FREE NEWSLETTER

You know you are getting old when you’re constantly shocked by what everything costs.

Latest PostsAll Discussions »

Tax Free Income Trap, Dealing With MAGI

"Nice article Dan. I remain thankful my MAGI is my AGI."
- Michael1
Read more »

The IRA Decision That Affects Your Kids

"My understanding is yes if the state specific rules are followed and the disclaimer is filed timely. Dr. Dahle's post in the above linked post lists six key general aspects for a disclaimer to be valid. I think the need to file a disclaimer could often be eliminated with appropriate planning and action during life."
- William Perry
Read more »

Financial Tension

"Curry is smart… he will figure out how to invest."
- William Housley
Read more »

Driving a Bargain

"NEVER BORROW MONEY to buy a depreciating asset." This personal finance tip is often used to dissuade folks from taking out car loans. But does a car really leave folks poorer?
When we value an asset, it’s typically thought of as its dollar value on a balance sheet. The monetary value of my car might indeed decline, and quickly at that, but it has far more usefulness than my personal balance sheet shows. When I consider my car’s true value, I think of how much it improves my life.
I made a major change in 2018, moving from Philadelphia to Scottsdale, Arizona. I landed with two suitcases, a backpack and my cat. I had a job starting in three weeks in the heart of Old Town Scottsdale—a pricey area.
In Philadelphia, I’d never needed a car. There’s great public transportation and I could get almost anywhere by walking or taking the train. If you’ve ever been to Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs, it’s a different story. It sprawls in every direction and lacks decent public transportation.
As a young professional 2,000 miles from home, I needed to travel this big expanse. I also wanted to do some exploring in the West, so I took out a loan to buy a new car.
I don’t imagine I’ll ever recoup the money I paid for the vehicle. In fact, I suspect that my car will always be asking me for more money—for maintenance and repairs—even after I’ve paid off the loan. That’s fine. My expectations are set on this because I see so much additional value in owning a car.
Monetary benefits. Old Town Scottsdale’s rents are at least 20% higher than some surrounding areas. I can live less expensively nearby as long as I can handle a 10- to 15-minute commute.
My car also provides me access to a larger pool of jobs. On top of that, I have reliable transportation, which makes me a more dependable employee. Finally, in this gig economy, a car opens up opportunities for self-employment, a side gig or temporary income during a gap in employment. This could come from signing on with services like Uber, DoorDash and Instacart.
Emotional benefits. My car is truly liberating. It can buy me time by making travel more convenient. It allows me to live where I want and gain happiness through new experiences outside of my neighborhood. The ability to go anywhere at any time is hugely appealing.
If it takes a loan to realize these benefits, I’m willing to bear that cost. I think most Americans would agree with me. Even when you’ve decided that a car is worth buying, however, another financial argument breaks out. It’s about whether it’s better to buy a new car or a used one. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"]
This is where I find the biggest ridicule from finance influencers. They advise never to buy a new car, and especially never to buy a new car with a loan. That’s because the moment you drive a new car off the dealer lot, it takes a big hit, thanks to depreciation.
Perhaps, in an ideal world, we’d all buy a good used car with cash. But that option isn’t available to many people. Moreover, even if you can afford to pay cash, there can be a good reason to buck the conventional wisdom. The benefit I’ve received from buying a new car can be summarized in one word: reliability.
A new car brings me peace of mind, knowing it’s unlikely I’ll be waiting on the side of the road for AAA. I don’t have to leave an extra hour early for work in case my car doesn’t get me there. I also knew I’d be traveling along dirt roads and across state lines to do some exploring, so reliability was nonnegotiable with my car purchase.
A new car works out well for me on another level. I’m not a car guy. I lack the understanding of how to take care of one. The new car warranty typically covers the scheduled service for the first few years. I’m happy to pay more to get that responsibility off my plate.
My goal has never been to turn around and sell my car for a decent sum when I’m done using it. Instead, I want to pull out all the value I can along the way. I’ll increase both my life experiences and my financial wealth through its use—and not by selling it at the end. Logan Murray is a solo financial advisor. His company Pocket Project offers subscription-based financial planning services to young professionals. For more financial insights, read Logan’s blog, connect with him on LinkedIn and check out his earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]
Read more »

The condo, HOA, senior citizen conundrum

"True in some cases, but if you can buy a $900,000 condo in one of the wealthiest town in Nj, perhaps the northeast, you likely don’t have a limited monthly budget - or shouldn’t."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Staying Rational

IT'S BEEN MORE than six years since Covid first entered our vocabulary. It goes without saying that investors have experienced a lot, and for better or worse, recent market events provide some useful lessons. The first has to do with the nature of the stock market. What drives stock prices? Open a finance textbook, and the answer will be clear: The value of a stock should equal the sum of the company’s future profits. This idea is known as intrinsic value, and it’s the textbook explanation of how stock prices work. But there’s clearly a disconnect, since stock prices bounce around far more than the math suggests they should.  How can we square this circle? Over the long term, the data tell us that intrinsic value is a valid idea. Chart the price of any given stock, then overlay the company’s profits, and there will often be a reasonably close relationship. But only if you’re Rip Van Winkle. Over shorter periods of time, anything can happen. Stocks often move far above or far below their intrinsic values in response to the news of the day.  Especially during times of economic uncertainty, intrinsic value analysis is typically cast aside and replaced by some combination of emotion, conjecture, speculation and storytelling. That’s what we saw in the early months of 2020. Stores were closed, employees had been sent home and the economy went into recession. And since no one had a crystal ball, that’s when storytellers were able to step in with their extreme predictions, causing the stock market to drop more than 30% in the space of six weeks. The lesson for investors: No one can predict when the next crisis will roll around or what form it will take. But there is one very reasonable way to be able to keep it in perspective: by remembering that, at the end of the day, intrinsic value is what matters, and ultimately that’s what drives stock prices. Basic arithmetic illustrates how this can help us manage through the next crisis. Consider that the price-to-earnings ratio of the U.S. stock market has historically averaged around 16. The average company’s total stock market value, in other words, has been equal to about 16 times its annual profits.  Now let’s imagine that the next crisis results in every company in America losing an entire year of earnings. That’s extreme and hasn’t happened since the Depression, but it’s useful as a thought experiment. In that scenario, what would be the impact to those companies’ intrinsic value? In simple terms, it would be just one-sixteenth, or a modest 6%. What if a crisis were so severe that a company lost two years of earnings? Using this simple model, the impact would be about 12%. This is meaningful, I believe, because crises typically result in stock price declines that are far more severe than just 6% or 12%. In 2000 and in 2008, the market dropped more than 50%. While every crisis is different, I think it’s useful to keep these numbers in mind whenever the next geopolitical event causes stocks to drop. When that occurs, storytellers will inevitably take over, and the news will be downbeat. But if stocks drop to an extreme degree, as they have in the past, we can probably view it as an overreaction. That won’t help anyone’s portfolio recover any faster, but it should help us tune out the worst of the forecasters and maintain our equanimity. How else can you maintain an even keel during a market crisis? It’s important to understand the impact of recency bias. This bias is the tendency to extrapolate from current conditions, to assume that the future will look like the present, and to downplay the possibility that things might change. That tendency is what contributed to the cycle of negative news during the depths of 2020, and this is why I think it’s so important for investors to be aware of market history.  Again, extensive analysis isn’t required. We need only look back across some of the crises the country has weathered, from the Civil War to the Depression to World War II. In each case, the economy recovered and went on to become larger and stronger than before. The lesson for investors: In the depths of a crisis, it’s very difficult to know when or how it will end. But a sense of history can help carry us through. Those are ways to manage through a crisis. Covid also provided a lesson on how to prepare—specifically, how to prepare our portfolios—for a future downturn. In 2022, investors were caught flat-footed when popular total-bond market funds delivered surprising losses. These funds are one pillar of the well-known three-fund portfolio and have traditionally been viewed as the default choice for a set-it-and-forget-it bond allocation. But in 2022, when the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, these funds dropped a surprising 13%. That was during the same year that the U.S. stock market dropped nearly 20%, creating a very difficult situation for those in retirement and needing to withdraw from their portfolios. The lesson for investors: Total-bond market funds may be well diversified, but they carry risk along another very important dimension known as duration. This is a bond metric that measures, in simple terms, how long it will take for bondholders to be repaid, and it’s a key determinant of risk. The longer the duration, the greater the risk of loss when rates rise. While total-bond market funds have holdings across a broad range of durations, they average out to nearly six years. That’s why they lost so much value in 2022. What’s the alternative? Short-term bond funds tend to have a duration in the neighborhood of just two years. As a result, in 2022, short-term government bond funds like Vanguard’s Short-Term Treasury ETF (ticker: VGSH) lost a far more manageable 4% of their value. To be sure, every crisis is different, and it’s easy to rationalize about the past once it’s in the past. But these lessons, I think, can help us better prepare both our emotions and our portfolios for whatever comes next.   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.
Read more »

A Life You Build

"Thank you, Jeff, for sharing your inspiring story. One of the greatest gifts of getting older is the ability to look back at the mountains we’ve climbed and realize—despite the doubts along the way—that we did better than we ever gave ourselves credit for."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

"Martin, I resemble your remark! As a regular Costco shopper and a patron of hardware stores, I am in total agreement."
- DAN SMITH
Read more »

Carrying Humble Dollar Forward

"Thank you for the comment, retirement can definitely be scary but if it's well thought out it can be a wonderful journey."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Scent of a Cheapskate: Frugality Gone Wrong

"Sounds like a much, much worse version of my day spent sawing up an old rabbit hutch and taking it to the landfill myself instead of paying our waste hauler a few dollars extra to haul it away! That was 35 or so years ago, but I still remember it -- so the idea of sawing up an oil tank and dispos... let's not even go there! Thanks for posting."
- urbie53ca4a2392
Read more »

Tax Free Income Trap, Dealing With MAGI

"Nice article Dan. I remain thankful my MAGI is my AGI."
- Michael1
Read more »

The IRA Decision That Affects Your Kids

"My understanding is yes if the state specific rules are followed and the disclaimer is filed timely. Dr. Dahle's post in the above linked post lists six key general aspects for a disclaimer to be valid. I think the need to file a disclaimer could often be eliminated with appropriate planning and action during life."
- William Perry
Read more »

Financial Tension

"Curry is smart… he will figure out how to invest."
- William Housley
Read more »

Driving a Bargain

"NEVER BORROW MONEY to buy a depreciating asset." This personal finance tip is often used to dissuade folks from taking out car loans. But does a car really leave folks poorer?
When we value an asset, it’s typically thought of as its dollar value on a balance sheet. The monetary value of my car might indeed decline, and quickly at that, but it has far more usefulness than my personal balance sheet shows. When I consider my car’s true value, I think of how much it improves my life.
I made a major change in 2018, moving from Philadelphia to Scottsdale, Arizona. I landed with two suitcases, a backpack and my cat. I had a job starting in three weeks in the heart of Old Town Scottsdale—a pricey area.
In Philadelphia, I’d never needed a car. There’s great public transportation and I could get almost anywhere by walking or taking the train. If you’ve ever been to Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs, it’s a different story. It sprawls in every direction and lacks decent public transportation.
As a young professional 2,000 miles from home, I needed to travel this big expanse. I also wanted to do some exploring in the West, so I took out a loan to buy a new car.
I don’t imagine I’ll ever recoup the money I paid for the vehicle. In fact, I suspect that my car will always be asking me for more money—for maintenance and repairs—even after I’ve paid off the loan. That’s fine. My expectations are set on this because I see so much additional value in owning a car.
Monetary benefits. Old Town Scottsdale’s rents are at least 20% higher than some surrounding areas. I can live less expensively nearby as long as I can handle a 10- to 15-minute commute.
My car also provides me access to a larger pool of jobs. On top of that, I have reliable transportation, which makes me a more dependable employee. Finally, in this gig economy, a car opens up opportunities for self-employment, a side gig or temporary income during a gap in employment. This could come from signing on with services like Uber, DoorDash and Instacart.
Emotional benefits. My car is truly liberating. It can buy me time by making travel more convenient. It allows me to live where I want and gain happiness through new experiences outside of my neighborhood. The ability to go anywhere at any time is hugely appealing.
If it takes a loan to realize these benefits, I’m willing to bear that cost. I think most Americans would agree with me. Even when you’ve decided that a car is worth buying, however, another financial argument breaks out. It’s about whether it’s better to buy a new car or a used one. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"]
This is where I find the biggest ridicule from finance influencers. They advise never to buy a new car, and especially never to buy a new car with a loan. That’s because the moment you drive a new car off the dealer lot, it takes a big hit, thanks to depreciation.
Perhaps, in an ideal world, we’d all buy a good used car with cash. But that option isn’t available to many people. Moreover, even if you can afford to pay cash, there can be a good reason to buck the conventional wisdom. The benefit I’ve received from buying a new car can be summarized in one word: reliability.
A new car brings me peace of mind, knowing it’s unlikely I’ll be waiting on the side of the road for AAA. I don’t have to leave an extra hour early for work in case my car doesn’t get me there. I also knew I’d be traveling along dirt roads and across state lines to do some exploring, so reliability was nonnegotiable with my car purchase.
A new car works out well for me on another level. I’m not a car guy. I lack the understanding of how to take care of one. The new car warranty typically covers the scheduled service for the first few years. I’m happy to pay more to get that responsibility off my plate.
My goal has never been to turn around and sell my car for a decent sum when I’m done using it. Instead, I want to pull out all the value I can along the way. I’ll increase both my life experiences and my financial wealth through its use—and not by selling it at the end. Logan Murray is a solo financial advisor. His company Pocket Project offers subscription-based financial planning services to young professionals. For more financial insights, read Logan’s blog, connect with him on LinkedIn and check out his earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]
Read more »

The condo, HOA, senior citizen conundrum

"True in some cases, but if you can buy a $900,000 condo in one of the wealthiest town in Nj, perhaps the northeast, you likely don’t have a limited monthly budget - or shouldn’t."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Staying Rational

IT'S BEEN MORE than six years since Covid first entered our vocabulary. It goes without saying that investors have experienced a lot, and for better or worse, recent market events provide some useful lessons. The first has to do with the nature of the stock market. What drives stock prices? Open a finance textbook, and the answer will be clear: The value of a stock should equal the sum of the company’s future profits. This idea is known as intrinsic value, and it’s the textbook explanation of how stock prices work. But there’s clearly a disconnect, since stock prices bounce around far more than the math suggests they should.  How can we square this circle? Over the long term, the data tell us that intrinsic value is a valid idea. Chart the price of any given stock, then overlay the company’s profits, and there will often be a reasonably close relationship. But only if you’re Rip Van Winkle. Over shorter periods of time, anything can happen. Stocks often move far above or far below their intrinsic values in response to the news of the day.  Especially during times of economic uncertainty, intrinsic value analysis is typically cast aside and replaced by some combination of emotion, conjecture, speculation and storytelling. That’s what we saw in the early months of 2020. Stores were closed, employees had been sent home and the economy went into recession. And since no one had a crystal ball, that’s when storytellers were able to step in with their extreme predictions, causing the stock market to drop more than 30% in the space of six weeks. The lesson for investors: No one can predict when the next crisis will roll around or what form it will take. But there is one very reasonable way to be able to keep it in perspective: by remembering that, at the end of the day, intrinsic value is what matters, and ultimately that’s what drives stock prices. Basic arithmetic illustrates how this can help us manage through the next crisis. Consider that the price-to-earnings ratio of the U.S. stock market has historically averaged around 16. The average company’s total stock market value, in other words, has been equal to about 16 times its annual profits.  Now let’s imagine that the next crisis results in every company in America losing an entire year of earnings. That’s extreme and hasn’t happened since the Depression, but it’s useful as a thought experiment. In that scenario, what would be the impact to those companies’ intrinsic value? In simple terms, it would be just one-sixteenth, or a modest 6%. What if a crisis were so severe that a company lost two years of earnings? Using this simple model, the impact would be about 12%. This is meaningful, I believe, because crises typically result in stock price declines that are far more severe than just 6% or 12%. In 2000 and in 2008, the market dropped more than 50%. While every crisis is different, I think it’s useful to keep these numbers in mind whenever the next geopolitical event causes stocks to drop. When that occurs, storytellers will inevitably take over, and the news will be downbeat. But if stocks drop to an extreme degree, as they have in the past, we can probably view it as an overreaction. That won’t help anyone’s portfolio recover any faster, but it should help us tune out the worst of the forecasters and maintain our equanimity. How else can you maintain an even keel during a market crisis? It’s important to understand the impact of recency bias. This bias is the tendency to extrapolate from current conditions, to assume that the future will look like the present, and to downplay the possibility that things might change. That tendency is what contributed to the cycle of negative news during the depths of 2020, and this is why I think it’s so important for investors to be aware of market history.  Again, extensive analysis isn’t required. We need only look back across some of the crises the country has weathered, from the Civil War to the Depression to World War II. In each case, the economy recovered and went on to become larger and stronger than before. The lesson for investors: In the depths of a crisis, it’s very difficult to know when or how it will end. But a sense of history can help carry us through. Those are ways to manage through a crisis. Covid also provided a lesson on how to prepare—specifically, how to prepare our portfolios—for a future downturn. In 2022, investors were caught flat-footed when popular total-bond market funds delivered surprising losses. These funds are one pillar of the well-known three-fund portfolio and have traditionally been viewed as the default choice for a set-it-and-forget-it bond allocation. But in 2022, when the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, these funds dropped a surprising 13%. That was during the same year that the U.S. stock market dropped nearly 20%, creating a very difficult situation for those in retirement and needing to withdraw from their portfolios. The lesson for investors: Total-bond market funds may be well diversified, but they carry risk along another very important dimension known as duration. This is a bond metric that measures, in simple terms, how long it will take for bondholders to be repaid, and it’s a key determinant of risk. The longer the duration, the greater the risk of loss when rates rise. While total-bond market funds have holdings across a broad range of durations, they average out to nearly six years. That’s why they lost so much value in 2022. What’s the alternative? Short-term bond funds tend to have a duration in the neighborhood of just two years. As a result, in 2022, short-term government bond funds like Vanguard’s Short-Term Treasury ETF (ticker: VGSH) lost a far more manageable 4% of their value. To be sure, every crisis is different, and it’s easy to rationalize about the past once it’s in the past. But these lessons, I think, can help us better prepare both our emotions and our portfolios for whatever comes next.   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.
Read more »

A Life You Build

"Thank you, Jeff, for sharing your inspiring story. One of the greatest gifts of getting older is the ability to look back at the mountains we’ve climbed and realize—despite the doubts along the way—that we did better than we ever gave ourselves credit for."
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Free Newsletter

Get Educated

Manifesto

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.

act

BUYING A CAR? Think twice before financing it through the dealership. While dealership loans are convenient, the interest rate charged will include the dealership’s markup. You can likely get a lower rate by going to a bank or credit union—or using a home equity line of credit. One warning: Interest on home equity borrowing for a car purchase is no longer tax-deductible.

Truths

NO. 20: DOLLAR-COST averaging isn’t magical—but it is worthwhile. Investing the same sum every month in stocks supposedly improves the odds of making money. But in truth, dollar-cost averaging is about investor psychology: It helps us to overcome our reluctance to invest in stocks, instills discipline and makes stock market declines more palatable.

act

ALERT U.S. EMBASSIES to your travel plans. Before leaving on a foreign trip, sign up for the State Department's free Smart Traveler Enrollment Program and detail where you’re going. The local U.S. embassy or consulate will then contact you if, say, there’s a natural disaster or terrorist incident while you’re traveling abroad—and it may be able to offer advice or help.

Forum

Manifesto

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

Gimme a Reason

When we deploy our hard-earned dollars, we all have our financial reasons. But are we focusing on the right thing? Consider four examples:
Homes. When folks buy a home, they’ll often dwell on the potential price appreciation, the tax benefits and the advantages over renting. But I’d contend there are two reasons that are even more compelling: Buying a home locks in our housing costs and, with every monthly mortgage payment, forces us to save.

Read more »

Money Memories

Six years ago, Jonathan Clements published an article in HumbleDollar recounting some of the  anecdotal influences on his financial thinking. Rather than research and facts, he explained, it’s often the exploits we experience, the tales we’re told or the comments that come our way that shape how we view money matters.
I know that holds true for me. Years later, I can still hear the voices and see the faces attached to these events:
1.

Read more »

Everything About Retirement on a 3×5 card

Here’s the 3×5 card challenge: Summarize everything essential for retirement on a 3×5 card, and then share your summary here. For the sake of this post, please limit your advice to eight to ten bullet points.
This is the first in a series of posts on: Everything You Need to Know on a 3×5 Card.
Have fun…
Bill

Read more »

Monday is a good day for a rant. Let’s talk everything annoying. People, money, people

Life if full of important things to be concerned about, some very important stuff – health, family, money. There are also little things that annoy us, things we should probably ignore, that are a waste of time worrying about. They nevertheless can stick in your craw.
The following list is the result of reaching 80 with nothing better to do and lots of time to become annoyed. 
Sorry if you find yourself on the list.
Here is what annoys me.

Read more »

Four Mantras

I’m not big on aphorisms—at least when talking to others. But there are certain things I say to myself all the time. Like what? Here are four mantras that I repeat to myself on an almost daily basis:
“First, do what you have to do, then do what you want to do.” This is my vegetables-first approach to the day. I have an ongoing to-do list that I typically revise each evening. When I look at that list in the morning,

Read more »

My Mistakes

My challenge to you: List your top financial mistakes. Not sure you want to invite the ridicule of others? To make everybody a little more comfortable, I’ll go first. Here are my top six:

When I started investing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I bought individual stocks and actively managed mutual funds. Admittedly, I went this route because it allowed this cash-strapped investor to get started in the financial markets with a few hundred dollars,

Read more »

Spotlight: Ferris

Six Months In! (from Dana/DrLefty)

Happy New Year, HumbleDollar folks! Today, besides being the first day of 2026, is also the six-month anniversary of my retirement. How's it going so far? I thought I'd follow up on a couple of posts from last year--this one was a year ago today (a "six months out" post). So far, I absolutely love being retired. Seriously, I'm just ecstatic about it. I said to my husband recently, "I thought I'd miss it (my career) a little bit." After all, even though university politics had soured me on my day job, I always loved teaching, and I enjoyed it right up through my last day of class in June. But I'm just feeling a sense of relief about the absence of responsibility. The Biggest News. After a few months of watching me live my best life, my husband started rethinking the "maybe I'll work until 70" plan (we're 65). His contract with his firm requires six months notice, so he's planning to give notice on April 1 for an October 1 retirement date. (Why that date? He has a couple of projects he wants to see through, and bonuses are paid in August.) It's possible that they'll ask him to stay on either as a part-time employee or as a consultant--he has a pretty specific skill set that will be hard to replace--and he's open to that, but he's committed to being done with full-time employment by October 1, 2026. How I'm Spending Time. That has gone pretty much as I expected. After a lot of travel over the summer, we had a quieter fall mostly at home. I'm working on several academic writing projects (a new edition of one of my books, journal articles from my final two research projects, and a new collection I'm co-editing). I'm trying to work on those…
Read more »

Family Dynamics, Part 3: What Do Adult Children Owe Their Aging Parents?

If you thought my posts on family estrangement and supporting adult children were doozies, wait until you dig into this one. My musings on all three of these topics are specifically related to how complicated the interaction between family dynamics (especially if it's a "difficult" family) and our finances can be. This one focuses on how caring for parents as they age can raise challenging questions. Like many of you, I'm at the stage of life where I view these questions both as a daughter and as a parent. The parameters and principles I hold to right now (about the older generation) could well be turned around to apply to me and my husband, and that all factors in to how I think about these matters. Anyway, let's dig in. I see two separate but related sets of factors or questions. Financial/Practical Questions If the aging parent needs regular or even daily assistance, are you willing and able to provide it? How might time spent fixing up their home, driving them to appointments, buying groceries, cooking, cleaning, and more, affect your own financial situation, especially if you're still working? What about your ability to care for yourself and your own family, if you have one? What if you don't live anywhere near them? If the parent says something like "I want to live out my years in my own home. Don't ever put me in assisted living"--are you (and your siblings, if applicable) able and willing to help make that happen? Will a family member move in with them? Will you have to provide the care yourself, or pay for in-home caregivers? If the parent has their own means to pay for help, who will be in charge of arranging and overseeing that care? If there are gaps in coverage,…
Read more »

Thank you, Jonathan

I hope I’m not overstepping here, but since I read the news yesterday, I’ve been thinking that it would be nice to have a thread in which we thank Jonathan for the various ways he touched our lives, whether it be as a writer or just a manager of our finances. I’m hoping it’s something his family might enjoy reading when they’re ready. So here’s mine: Unlike many of you who go back to Jonathan’s WSJ days, I only discovered him and HumbleDollar in 2020, early in the pandemic. I don’t recall exactly how I came across it, but I definitely remember reading Dick Quinn’s articles about being stuck on the cruise ship after COVID hit. I think those were the first ones, and then I started poking around through the other articles, and subscribed to the twice-weekly newsletter. Over the next couple of years, I began to think about proposing an article myself to Jonathan and even started keeping a list of ideas. Finally, in early 2023, I got up my nerve and wrote to him. He couldn’t have been more welcoming, encouraging, and helpful. Between 2023 and when HD stopped publishing articles, I published 9 pieces edited by Jonathan. I was so impressed that he shared the platform he’d created with such a wide variety of people. I’m no financial expert—honestly, I barely understand investing—but like so many other HD authors, I had life experience and stories to share. So thank you, Jonathan, for giving me a seat at this table and helping me find my voice. What about you? Please share here if you feel moved to do so. Thank you, Jonathan.—Dana Ferris
Read more »

Estrangement & Estates

I've been thinking about family dynamics and how they affect financial decisions, and this will be the first of several posts on various applications of this topic. This first one is a hard one to talk about: It's family estrangement, specifically a family member(s) going "no contact" with or otherwise walking away from other family member(s). It's not as unusual as you might think--there is growing research on the topic, and some estimate that more than 30% of American families have an estranged family member. The reasons for this alarming trend are sociologically complex. One expert on the topic is psychologist Joshua Coleman, who's written a couple of books and many articles based on insights from his own practice and his research. He notes that while about half of the estrangement situations happen for reasons we'd all consider legitimate (e.g., clearly abusive behavior), others are harder to peg, and what one adult child might consider a "toxic" on the part of their parents might be incomprehensible to their sibling. As I said, it's complicated. Sometimes, according to Coleman, the estranged family members might find a way back to each other. In other cases, the person is (most likely) gone forever. The question arises as to the implications estrangement has for one's estate. Coleman urges parents with an estranged adult child not to cut them out of their will, arguing that this will just exacerbate an already painful situation. However, others might argue that if a family member has chosen to exit the family, causing pain by so doing, they are no longer entitled to family resources--and including them in an estate plan might even seem or be disrespectful to other family members who have been hurt by their actions. I'll be vague, but we have an estrangement situation in my…
Read more »

A Rental House? By the Numbers

Thanks so much for the great comments and advice on my previous post about this topic. As I said in a reply, I’m making a list of all the ideas commenters shared to discuss with my husband. We may or may not move forward with this idea—there are some complicated family dynamics that I won’t get into in this particular post. But if we do, here are some of the numbers we’re considering. I’ve been looking at small starter homes or condos in either our town or the one 10 miles north of us. They’re mostly 3 bedrooms, but some are 2 and a couple are 4. The price range I’ve set is $450-650K. (I know that’s horrifying. It’s California.) Zillow does a pretty good job of estimating what your monthly payment would be, and you can adjust it for a larger or smaller down payment. If interest rates drop, we could make a smaller down payment. At this point, we’re looking at a down payment in the $200-300K range. Zillow also estimates what kind of rent could be charged for the property. I’d like our total house payment, including HOA (if applicable), property taxes, etc., to be $2500-3000. How much rent we could charge will depend on the size of the home and whether it’s one or two paying roommates. According to the Zillow estimates, the types of properties I’m looking at should rent for that range. We won’t charge our daughter rent if she’s going to school, and since we’ve been paying her rent since her latest car accident, this will be a wash for us. If she finishes school and is working full-time and wants to stay in the house, we’ll start charging her rent. So we’d make a down payment large enough to get the monthly…
Read more »

The “Mean Girls”/Junior High Bullies at HumbleDollar

I've been thinking of writing this post for a while, and my early morning scroll through recent Forum posts finally pushed me to it. When I author a post, I try to go back to it every so often and reply to comments. That was something Jonathan hoped for from the authors he published. In going through the thread of a post I made a few days ago, I noticed that one or two people had systematically downvoted every comment I made, even things like "Thanks! Great suggestion!"--completely innocuous comments that couldn't possibly have offended anyone. The clear message of them has to be, then, "I don't like you. I wish you'd go away." That's happened to me before. I've also noticed it happening to a couple of other regulars and writers. I have several thoughts about this, followed by a suggestion. It's cowardly. Because downvotes are anonymous on HD, you can just add a hit-and-run red arrow without putting your name behind it. It's immature. See my title. It's lazy. If you disagree with something, how about adding some content or a thoughtful response? It dishonors Jonathan's memory. If you don't like me, whatever. After 35 years of receiving anonymous student evaluations and reviews on my journal article submissions, I've grown a fairly thick skin. But this is not the type of community Jonathan tried to build, and one of his dearest wishes in his final months was that HD would live on as he envisioned it. If the good, kind, supportive folks (who are the majority, for sure) start staying away because the discourse has gotten too nasty, this site will not thrive. It's already started to happen. My suggestion is that the owners/moderators of this site make a change. I'm not sure exactly what is possible on…
Read more »