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What Addiction Couldn’t Take: My Sister’s Story

"Tory's life was vibrant, service-oriented, purpose-filled. You've created a love-filled snapshot of your sister's soul. Thank you for this. Every human being is more than the direct and indirect tolls of a disorder. Each deserves to be remembered for their special gifts, their ideas, their contributions and dreams and accomplishments. As for addiction, "it became the kind of shadow that never fully disappeared, no matter how much help, hope, or determination surrounded it". It reminds me of the famous lines from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” Losses, or the lack of wins, build slowly and it seems we forever will have more time, more chances for turnaround. At least some prevail and survive and we rejoice at this, hoping the same for our dear loved ones. Then, the suddenness of loss. I am so sorry for your family's double loss, of Tory and of Jonathan. You include here an assessment of the financial cost, which might have derived from her earnings and savings, or yours, or possibly social agencies. In my own life, it's buying a cup of coffee for a homeless person sitting outside the neighborhood donut shop, or paying for a night at a motel to give a loved one a place where they might safely if briefly sleep and shower. I've helped with rent for a family member whose disorder has contributed to inability to hold onto a job. You name it, a panoply of troubles. Over time, these add up to big money that won't be there for me or them to handle other emergencies, retirement, ordinary expenses, or discretionary extras for oneself or other people. One oft-recommended strategy is "tough love", refusing any financial support for a family member in trouble. That might save money for me, I guess, but in my long experience I know of few successes, where the person in need recovers, prompted by the withdrawal of outside resources. It'd be great if this strategy worked better, we'd all have more money in our pockets and our loved ones would be healthy. As a civil society the cost of addiction and other disorders is a huge line item in many municipal budgets, borne by taxpayers or generated through outsized fees to spread these costs across many persons. I wish there were better solutions for families and individuals seeking help. Thanks for including the SAMSHA number, too, I bookmarked it to share around."
- Catherine
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Fixing Social Security is not that hard, here’s how

"I found https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-us/insights/market-commentary/the-politics-and-practicalities-of-the-social-security-trust-fund useful on this topic."
- Mark Gardner
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He Said I Wasn’t Very Nice

"Our sign says “no soliciting…don’t make this weird”. LOL! Chris"
- baldscreen
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Many seniors think we paid for our Social Security benefits based on the FICA taxes we paid. Let’s dispel that myth- we didn’t

"Why did you ask “Where did their benefits go?” If you know how pensions and SS work you surely know the answer. To put it another way which you also know, they were an actuarial gain for the trust "
- R Quinn
Read more »

Risk Adjusted: The Family Ledger 

"Marcus, your final remark made me laugh! On a more serious note, your point about presence is spot on, and working on this post stirred up some echoes of my own career as a business owner. There were so many times I couldn't make it to my girls' sporting events or dance rehearsals because of my workload. Now that I'm retired and have the time to follow my two grandchildren's every interest, I'm more aware of what I missed back then — and it makes me wish I'd made more of an effort during my career."
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

HD Reader’s Demographics

"Glad to be of service! Ha! Just calling them as I see them."
- Mike Lynch
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…..taxes and you

"Is that really true about the minimum tax on older cars? I always have older cars, and this year I paid: 2005 Sienna: state: $66, town: $82.50 2004 Sentra: state: $48, town: $42.50 2012 Focus: state: $54.50, town $48.00 1980 man lift: state: $40, town $30.50 2003 popup camper: state: $13.20, town $35.50 various one-axle trailers: state: $13,20 (one was $3.30), town $10.50"
- Jon Daley
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Interesting insight

"I wonder about this, too. I find I can live on my Social Security income alone (admittedly, it would be a spartan lifestyle), but I've reached the age of RMDs. I spend part of my RMD and save/invest the balance. At the same time, the boom you've described is growing both my investment and retirement accounts - in spite of all the bad news we're pounded with each day. One of my two kids is doing very well for himself. The other was doing fine until all the wheels fell off - job loss, divorce, kid expenses, etc. I can be a financial backstop as needed and within reason, but not forever. In your second to last paragraph you refer to Boomers not being immortal. That's all well-and-good, the end comes to us all. But I intend to keep living as well and as long as possible - so the Boomer wealth transfer will need to wait!"
- Jeff Bond
Read more »

A Sunday Thought About Money

"I am so jealous...my kids haven't had kids, so my best grandparents' years are going to waste. I thought your grandparents might enjoy this comedy from Kathleen Madigan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LeOMMqvwLI&t=8s. The grandparents' part starts at 1:45."
- Mike Lynch
Read more »

Bonds vs. Bond Funds

"Thank you all for the comments. Mark's line — "the main issue here is a misalignment of timeline and purpose" — really does get at the heart of it. When you put money into a bond fund without ever looking at the index it's managed against, you're not choosing a risk profile, you're inheriting whatever risk profile that index happens to carry at that moment, and that profile isn't fixed. As the Hartford chart shows, the Agg's duration has swung meaningfully over time, drifting higher as rates fell and issuance patterns shifted, then snapping back as rates rose again. An investor who bought in with a rough mental model of "this is a five-year-ish bond fund" could easily find themselves several years later holding something with a noticeably different interest-rate sensitivity, without ever having made an active decision to change it. That's the randomness I'm pointing to: not that the fund is mismanaged, but that its risk level is set by the bond market's borrowing patterns and the benchmark's construction rules, not by your goals. That's exactly why a bond ladder, or a CD ladder, is a useful alternative for some investors: you pick the duration profile that matches your own timeline and risk tolerance, and it stays matched to that purpose rather than drifting with the index. And the CD ladder point is well taken too. For someone who wants that certainty without dealing with the secondary-market mechanics of individual bonds, a CD ladder is often the simplest way to get there. Matt"
- Matt Halperin
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SpaceX IPO: Is Margin Optional?

"A good article from Morningstar explaining the Space X impact on index funds. The SpaceX IPO: How Index Funds Are Adapting | Morningstar"
- Harold Tynes
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How well off are Americans compared to the rest of the world? Fun facts.

"I should modify my comment. Living P to P is always real, just not always necessary and surely not always or mostly associated with low income as generally assumed."
- R Quinn
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What Addiction Couldn’t Take: My Sister’s Story

"Tory's life was vibrant, service-oriented, purpose-filled. You've created a love-filled snapshot of your sister's soul. Thank you for this. Every human being is more than the direct and indirect tolls of a disorder. Each deserves to be remembered for their special gifts, their ideas, their contributions and dreams and accomplishments. As for addiction, "it became the kind of shadow that never fully disappeared, no matter how much help, hope, or determination surrounded it". It reminds me of the famous lines from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” Losses, or the lack of wins, build slowly and it seems we forever will have more time, more chances for turnaround. At least some prevail and survive and we rejoice at this, hoping the same for our dear loved ones. Then, the suddenness of loss. I am so sorry for your family's double loss, of Tory and of Jonathan. You include here an assessment of the financial cost, which might have derived from her earnings and savings, or yours, or possibly social agencies. In my own life, it's buying a cup of coffee for a homeless person sitting outside the neighborhood donut shop, or paying for a night at a motel to give a loved one a place where they might safely if briefly sleep and shower. I've helped with rent for a family member whose disorder has contributed to inability to hold onto a job. You name it, a panoply of troubles. Over time, these add up to big money that won't be there for me or them to handle other emergencies, retirement, ordinary expenses, or discretionary extras for oneself or other people. One oft-recommended strategy is "tough love", refusing any financial support for a family member in trouble. That might save money for me, I guess, but in my long experience I know of few successes, where the person in need recovers, prompted by the withdrawal of outside resources. It'd be great if this strategy worked better, we'd all have more money in our pockets and our loved ones would be healthy. As a civil society the cost of addiction and other disorders is a huge line item in many municipal budgets, borne by taxpayers or generated through outsized fees to spread these costs across many persons. I wish there were better solutions for families and individuals seeking help. Thanks for including the SAMSHA number, too, I bookmarked it to share around."
- Catherine
Read more »

Fixing Social Security is not that hard, here’s how

"I found https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-us/insights/market-commentary/the-politics-and-practicalities-of-the-social-security-trust-fund useful on this topic."
- Mark Gardner
Read more »

He Said I Wasn’t Very Nice

"Our sign says “no soliciting…don’t make this weird”. LOL! Chris"
- baldscreen
Read more »

Many seniors think we paid for our Social Security benefits based on the FICA taxes we paid. Let’s dispel that myth- we didn’t

"Why did you ask “Where did their benefits go?” If you know how pensions and SS work you surely know the answer. To put it another way which you also know, they were an actuarial gain for the trust "
- R Quinn
Read more »

Risk Adjusted: The Family Ledger 

"Marcus, your final remark made me laugh! On a more serious note, your point about presence is spot on, and working on this post stirred up some echoes of my own career as a business owner. There were so many times I couldn't make it to my girls' sporting events or dance rehearsals because of my workload. Now that I'm retired and have the time to follow my two grandchildren's every interest, I'm more aware of what I missed back then — and it makes me wish I'd made more of an effort during my career."
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

HD Reader’s Demographics

"Glad to be of service! Ha! Just calling them as I see them."
- Mike Lynch
Read more »

…..taxes and you

"Is that really true about the minimum tax on older cars? I always have older cars, and this year I paid: 2005 Sienna: state: $66, town: $82.50 2004 Sentra: state: $48, town: $42.50 2012 Focus: state: $54.50, town $48.00 1980 man lift: state: $40, town $30.50 2003 popup camper: state: $13.20, town $35.50 various one-axle trailers: state: $13,20 (one was $3.30), town $10.50"
- Jon Daley
Read more »

Interesting insight

"I wonder about this, too. I find I can live on my Social Security income alone (admittedly, it would be a spartan lifestyle), but I've reached the age of RMDs. I spend part of my RMD and save/invest the balance. At the same time, the boom you've described is growing both my investment and retirement accounts - in spite of all the bad news we're pounded with each day. One of my two kids is doing very well for himself. The other was doing fine until all the wheels fell off - job loss, divorce, kid expenses, etc. I can be a financial backstop as needed and within reason, but not forever. In your second to last paragraph you refer to Boomers not being immortal. That's all well-and-good, the end comes to us all. But I intend to keep living as well and as long as possible - so the Boomer wealth transfer will need to wait!"
- Jeff Bond
Read more »

A Sunday Thought About Money

"I am so jealous...my kids haven't had kids, so my best grandparents' years are going to waste. I thought your grandparents might enjoy this comedy from Kathleen Madigan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LeOMMqvwLI&t=8s. The grandparents' part starts at 1:45."
- Mike Lynch
Read more »

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Get Educated

Manifesto

NO. 33: WE HAVE two great financial advantages: time and our income-earning ability. To grow wealthy, we should take a slice of each month’s earnings—and invest it for as much time as possible.

Truths

NO. 76: TAX DEFERRAL lets you use dollars that’ll eventually go to Uncle Sam to earn extra gains for yourself. An example: If you invested $1,000 at 6% a year and paid 22% in taxes every year, you would have $3,944 after 30 years. But if you put off the 22% tax bill for 30 years by funding a tax-deferred retirement account, you’d end up with $4,700, or 19% more.

humans

NO. 75: WE'RE HAPPIER when we count our blessings. All of us have reasons to be happy—we just need to keep those things in mind. If we spend a few minutes pondering our friends and family, the lovely things we own and the great experiences we’ve had, we can squeeze more happiness out of our past spending and get more joy out of each day.

think

SKEWNESS. The most a stock can lose is 100%, but its potential gain is unlimited. Every year, a minority of stocks with huge returns skew the market higher, so most stocks end up trailing the averages. The irony: The big winners make beating the market seem easy—and yet betting on a handful of stocks will likely result in market-lagging performance.

Article archive

Manifesto

NO. 33: WE HAVE two great financial advantages: time and our income-earning ability. To grow wealthy, we should take a slice of each month’s earnings—and invest it for as much time as possible.

Spotlight: Saving

IRS 2026 Updates

SECTION 415(D) OF the IRC requires the Secretary of the Treasury (IRS) to annually adjust limitations for cost-of-living increases. So, let’s dive into some of the changes:
 
401(k), 403(b), and Most 457 Plans:

For 2026, the 401(k)/403(b)/457(b) amount you can contribute is increasing from $23,500 to $24,500. If you are in a 24% marginal tax rate, that’s an additional $240 of federal taxes you can defer. If you are over age 50, the catch-up contributions are also increasing by $500,

Read more »

No Time Left for Calculating My Net Worth

Oh my, I’m beginning to think that some of the articles I find on the internet aren’t really news at all. Below is one I clicked on today. It reminds me of those free dinners that Mike Flack recently posted about. I also think it ties in well with Dave Lancaster’s post about calculating net worth. 
The article didn’t define how it calculated net worth. I assume it includes checking and savings, IRAs and similar accounts,

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Money and Me

JONATHAN CLEMENTS’S final book was released this week. Titled Money and Me, it traces the arc of Jonathan’s nearly four-decade career as a personal finance columnist.
Money and Me starts with the story of a man named George Cope, who was a nineteenth century tobacco baron. At the time of his death in 1888, Cope was one of Britain’s richest men. But within just two generations, his fortune was gone.

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In Love With Bonds

WHEN I WAS GROWING up, I’d receive Series E savings bonds as birthday gifts from my parents. It was the start of many to come. My parents had great respect for savings bonds and, as I got older, I came to hold them in high regard as well.
Savings bonds never offered the highest interest rate. At a defense plant where I worked, a guy in the accounting department questioned my bond buying. He noted that savings bonds paid less interest than the certificates of deposit then available.

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Living My Beliefs

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN a saver, and perhaps even pathologically frugal. Growing up, it pained me to spend money, even on food when I was hungry. Today, I have more than enough money, but I still resist paying full price for food.
Perhaps I’m just genetically frugal, or perhaps my feelings about money reflect my parents and my upbringing. My mom once shared that her aunt predicted that she’d make lots of money, but it would be like grains of rice and slip through her fingers. Meanwhile,

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Raising Savings

When I was working full-time, I always saved the maximum to my 401(k). Before my employers had a 401(k) plan, in the early 1980s, I saved the maximum to an IRA—a princely $2,000. Pretty soon I felt rich. I had $40,000 saved.
For this reason, I always pay attention to changes in plan savings limits. And there are higher savings limits for 401(k) plans in 2025, plus a new “super catch-up” category. For those who are interested,

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Spotlight: Horiuchi

When It Rains

TWO WEEKS AFTER my husband’s death, we held a memorial service for local friends and family. Days later, after a reasonable amount of online research, I visited a car dealer. It’s my experience that bringing at least one youngster along speeds up dealmaking, plus a parent can get unvarnished opinions about life in the backseat. So I brought along my 13-year-old. The two of us test drove two used cars and bought one of them. The next day, I drove to work in the city, instead of taking a train from the park-and-ride lot, as I'd done for the prior decade. My goal was to shorten my commute and reduce my hours away from home. This ended badly when I slipped on wet pavement in a parking garage, resulting in an injury that required surgery and time off work. Having never endured such an injury before, it was a shock to realize that—for the first time in my adult life—I was neither earning nor saving money, especially during a period of such high expenditures. Further, we’d lost all my husband’s future cash flow and his sharing of family responsibilities. Would that I had a partner and decades of earnings to recover the lost cash. But instead, I was on my own, launching three young adults. I had read about the "widowhood effect." I was at elevated risk of illness, injury or death. I had been careful. But I’d already exceeded the three-to-five days off work allotted for a death in the immediate family. On top of that, we grieving people are often told to stay busy and try to get back to normal routines. While anyone can lose their footing on a rain-soaked walkway, possibly nothing bad would have happened if I’d kept to my familiar commute or, even better, stayed…
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Not Your Friends

FINANCIAL FIRMS spend heavily on marketing to create a friendly, customer-first impression. But these firms aren’t your friends, at least not in the ordinary sense of the word. They make their money, fairly and legally, by providing specific services to customers. Friendliness at a retail level keeps your capital in place, where it works for the firm’s benefit. Every once in a while, I see language that clearly expresses what they want from our “relationship.” These communications help me review where I do business, and why. Consider two examples from a single day online. First, “check your spending power” appeared on a web page when I was paying off this month’s credit card charges. It encouraged paying the minimum required, with the number highlighted on the page. But that, of course, would trigger steep financing charges. The site’s other suggestion: Run up my credit card balance closer to its current limit. That might completely derail my financial plans. For most people, our spending superpower lies in paying off the balance in full each month. Second, on one of my investment accounts, I spotted a line item labeled “excess liquidity.” This represents the cash value of dividends that I have chosen not to reinvest. There’s nothing “excess” in this holding. I need the “liquidity” to pay next semester’s college tuition and housing for my twins. The investment firm sees cash in an investor’s account as something it would like to retain and no doubt fears it’ll be moved elsewhere. Calling it “excess liquidity” is a cognitive trap. It’s a nudge to buy more stocks in the same account. But that would be a mistake for me. Stocks are too volatile for money I’ll need for college bills over the next three years.
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Give It Away Already

DRIVING CROSSTOWN, my brother and I stopped at an onramp, where a man held a cardboard sign. “Does anyone give these people money?” my brother asked, then immediately answered his own question by mentioning a friend who hands out bottles of water instead. “Anything helps,” read the man’s sign. “Sure,” I said. “I’ve seen people pass $5 bills out the window.” A single dollar used to be enough for a panhandler to end his shift and shuffle off to the nearest mini-market. But inflation has changed that. “I once tried to give a person $5,” my brother started. “Long ago.” Here we go again, I thought. Another tale from his hippie youth. If it was a story I recognized, I could probably stop him mid-sentence. Thankfully, most stories are short, though the moral of his fables are harder to determine than Aesop’s. “Oh?” I tried to sound noncommittal. Maybe he’d veer into another topic. World politics perhaps. “Yes, I was in Jennifer’s car with her and a couple other people. Some guy had a sign, ‘Need $$$.’ I pulled a fiver from my pocket. One moment, I had it in my hand. Next thing I knew, Jennifer was stuffing it into her purse. She drove on without a word.” “Charity begins at home,” I said, not really sure if this was the moral he had in mind. “Jennifer was in a hard spell,” he agreed amiably. More than half a century had passed since the day he tried to give a stranger $5, blocked by his friend’s more urgent need. I was hearing about this for the first time, and I’ll remember it, too. That’s because I’m decumulating, though slowly. My calculations and advisors indicate that I’ve likely saved enough to last for the rest of my natural life and…
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4% every year? even this one?

I'm withdrawing a bit from IRAs, ahead of RMDs in a few years, which will decide for me how much I'll be taking out each year. For those of you who make voluntary withdrawals, do you go with a fixed percentage, like 4% every year, plus an inflation boost, calculated on Jan. 1 and taken at the beginning of the year? Or do you recalculate to reflect market change, and withdraw gradually throughout the year? Or wait till Dec. 31 when you know how the year went, and then take it? I'm thinking this is sort of related to "decummulation", which for me includes both retirement money and other savings socked away.  4% a year max spent out of all your assets? Or more variable?
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The Aftermath

AFTER LEAVING THE hospital, our family met up at a favorite neighborhood restaurant. “What’s next?” the teenagers asked. “Now begins the parade of covered dishes,” I answered. For the month after my husband’s death, when preparing food hardly seemed possible, friends and neighbors made sure our refrigerator and freezer bulged. The kids experienced a variety of main meals, side dishes and desserts. There was enough for us and our many helpers, and we experimented with time and labor-saving meal shortcuts. Prepackaged salad, anyone? We also had support personnel. My sister-in-law was the first to arrive, dispatched ahead of my brother, who would come the following week to assist with the memorial service. For two months, half-a-dozen houseguests took on mundane tasks, each in their own way. The kids experienced myriad household models. By the end of this, a couple of months later, we were ready to be alone. Questions of what would happen to my spouse’s things—including his bank accounts—began the day he died. One person asked about a charitable contribution he had made annually. Would I be making it again this year, possibly increasing the amount? Since it was January and he made the contribution each December, I replied that I would answer in 10 months. Another person said, “You have two cars. What will you do with the second car?” There was absolutely no immediate need to do anything with the second car, and I replied to that effect. Two matters, however, required immediate handling. First, I needed to decide where to send my husband’s body. Did I want to work with a funeral home or handle matters myself? It’s possible, by arranging a cremation, picking up the ashes yourself and then going somewhere to scatter them, to reduce the cost to a few hundred dollars. At the…
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Money Pit

It's time to rewatch the 1986 Tom Hanks/Shelley Long cautionary tale about their dream house gone wrong. After spending last year's home improvement efforts on my newly-acquired tin can casita, my used car of a fishing cabin in the Sonoran Desert, I'm back in the city for some long-pondered home renovation. It ain't been pretty, at least when I review the hit to my portfolio. Everything from a piece of lumber to a square foot of cement is more expensive than I'd imagined. Plus, it's all taken much longer than expected, and the planned summertime work will stretch into late fall. The primary goal here is to improve the property so it's in good condition for my older years, should I stay in it rather than move elsewhere. The secondary goal is to increase its appeal to younger homebuyers, should I downsize or leave it behind altogether. I'm also listening to long podcast discussions on "rent v. buy".  I'm renting the spot where my retirement experiment, my owned park unit sits (it came to rest there 40 years ago, been through many owners before me) so I'm actually on both sides of the discussion for the first time in decades. The thing is, as is the case for many other homeowners, the house I've lived in for over 30 years has become a sizable element in my portfolio. A 401k only requires an occasional rebalance, a small pension is completely on autopilot. But like most homes, mine benefits from ongoing maintenance and occasional improvement. Instead of selling the big house and living full-time in my remote 370-square-foot unit, I may downsize into a smaller house nearby. At least for a few years, I'd like to retain regular contact with my kids, old friends and neighbors,  enjoy city life on occasion,…
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