to get more income from your portfolio, you might be compelled to sell stocks and bonds at the worst possible time.
To avoid that nightmare scenario, which many retirees faced in 2008-09 and 2022, try dividing your portfolio in two. You might allocate 80% to a mix of stocks and riskier bonds designed to deliver healthy long-run growth.

AFTER YEARS OF uncertainty, Congress voted in late 2015 to make so-called qualified charitable distributions, or QCDs, a permanent part of the tax code. The QCD provision allows those age 70½ and older to contribute up to $105,000 directly from their IRA to a qualified charity in 2024 and up to $108,000 in 2025. The contribution counts toward their annual required minimum distribution.
The charitable gift isn’t tax-deductible—but the IRA distribution also isn’t included in your taxable income,

THANKS TO 2022’S TAX law, the typical starting age for required minimum distributions, or RMDs, is age 73 beginning in 2023. In 2033, the RMD starting age will rise again, to age 75.
Any exceptions to RMDs? There are three. First, if you’re still working at age 73, you don’t have to take distributions from your employer’s 401(k) or similar plan until you retire, unless you own 5% or more of the company, in which case distributions must begin at age 73.

WHEN WE THINK ABOUT the financial tools available to us, we often overlook a key lever: our ability to control how much we spend. It is typically a lot easier to cut our spending than to increase our income. That is especially true once we are retired and no longer pulling in a paycheck.
No matter what, you’ll always have to cover your fixed monthly costs. That is why it’s important to know what that number is and keep it at a reasonable level.

IT’S CRUCIAL TO PUT at least enough in your employer’s 401(k) or 403(b) plan to earn the full matching employer contribution. To appreciate how valuable that match is, consider an extreme example.
Suppose your company is likely to have layoffs. Meanwhile, the local employment market is sufficiently depressed that you fear it will take many months to find a new job. Your instinct is to hoard every dollar possible for what could be a lengthy period of unemployment.