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Insurance

To Claim or Not to Claim, That Is the Question

Mark Crothers  |  Oct 28, 2026

"Dick, I do the same. I shut off the water whenever we leave, and our policy actually requires it: between 1 October and 31 March, failing to do so invalidates the coverage. We also leave the furnace on frost protection over the colder months. A home watch service sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately there isn’t one available in our area."
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

Markets

Doubling the Bear Market Low

Mark Crothers  |  Oct 22, 2026

"Steve, to be annoyingly pedantic for a moment: a 25% gain only protects you against a 20% fall. But you’ve got the gist of what I was saying. If a $2 million portfolio at or near retirement gives you peace of mind and a comfortable retirement, and it then doubles, why not lock in those gains in low-volatility assets and enjoy much greater certainty? You’d still have the original amount you already found perfectly acceptable to live on. Yes, a full collapse would hit those assets too, but that’s a risk of a different order from an ordinary market drawdown. I suppose it comes down to whether your idea of “enough” is fixed or a moving target."
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

Retirement

Why can’t Americans put more effort into understanding Social Security?

R Quinn  |  Oct 29, 2026

"True, for decades. On the other hand, if people understood more, they might put on more pressure."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Family

The Advantage We Bring

Andrew Clements  |  Oct 28, 2026

"Chrissy and I love our sunny vacations in the Caribbean, and always enjoy interacting with the workers. One memorable trip was in the Dominican Republic. A tour we bought included visiting the home of a typical family and a grade school class of children. Our guide's name was Elvis, who was a citizen of Haiti who crossed the border each day to haul around a bunch of American and European tourists. We had very interesting conversations about the DR and Elvis's life in Haiti. I know that just passing through a place and seeing how people live day to day isn’t remotely like living there, but it did give us a small glimpse into their reality.  Finally, don’t forget the people at home who struggle to put food on the table and raise their kids well. America may be a land of opportunity, still, I wonder if my little tax practice would have grown as easily if I were a color other than white, or if English was my second language. "
- Dan Smith
Read more »

From HumbleDollar Founder Jonathan Clements

Careers

Late Shift

LIKE A SLOW-MOTION train wreck, we’ve spent recent decades inching toward a world where we have too few workers and too many retirees dependent…
Read more »

Investing

Do I really need International funds in my portfolio? I say no.

Bruce Roberts  |  Oct 26, 2026

"Rather than debate the point, I would just note that practically all of the investing and personal finance experts I follow recommend some kind of international allocation. As I recall Jonathan Clements liked holding the global stock market as represented by Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund ETF (VT) where international is well more than a third. Adam Grossman says for diversification purposes there’s not much point in holding more than 20 percent. But virtually all recommend some kind of international allocation. "
- Michael1
Read more »

Behavior

Monopoly

D.J.  |  Oct 27, 2026

"lol, of course both the Mudhens and Tony Packos are musts on the game."
- DAN SMITH
Read more »

In Retirement

The pension conundrum and a solution

R Quinn  |  Oct 26, 2026

"Your fellow taxpayers say “you’re welcome.” 😁"
- R Quinn
Read more »

In Retirement

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.
Read more »

Investing

Would copying Congress have beaten an index fund?

Daniel Oliveira  |  Oct 28, 2026

Be the first to comment.
Read more »

Saving

Jonathan Clements Initiative at the Bogle Center for Financial Literacy

Sheila Roher  |  Aug 22, 2025

"We are giving much more than we ever have, but we still find it hard. In fact we have a couple DAF's (donor advised funds, essentially deferred giving) that have grown larger than most people's net worth. Why is it so hard to give money away? For us, having always been very frugal, a big barrier is the loss of control. Once we give away the keys, someone else will make the decisions about how to drive. I try to calm this fear by reminding myself that I am also an inadequate, imperfect, deficient manager, and that giving away control is just like diversification, which in the long run will lead to a greater and more stable return on investment. We'll try to keep working on it!"
- Steve Spinella
Read more »

Retirement

Roth conversion cash flow

Severly Independent  |  Oct 24, 2026

"For what it is worth, I did a complete analysis with ChatGPT. Ran alternate conversion strategies, did sensitivity analysis and simulations that tweaked several parameters at the same time (had to specify some probabilities of various parameters). I cross-checked with a multi-page excel worksheet that i had coded. The answers were within spitting distance, and the overall strategy was clear cut. The AI prompt is the key -- you must tell it your goal and provide guidance (e.g., account for mortality risk). Finally, I only provided aggregate data to the AI (to nearest $100K to maintain some anonymity."
- ram bala
Read more »

Insurance

To Claim or Not to Claim, That Is the Question

Mark Crothers  |  Oct 28, 2026

"Dick, I do the same. I shut off the water whenever we leave, and our policy actually requires it: between 1 October and 31 March, failing to do so invalidates the coverage. We also leave the furnace on frost protection over the colder months. A home watch service sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately there isn’t one available in our area."
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

Markets

Doubling the Bear Market Low

Mark Crothers  |  Oct 22, 2026

"Steve, to be annoyingly pedantic for a moment: a 25% gain only protects you against a 20% fall. But you’ve got the gist of what I was saying. If a $2 million portfolio at or near retirement gives you peace of mind and a comfortable retirement, and it then doubles, why not lock in those gains in low-volatility assets and enjoy much greater certainty? You’d still have the original amount you already found perfectly acceptable to live on. Yes, a full collapse would hit those assets too, but that’s a risk of a different order from an ordinary market drawdown. I suppose it comes down to whether your idea of “enough” is fixed or a moving target."
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

Retirement

Why can’t Americans put more effort into understanding Social Security?

R Quinn  |  Oct 29, 2026

"True, for decades. On the other hand, if people understood more, they might put on more pressure."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Family

The Advantage We Bring

Andrew Clements  |  Oct 28, 2026

"Chrissy and I love our sunny vacations in the Caribbean, and always enjoy interacting with the workers. One memorable trip was in the Dominican Republic. A tour we bought included visiting the home of a typical family and a grade school class of children. Our guide's name was Elvis, who was a citizen of Haiti who crossed the border each day to haul around a bunch of American and European tourists. We had very interesting conversations about the DR and Elvis's life in Haiti. I know that just passing through a place and seeing how people live day to day isn’t remotely like living there, but it did give us a small glimpse into their reality.  Finally, don’t forget the people at home who struggle to put food on the table and raise their kids well. America may be a land of opportunity, still, I wonder if my little tax practice would have grown as easily if I were a color other than white, or if English was my second language. "
- Dan Smith
Read more »

From HumbleDollar Founder Jonathan Clements

Careers

Late Shift

LIKE A SLOW-MOTION train wreck, we’ve spent recent decades inching toward a world where we have too few workers and too many retirees dependent…
Read more »

Investing

Do I really need International funds in my portfolio? I say no.

Bruce Roberts  |  Oct 26, 2026

"Rather than debate the point, I would just note that practically all of the investing and personal finance experts I follow recommend some kind of international allocation. As I recall Jonathan Clements liked holding the global stock market as represented by Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund ETF (VT) where international is well more than a third. Adam Grossman says for diversification purposes there’s not much point in holding more than 20 percent. But virtually all recommend some kind of international allocation. "
- Michael1
Read more »

Behavior

Monopoly

D.J.  |  Oct 27, 2026

"lol, of course both the Mudhens and Tony Packos are musts on the game."
- DAN SMITH
Read more »

In Retirement

The pension conundrum and a solution

R Quinn  |  Oct 26, 2026

"Your fellow taxpayers say “you’re welcome.” 😁"
- R Quinn
Read more »

In Retirement

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.
Read more »

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Manifesto

Oct 28, 2026

NO. 68: AS INDIVIDUAL investors, we enjoy a key advantage: While money managers risk losing their job if their short-run results are lousy, we can invest for the truly long term.

think

Oct 29, 2026

TIME HORIZON. How long will your money be invested, before you need to convert back to cash to pay for your goals? The longer you have, the more risk you can take. Some goals, such as a house down payment, have hard deadlines, with all money needed on a particular day. Others, like retirement, involve softer deadlines, because you’ll use the money over many years.

act

Oct 28, 2026

MAKE SURE MUNIS make sense. High-income earners are often told to buy tax-free municipal bonds in their taxable account. But often, it's smarter to hold higher-yielding taxable bonds in a retirement account, while buying tax-efficient stock index funds in your taxable account. Even if munis make sense today, that may change if your income drops once you retire.

humans

Oct 27, 2026

NO. 18: SPENDING can give us a thrill. Just had a rough day? Others may cheer themselves up with comfort food or a beer. But for some, the antidote is to make a purchase or two, because this spending lifts their spirits. But thanks to hedonic adaptation, the thrill doesn’t last long and, taken to an extreme, such spending could cause financial problems.

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Retirement

Manifesto

Oct 28, 2026

NO. 68: AS INDIVIDUAL investors, we enjoy a key advantage: While money managers risk losing their job if their short-run results are lousy, we can invest for the truly long term.

Spotlight: Lists

Worth Repeating

Adam M. Grossman   |  Dec 29, 2024

IN THE FINANCIAL world, some topics are serious, others not so much. Since it’s the holiday season, it seems appropriate to look back at some of the past year’s lighter moments. No joke. In 2019, artist Maurizio Cattelan unveiled a collection he called Comedian.…
Read more »

Join me on a trip down memory lane. It’s likely too long a trip for many readers

R Quinn   |  Jan 9, 2025

Regular HD readers know how old I am, but just for fun how about a trip down memory lane to a very different time.  When I was a child an ice cream cone was a dime, a slice of pizza was $0.15. There were no…
Read more »

Many Words Later

Richard Connor   |  May 21, 2024

THIS IS MY 150TH article for HumbleDollar. My first appeared on Aug. 12, 2019. I’m not sure when I became aware of the site, but it’s become an important part of my life. I’ve truly enjoyed the writing, along with reading the work of…
Read more »

Dick Quinn’s guaranteed route to becoming “rich.”

R Quinn   |  Jul 6, 2024

What does it take to be “rich?”  Answering that question is nearly impossible. There are as many answers as Google sites, but after trying, I have settled on being in the top 10% of income and net worth at around $200,000 per year and $2,000,000.…
Read more »

Worth 1,000 Words

Adam M. Grossman   |  Aug 2, 2025

IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, before the invention of the printing press, the most common way to retain information was to build what’s known as a memory palace. The idea was to link words to images, because images are easier to remember. I’ve found that this…
Read more »

15 Tasks for Today

Edmund Marsh   |  Sep 21, 2026

No, we don’t need to complete all 15 tasks by the end of this day. Still, we might knock them out by the end of the year. Meanwhile, I suspect that long before we’ve checked off the last of the list, we’ll experience less worry,…
Read more »

Spotlight: Kerr

Back to Work

James Kerr   |  Apr 3, 2024

CALL IT THE GREAT unretirement. Hit by rising living costs and unexpected feelings of boredom, one out of eight retirees plan to return to work this year, according to a recent survey. I’m one of them. Two and a half years after retiring from the corporate world, I’m headed back to work. I’ve accepted a position as lead writer for…
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Fit to Retire

James Kerr   |  Dec 2, 2021

I WAS RECENTLY talking with a younger acquaintance about my decision to leave the workforce early. I’d left a demanding career to pursue my personal passions, while I was still young and healthy enough to do so. My acquaintance is in his early 30s. He’s single and makes a boatload of money working in IT for a pharma company. He’s also a…
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Inflation Bites Dog

James Kerr   |  Mar 16, 2023

RACHAEL AND I WENT to Walmart the other day to stock up on dog food—and came away with a severe case of sticker shock. We feed our two dogs a daily menu of dry food mixed into a delightful mash with a little canned wet food. Our go-to brands are Purina Dog Chow for the dry food and Pedigree Chopped…
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Where Value Ends

James Kerr   |  Feb 17, 2023

I RECENTLY HAD a revelation about my adult children: When it comes to money, they’re a lot like me—and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. I had this revelation while dining with my 25-year-old son at a sports bar over the New Year’s holiday. The food was marginal—it was a sports bar, after all—but the plates came…
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Ignore That Gut

James Kerr   |  Apr 28, 2022

WITH THE MARKETS in a tizzy this year due to roaring inflation and the war in Ukraine, I’ve been kicking myself for not listening to my gut. At issue: an investment decision I made last fall. When I left the corporate world in September, I took with me the 401(k) balance I’d built up over my five years with my former employer.…
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The Road Not Taken

James Kerr   |  Oct 9, 2023

LAST MONTH MARKED two years since I leapt into the unknown and left the security of the corporate world to begin a second act as an independent writer. How’s it gone? Have things panned out as I hoped, financially and otherwise?  Let’s be clear upfront that this move was never about making money. It was about taking a shot at…
Read more »
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