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What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

William Perry | Sep 14, 2026

"No you can’t."

- Nick Politakis

Total portfolio approach?

baldscreen | Sep 14, 2026

"Love Jim. However, ““What you don’t realize is that nobody else knows the right answers either”, suggests a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” approach. While THE right answer may be unknowable, some answers are more right than others. "

- Mark Bergman

Being terminated…

gnussen623 | Sep 12, 2026

"I agree. A mindset change about retirement might very well be in order."

- gnussen623

I will still take the dividends

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"Yikes, dividends kick off an income stream, bonds kick off an income stream. At least that’s what happens to me. ‘Who said anything about change in total asset value?"

- R Quinn

Locking it in

greg_j_tomamichel | Sep 5, 2026

"Yup sounds like the UK offset mortgage which is a really useful tool, essentially overpay as much as you want then those payments sit in a offset savings account reducing the amount of principal for interest calcs. Term is unaffacted. Guess you can technically carry an almost nil mortgage balance to term."

- bbbobbins

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Mark Gardner | Sep 13, 2026

"Great Mark G with your suggestions. Any Government regulation is better than nothing. USG definitely needs to play a leadership role. Other countries may not even know where to start since all the major AI companies are operating from our land here. As a simple software engineer continuing in the Tech Industry for four decades, I wrote my view on this topic a week ago in three pages which can be read or downloaded as PDF from the following URL. https://lnkd.in/p/eyhTxmbs Cheers."

- Senthil Nathan

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

WHEN A HUSBAND dies, his widow inherits his IRA. Somewhere in the paperwork of the months that follow there is a decision to make, and nobody presents it to her as one. She can take the account as her own, or she can leave it titled as inherited. Taking it as her own means filling something in. Leaving it means doing nothing, and the IRS tells custodians they may assume that is what she wants. So the account sits where it is, at the same firm, holding money the household always treated as joint, and the decision gets made by nobody. It is the more expensive of the two. Not by a little. Two Tables Every year, a required minimum distribution, or RMD, has to come out of the account. The amount is the balance divided by a number from an IRS table, and there are two tables in play here. Beneficiaries use the Single Life Expectancy table. Owners use the Uniform Lifetime table, which spreads the money over a longer period and therefore asks for less each year. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth about a third of the annual bill. Take a widow of 76 with $480,000. Left titled as an inherited account, she must take $34,043 that year. Had she taken the same account into her own name, she would have to take $20,253. Same money, same woman, same birthday. The difference is which box got ticked in the months after the funeral. It Does Not Happen Once That gap is not a one-year event. Run both versions forward 10 years, same account, same growth, taking exactly what is required and nothing more. The inherited schedule forces out $374,306 over the decade. As owner, $246,281. She pays about $30,600 more in federal income tax getting there, and reaches 85 with roughly $171,000 less still inside the IRA. She has not lost that money. She has been made to take it out early, pay tax on it sooner, and hold it somewhere less sheltered for the rest of her life. That is a slower kind of damage than a penalty, and a larger one, because it renews every January for as long as she lives. A Floor, Not a Ceiling The usual objection to taking the account as your own is that it locks the money up. It does the opposite. A required distribution is a floor, not a ceiling. She can take more in any year she wants it, for any reason, and nobody asks why. What she leaves alone stays sheltered and keeps compounding. The lower figure buys her the choice. The higher one makes it for her, every year, whether the money is needed or not. One Case Runs the Other Way There is a real exception, and it matters enough to state plainly. Money paid out of an inherited IRA escapes the 10% early-withdrawal penalty at any age, because the IRS exempts what is paid to a beneficiary on account of the owner's death. Take the account as your own and you are back under the ordinary rules. So a survivor who is young enough that an early withdrawal would be penalized, and who expects to need the money, has a genuine reason to leave the account exactly where it is. That threshold is 59 and a half. For most couples already retired this will not apply, and the rest of the article governs. Where it does apply, it outranks everything above. Nobody Will Prompt You I wrote recently about the letter that never comes. A custodian has to tell an IRA owner what must be withdrawn each year, and owes an inherited account nothing at all. So the choice decides more than the size of the bill. Take the account as your own and the letter starts arriving, every January, for the rest of your life. Leave it as inherited and you are on your own to remember the RMD. The branch that requires no paperwork is therefore both the more expensive one and the quiet one, and those two facts feed each other. The option that costs more is also the one that removes the annual nudge that might have made you reconsider it. Decide It Before You Have To None of this is hard to work out. It is hard to work out in the eight weeks after a funeral, which is exactly when it gets decided, usually by default. If you are married and you both hold IRAs, settle it now, while it is hypothetical for both of you. Talk through which of you would be likely to need the money soon after the other died. That is what the 59-and-a-half question really asks, and it is a conversation about your circumstances rather than about tax tables. Then decide which way the survivor should go, write it down, and put it with your trust, your will and the beneficiary designations, where a survivor or an executor will actually come across it. Tell whoever else needs to know that it exists. Look at it again as either of you nears the age your own distributions must begin. That is 70 and a half if you were born before July 1949, 72 if you were born between then and the end of 1950, 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. It is the birthday that makes the whole question live. The paperwork will not choose for you. It will simply do nothing, which is a choice, and on these numbers it is the wrong one for most people who make it by accident. ________________________________________________________________________________ John Urban is the founder of RetireSmartIRA, a retirement tax-planning app. Earlier, he founded GT Nexus, a supply-chain software company acquired by Infor in 2015. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Kathy, and enjoys time with family, travel, reading, Bay Area sports, and the occasional deep dive into the fine print of the tax code.

Growing Up In A Big House

DAN SMITH | Sep 9, 2026

".... and that's what it's all about!"

- DAN SMITH

Americans are rushing to collect Social Security. The reason is disturbing

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"My wife and I started taking social security the month we first became eligible at 62. Our break-even point is age 79. Regardless, the reason we didn't wait is that we have plenty of retirement income already...social security is simply travel money. Our goal wasn't to maximize the net present value of the draw of funds, which is only a guess anyway since you don't know how long you will live, but to maximize the enjoyment of the healthiest portion of retirement years."

- Joe D'Alessandro

A Wedding Too Far

Mark Crothers | Sep 7, 2026

"William, we were in the same boat — paying for our own wedding. That's probably why we kept costs down. We'd also just bought our first house six months earlier, so money was really tight."

- Mark Crothers

Free Breakfast

D.J. | Sep 9, 2026

"Hilton? Higher end? Not the ones where I have to stay."

- Rich

Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 7

Jonathan Clements | Sep 4, 2026

"Jonathan is still giving great advice. Simple an to the point too."

- Brian Kowald

Financial Choices

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Sep 12, 2026

FOR MUCH OF THE seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European monarchs used a financial instrument known as a tontine to help finance their governments. Tontines were first developed in the 1650s by an Italian government worker named Lorenzo Tonti and were similar to annuities: In exchange for a single, lump-sum purchase, tontines offered guaranteed payments for life. But tontines also offered some unique features. Unlike an annuity, where payments end with the death of the owner, tontine holders had the option of tying the payments to another person. A parent, for example, could name their son or daughter on a tontine, thus extending the payments over a much longer period. In the 1750s, however, a Swiss banker named Jacob Beaumont had a realization: While the owners of tontines typically named their children, a quirk in the rules permitted a tontine owner to name any individual. To Beaumont, this presented an opportunity: Why not name the youngest possible person, thus extending the stream of payments even further? In his home town of Geneva, Beaumont identified ideal candidates for this role: young children who came from well-heeled backgrounds and were thus likely to have access to good healthcare. He then began loading up on tontines tied to the very long life expectancies of these children. The strategy worked exactly as expected and delivered Beaumont enormous profits. Other investors then piled in, mimicking Beaumont’s strategy, which, for a time, offered a virtually no-lose opportunity for profit. This went on until the French government, in frustration, discontinued its tontine program. When it comes to financial decisions, it’s the rare situation that’s as obvious as the one that Beaumont identified. Instead, most financial decisions entail some amount of uncertainty and are subject to judgment. Some choices, though, are closer than others to being obvious decisions. Here are six that I see frequently.

Certain Social Security claiming decisions are without question. For example, if you’re married and plan to claim the spousal benefit, it’s important to know that this benefit hits a maximum at full retirement age (FRA), which is now age 67 for most people. Unlike workers’ own benefits, which can continue to increase all the way to age 70, spousal benefits are subject to a different rule, so there’s no benefit for anyone to wait beyond FRA.
You may be familiar with umbrella insurance. This provides additional liability coverage on top of auto and homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance. Because it covers low-likelihood situations, such as someone slipping and falling on your front walk, umbrella coverage is extremely cost effective—sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars per year. I see it as an obvious benefit because the situations it covers, however unlikely, are also the ones that could be the most expensive. And because it would be the insurance company that would face exposure, insurers provide legal defense, at their expense, if there is ever a claim. How much coverage should you have? I generally recommend between $1 million and $5 million, but the key point is that almost any coverage is better than none.
In choosing an asset allocation for your portfolio, I think it’s best to avoid rules of thumb, because everyone is different. At the same time, a recommendation that I see as universal is to avoid extremes. I wouldn’t get too close to 100% bonds because of the corrosive impact of inflation. And I don’t like getting too close to 100% stocks because of the volatility and risk of loss. That’s always been my view, but recent research can help investors narrow the range further. William Bengen, creator of the “4% rule,” published a book last year in which, for the first time, he looked at the question of portfolio longevity through the lens of asset allocation. What he found was that portfolios with stock allocations between 45% and 75% offered the highest sustainable withdrawal rates over multiple decades.

If you’ve recently retired, you may be considering a Roth conversion, whereby you’d move dollars from your pre-tax IRA to a Roth IRA. This is a popular strategy, but the catch is that a tax must be paid when a conversion is completed, and your tax bracket can increase as you convert more. Convert too much, and you can negate the benefit of a conversion. For that reason, it isn’t always obvious whether a conversion is advisable. There is one situation, though, where a conversion offers an almost obvious benefit: If your income, even with a conversion, would be in one of the two lowest tax brackets (10% or 12%), then it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself in a lower bracket than that in the future. In that case, especially because of special deductions provided by the new tax rules, I’d view it as an almost obvious choice to proceed with a conversion up to the top of the 12% bracket.

Looking to make charitable gifts? Because the standard deduction is now so high, fewer taxpayers are able to itemize deductions, and that can limit the tax benefit of donations. But there’s still a way to gain a tax benefit: If you have appreciated stocks in a taxable account, you can donate them to a donor-advised fund. That would allow you to sidestep the capital gains tax that would otherwise be due if you sold those stocks. Many donor-advised funds have no minimums, making this an easy choice, in my view.
If you believe your estate will top the estate tax threshold (about $15 million per person at the federal level, but much lower in certain states), then I would be sure to use the annual exclusion (currently $19,000 per donor and per recipient) to make incremental gifts to your heirs. That's because this annual exclusion is in addition to the lifetime exclusion and doesn’t carry over from year to year.

Note that these gifts don't have to be made in cash if the recipients aren't yet in a position to receive them. As alternatives, you could make contributions to a 529 account or to a trust for their benefit, and these contributions would count toward the annual exclusion. Adam M. Grossman is the founder of Mayport, a fixed-fee wealth management firm. Sign up for Adam's Daily Ideas email, follow him on X @AdamMGrossman and check out his earlier articles.

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

William Perry | Sep 14, 2026

"No you can’t."

- Nick Politakis

Total portfolio approach?

baldscreen | Sep 14, 2026

- Mark Bergman

Being terminated…

gnussen623 | Sep 12, 2026

"I agree. A mindset change about retirement might very well be in order."

- gnussen623

I will still take the dividends

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"Yikes, dividends kick off an income stream, bonds kick off an income stream. At least that’s what happens to me. ‘Who said anything about change in total asset value?"

- R Quinn

Locking it in

greg_j_tomamichel | Sep 5, 2026

- bbbobbins

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Mark Gardner | Sep 13, 2026

- Senthil Nathan

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

Growing Up In A Big House

DAN SMITH | Sep 9, 2026

".... and that's what it's all about!"

- DAN SMITH

Americans are rushing to collect Social Security. The reason is disturbing

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

- Joe D'Alessandro

Financial Choices

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Sep 12, 2026

Certain Social Security claiming decisions are without question. For example, if you’re married and plan to claim the spousal benefit, it’s important to know that this benefit hits a maximum at full retirement age (FRA), which is now age 67 for most people. Unlike workers’ own benefits, which can continue to increase all the way to age 70, spousal benefits are subject to a different rule, so there’s no benefit for anyone to wait beyond FRA.
You may be familiar with umbrella insurance. This provides additional liability coverage on top of auto and homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance. Because it covers low-likelihood situations, such as someone slipping and falling on your front walk, umbrella coverage is extremely cost effective—sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars per year. I see it as an obvious benefit because the situations it covers, however unlikely, are also the ones that could be the most expensive. And because it would be the insurance company that would face exposure, insurers provide legal defense, at their expense, if there is ever a claim. How much coverage should you have? I generally recommend between $1 million and $5 million, but the key point is that almost any coverage is better than none.
In choosing an asset allocation for your portfolio, I think it’s best to avoid rules of thumb, because everyone is different. At the same time, a recommendation that I see as universal is to avoid extremes. I wouldn’t get too close to 100% bonds because of the corrosive impact of inflation. And I don’t like getting too close to 100% stocks because of the volatility and risk of loss. That’s always been my view, but recent research can help investors narrow the range further. William Bengen, creator of the “4% rule,” published a book last year in which, for the first time, he looked at the question of portfolio longevity through the lens of asset allocation. What he found was that portfolios with stock allocations between 45% and 75% offered the highest sustainable withdrawal rates over multiple decades.

If you’ve recently retired, you may be considering a Roth conversion, whereby you’d move dollars from your pre-tax IRA to a Roth IRA. This is a popular strategy, but the catch is that a tax must be paid when a conversion is completed, and your tax bracket can increase as you convert more. Convert too much, and you can negate the benefit of a conversion. For that reason, it isn’t always obvious whether a conversion is advisable. There is one situation, though, where a conversion offers an almost obvious benefit: If your income, even with a conversion, would be in one of the two lowest tax brackets (10% or 12%), then it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself in a lower bracket than that in the future. In that case, especially because of special deductions provided by the new tax rules, I’d view it as an almost obvious choice to proceed with a conversion up to the top of the 12% bracket.

Looking to make charitable gifts? Because the standard deduction is now so high, fewer taxpayers are able to itemize deductions, and that can limit the tax benefit of donations. But there’s still a way to gain a tax benefit: If you have appreciated stocks in a taxable account, you can donate them to a donor-advised fund. That would allow you to sidestep the capital gains tax that would otherwise be due if you sold those stocks. Many donor-advised funds have no minimums, making this an easy choice, in my view.
If you believe your estate will top the estate tax threshold (about $15 million per person at the federal level, but much lower in certain states), then I would be sure to use the annual exclusion (currently $19,000 per donor and per recipient) to make incremental gifts to your heirs. That's because this annual exclusion is in addition to the lifetime exclusion and doesn’t carry over from year to year.

Manifesto

Sep 13, 2026

NO. 32: WE SHOULD start with the global market portfolio—the investments we collectively own—and decide what we don’t want in our portfolio. Often, foreign bonds are the biggest subtraction.

think

Sep 14, 2026

BE AN OWNER. Home buyers typically fare better than renters, provided they stay put for at least five years. Becoming a part owner of corporations, by investing in stocks for the long haul, should be more lucrative than lending money by buying bonds. Owning a car is typically cheaper than leasing, provided you keep the vehicle for more than three years.

Truths

Sep 13, 2026

NO. 91: A MORTGAGE leverages your home’s price appreciation—and costs you a bundle in interest. If you buy a $300,000 home with $30,000 down and the price climbs 30% to $390,000, your home equity would leap 300% to $120,000. But how much did you pay in mortgage interest to get this gain? Often, the cost of leverage offsets the benefit.

humans

Sep 12, 2026

NO. 5: WE'RE IMPULSIVE. Our brain has two parts: an instinctive side and a contemplative side. Much of the time, we operate on instinct. But with money, our instincts can lead us astray, prompting us to make impulsive spending and investing choices. To reduce the risk of subsequent regret, stop and pause, especially before big financial decisions.

Money Guide

Manifesto

Sep 13, 2026

Spotlight: Advisors

Getting Rolled

Kenyon Sayler | Dec 18, 2023

THE SECURITIES AND Exchange Commission recently proposed that registered financial advisors be compelled to act as fiduciaries when recommending rolling over 401(k) money to an IRA. Whether this rule gets adopted or not, plenty of advisors are eager to help investors with the issue.
Indeed, as I approached retirement, a number of advisors contacted me about rolling over my 401(k). Of course, these advisors also offered to manage my funds for a fee, usually around 1% a year of assets.

Dinner Is Served

Mike Zaccardi | Sep 15, 2021

HOW LUCKY I WAS to be the recipient of a dinner invitation to Ruth’s Chris. I love a sizzling ribeye, so I booked my seat at the event. Those nearing and in retirement have a good idea of what I’m referring to—the good old annuity sales presentation.
These dinners are put on by financial advisors looking to expand their business. The routine goes like this: Invite prospects, present for an hour on the benefits of owning insurance or an annuity,

Is a good financial advisor worth 1% of assets per year?

Jonathan Clements | Jun 6, 2021

Off the Hook

Michael Flack | Apr 2, 2022

ONLINE INVESTMENT advisor Personal Capital offered me a $25 Amazon gift card to open an account and then link it to one of my existing financial accounts worth more than $1,000. As a bonus, it also offered a complimentary financial checkup.
I duly signed up and linked one financial account. I then dodged the complimentary checkup and subsequently used my newfound wealth to purchase a portion of a good-enough HP computer.
I thought I was home free until I inadvertently answered a phone call from a member of my “Personal Capital team,” who again offered me the complimentary financial checkup.

Roles of financial advisors and tax experts for high net worth individuals

Michael Calogero | Jun 29, 2024

Let’s play a hypothetical – a married couple 60 and 58, with a net worth of $10M. No debt, no children.
What roles does a financial advisor play, assuming the couple is content on how they invest?
What role might a tax expert play for planning and managing cost avoidance over time?

You Aren’t Listening

Andrew Forsythe | Sep 24, 2021

WHEN IT COMES to communication, I’m kind of a fanatic. (My wife would say I should drop the “kind of.”) More specifically, I’m a fan of responsive communication.
Back in my working days, when I practiced criminal law, I made it a point to return phone calls and emails from clients promptly. It was rare that I didn’t do it the same day. If that meant staying late at the office until I caught up,

Rules for Gift Giving

Sonja Haggert | Dec 16, 2022

IT’S THE MOST wonderful time of year—for trying to figure out what gifts to give. If you’re like me, you may be wringing your hands. But some studies and a bit of psychology could help. While searching my favorite websites for gift ideas, I came across a helpful article by psychologist Jill Suttie. She offered five suggestions. The first is to make sure the gift is practical. I didn’t see that one coming. Practical gifts are remembered. Expensive gifts aren’t necessarily better. Please don’t tell my husband. You’ll be able to relate to No. 2 if you have small children: Initial enthusiasm doesn’t equate to long-term satisfaction. Have you ever given a child that toy he wanted, only to see him set it aside after a few days or even a few hours, never to be touched again? Suttie says we shouldn’t aim to wow the recipient momentarily with something flashy, but rather give a present likely to deliver longer-term happiness. Third, people prefer gifts they’ve asked for rather than something you thought they’d appreciate. I can relate to this. Growing up, my mother rarely bought something on the spot when I wanted it. But often, I would later find it under the Christmas tree or as a birthday gift. I’m sure this was her way of ensuring her only child didn’t become a spoiled brat. I hope she succeeded. Fourth, there’s been much talk about giving experiences over things. According to science, this brings about feelings of closeness between the gift-giver and the recipient. Finally, there was one caution I found interesting: Don’t give folks a gift if they don’t want one. Such gifts are seen as self-serving, creating a sense of indebtedness. Suttie’s article reminded me that the point of giving gifts is to strengthen relationships. That helped…

Hitting Record

Sonja Haggert | Jan 30, 2022

OVER THE PAST TWO years, we’ve seen everything from tornadoes to devastating fires to hurricanes, often at unusual times and in unexpected places. That got my husband and me thinking about how to prepare for what may come our way—and how we could document what we might lose. We decided to make a home movie. Our new phones are perfect for taking videos. What better proof of what we have? You’ve probably seen the suggestion that you do this, but did you do it? We did many years ago, but that record of our possessions is now outdated. Out came the phones. In addition to making a video of the rooms in our house, we also took pictures of the contents of drawers. Our closets hold all kinds of things we would miss, so we took pictures of those items, too. After all, would you remember what was in your closets if asked? An upside of this exercise: We can throw away the old video and save this new one on our phones. We always have our phones with us—and would even if a calamity struck. After looking at what we have, do we have enough homeowner’s insurance to cover all those things we would miss? Maybe it’s time to research construction costs in our area to see if we should increase our coverage. There’s another benefit to all of this: When we’re no longer around and our family must dispose of our items, perhaps they won’t give away that painting that could cover a year of college costs.

A Million Dreams

Sonja Haggert | Nov 15, 2022

I DIDN'T WIN the Powerball lottery—this time. That’s too bad because I knew exactly what I’d have done with the money. I’ll bet you did, too. I was ready to pay for the education of all of our nieces’ children. “Go where you wanna go,” as the song says. My favorite charity would also have been on the list. Laurel House, a domestic violence agency, does tremendous work in Montgomery County, where we live in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Lest you think I don’t have something personal in mind, there’s a condo in Florida that I’ve had my eye on. And another one in New York City, so I could attend a Broadway show at a moment’s notice. All in my dreams, of course. Because I didn’t win—this time. Which means I won’t be on the evening news. In Pennsylvania, you must fill out a claim form to get your prize. The state will reveal your name, the town or county where you live, and how much you’ve won. Why does the state insist on this? It wants the public to know that you can indeed win, plus the more winners it publicizes, the more people play. Pennsylvania also has an open records law, which makes such information public. With such a revelation, all my friends and neighbors would have known I was RICH. I may have discovered friends and family I didn’t even know about. How would I say “no” to them? More to the point, how do you decide when to say “no” in general? Then there’s the whole issue of safety and scams. My lawyer friend said someone might have filed a bogus lawsuit against me or staged an accident, hoping I would pay up. There are loopholes around the identity issue, such as forming a trust to claim…

Get a Job

Sonja Haggert | Jun 23, 2022

WHEN I WAS GROWING up, my mother thought the best way to relieve my boredom during summer vacations was to get a job. She was a valued employee at a local business and she knew the firm was hiring. I asked if part of the job was to calculate change for customers when they made a purchase. That terrified me. My mother said she wasn’t sure, but that I’d learn to do it if it was required. The thrill of having money to spend outweighed my fear of making change. I took the job and survived the cash register. That got me thinking about today’s teens taking their first jobs. I read that jobs are plentiful this summer, and there may even be a signing bonus. If they get a job in retail, kids won’t have to calculate change, either. The computer will do it for them. On top of that, they’ll have other advantages. For starters, they’re unlikely to owe federal income taxes on their summer wages. A dependent child can earn up to $12,950 and pay no federal income taxes in 2022. Social Security and Medicare taxes must typically be paid, however. Seeing those deductions will teach teens a little about the taxes all workers pay. Fidelity Investments reports that teens know they need to have financial goals. Saving comes up as teens’ No. 2 goal—right after getting a well-paying job. Yet less than half of teens have any savings at all, according to Fidelity’s research. When saving, a teen might be tempted to take the TikTok money challenge, which involves saving cash in a liquor bottle. The TikTok challenge offers the sense of community and accountability that financial planners say can encourage saving. The idea: Don’t crack open the bottle until it’s full. The liquor bottle challenge, however,…

Vet These Policies

Sonja Haggert | Mar 9, 2023

YOU LOVE THEM LIKE family. You want them to have the best care possible. You have insurance for yourself, your family, your home, your car and your upcoming vacation. Why not for your pet? One of our friends recently opted for pet insurance—after multiple trips to the vet, with more than 20 medications prescribed. Intrigued by the idea of pet insurance? Here are eight choices and what they offer: Pets Best covers everything, including medications, physical therapy and even acupuncture. It also covers senior pets and makes it easy by paying the veterinarian directly. You can decide if you want a $5,000 annual cap on reimbursement or unlimited coverage. You can also customize your policy. Payment options are monthly, quarterly or semiannually. Trupanion may be your choice if you prefer to avoid paying deductibles. It will also pay the veterinarian directly, and there’s no cap on the number of claims you can submit. There is, however, a limit to how much you can customize your policy. Lemonade is great for digital claims. Your claim can be reimbursed within minutes through an app on your phone. The coverage isn’t available in all states. ASPCA offers complete and accident-only coverage. Coverage starts at $10 a month and allows you to adjust the reimbursements to suit your budget. Pumpkin plans can have annual caps on reimbursements, such as $20,000 for dogs and $15,000 for cats, though pet owners can also pay up for unlimited coverage. Healthy Paws doesn’t cover hip dysplasia, a common dog problem, if a pet is six years or older at the time of enrollment. Prudent Pet offers acupuncture and chiropractic care coverage if a veterinarian recommends it. It may have a longer claim-processing wait time than some of the other policies. Nationwide covers cats and dogs, but also exotic pets. This…

Details, Details

Sonja Haggert | May 11, 2022

DO YOU SKIM OVER the fine print? Two recent incidents involving insurance coverage made me rethink my tendency to do just that. One incident alerted me to a major problem. The other saved me money. Let’s start with the problem. It was time to renew our homeowner’s insurance. In looking over the policy, something didn’t look right. In the section for dwelling, which is defined in our policy as alterations and other improvements, we had $5,000 worth of coverage. That sum would potentially need to cover the replacement of appliances, flooring, fixtures and so on. Meanwhile, for personal property, we had $250,000 of coverage. This is defined in our policy as furniture and clothing. I think you know where this is going. When I called our insurance agency to ask if I understood the designated amounts correctly, an employee acknowledged there was a problem. I was told to call the insurance company directly. What we discovered was that our coverage had been flipped. Even though we all have the impression that our personal items are valuable, it’s far more important to be able to replace the essentials in our homes, such as appliances and flooring. The $5,000 would barely cover the price of one or two appliances. What about the happier incident? We have some trips planned, and there’s the issue of travel insurance. Since the pandemic, travel has gotten dicier, so finding the right policy is important. In my research, I discovered something positive: We already have significant coverage through our credit cards. For example, according to the American Express literature, I’m covered for $3,000 of lost or stolen baggage. Not bad. The amount for trip cancellation also looked good to me. I was skeptical, so I called American Express. The fine print said it provides secondary coverage. A…

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

Total portfolio approach?

Being terminated…

I will still take the dividends

Locking it in

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Widow’s IRA Choice

Growing Up In A Big House

Americans are rushing to collect Social Security. The reason is disturbing

A Wedding Too Far

Free Breakfast

Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 7

Financial Choices

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

Total portfolio approach?

Being terminated…

I will still take the dividends

Locking it in

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Widow’s IRA Choice

Growing Up In A Big House

Americans are rushing to collect Social Security. The reason is disturbing

Financial Choices

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Manifesto

think

Truths

humans

Money Guide

Manifesto

Spotlight: Advisors

Getting Rolled

Dinner Is Served

Is a good financial advisor worth 1% of assets per year?

Off the Hook

Roles of financial advisors and tax experts for high net worth individuals

You Aren’t Listening

Spotlight: Haggert

Rules for Gift Giving

Hitting Record

A Million Dreams

Get a Job

Vet These Policies

Details, Details