Finally, I’ve gotten around to building a ladder. I have procrastinated doing so because it seemed like a hassle; buy a one year, and a two, and a three, etc. Then after a year, roll the one year to a five, and on and on. If I knew how simple Fidelity made it, I would have acted sooner.  Looking for ultimate safety, We decided to use Brokered Certificates of Deposit (CD). As most everyone here knows, Brokered CDs are simply CDs purchased from a broker dealer, in our case, Fidelity. It’s not my purpose to go into detail about the differences between bank and brokered products. I’ll just say that the brokered CD can be a bit more flexible, though there are pros and cons. The size of our ladder should outlast a dreaded ‘lost decade’. For those who have not yet built a CD or Bond ladder, here is the process at Fidelity.  Click on “build a ladder” Select which account to fund the ladder Click on the desired duration, (in our case, five years) Input the ladders investment ($100K for example) Press next At this step Fidelity displayed the highest paying CDs for each duration (I believe this is updated every 15 minutes) Choose if you want maturing CDs to be deposited back into your account, or if you want to purchase a new CD at the maximum duration of your ladder (again, five years) Select “buy”, and you now own five $20K CDs.  The ladder is totally on autopilot. Easy Breezy.

I enjoy tasting new beers, and today there are some very good ones on the shelves. Still, it hasn’t always been this way.  Some time in the nascent days of the micro-brewery craze, I recall my boss, the owner of the beer distributor, commenting that it was as if the tiny brewers were having a contest to see who could make the lousiest tasting beer.  I think that there’s an analogy that can be made between the abundance of micro-breweries and myriad financial products in that not all of them leave a good taste in my mouth.  Variable life insurance and variable annuities, real estate investment trusts, oil well partnerships to name a few that have been around for a while. Now we have things like crypto money, private equity, leveraged funds, and a slew of niche exchange traded funds that track all sorts of weird things. And don’t forget the endless array of things a prospective advisor might utter in order to snag your money.  In a recent post, Bill W wrote that he poured all his contributions into the S&P500 for 40 years. Simple. Wow. I commented that we should coin a new phrase, Keep It Boring Stupid, KIBS. (I’m not advocating for everyone to go all in on a single index, rather, I am just illustrating my point).  When it comes to investing, boring is good, and few, if any, HumbleDollar readers would buy into the promises that many investments expound. But today's workers are our children and grand-children, they have their own savings, and soon, many will have some of ours as well. I wouldn’t want them to bite on the hype. I’m not suggesting we preach financial fire and brimstone to the kiddies, perhaps just set a good example and maybe share a story or two about our life experiences. Maybe we can convince them that “there ain’t no such thing as easy money”. Rickie Lee Jones - Easy Money (w/ Lyrics)

HOW DO SOME INVESTORS end up in places they don’t belong? Where do they turn for information and guidance? Who do they talk to before making important financial decisions? What follows are the results of my unscientific research, which was conducted in some of the finest and most respected centers of advanced learning anywhere. Barroom seminars, your window on the world. Are we talking politics, investing, religion, world peace or other topics of paramount importance, such as Ohio State’s quarterback dilemma for the upcoming football season? Doesn’t matter. There’s no problem too big or too small that won’t be solved with a barroom seminar. The guy running the seminar will be the big guy at the corner of the bar with the type-A personality. He’ll be lording it over his minions, who typically express their concurrence with air punches and choruses of “hell, yes.” Happy hour from three to six, and don’t miss all you need to know about the Iraqi dinar. I once dropped off a tax return to a beaming client. Why so cheery, I inquired? He said the RV was coming. I was like, what, are you getting a new camper? He said, “No, dummy, the dinar is going to be revalued this week and I’m gonna make a couple million bucks.” Seems RV is also short for revalued. I think we all know how this bet turned out. Bucket of brews for $10 and your best Social Security claiming options. “You’re stupid if you wait till later to claim because it’ll take until you’re 80 just to break even.” That guy is now age 80 and trying to live off the benefit he claimed at age 62. We’ve got the NFL Sunday Ticket and the get-rich-with-our-cryptocurrency primer. I actually know some folks who have done well with crypto. But most of my barroom buddies got in way too late and then sold way too low. Sign up for our darts league and the all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-Middle-East policy forum. I once heard a guy in a bar say that, if he were president, he could easily negotiate peace in the Middle East. Later that night, he couldn’t even talk the cop out of arresting him for driving under the influence. Two-for-one drink specials and 10 barely intelligent reasons your guy sucks. This might be my favorite barroom seminar—the nearly inarticulate reasons my political candidate stinks. Left, right, blue, red. Doesn’t matter. There’s a type-A jackass for every political persuasion. Today’s soup is muskrat turtle bean and features Bubba’s Bible interpretations. I’m laughing to myself as I type this one. Barroom Bubba seems to know more about the Bible than my daughter, who has a degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame. And here I come to the moral of my story. I know some people who have never met a conspiracy theory they didn’t like, and who sometimes make financial and other important decisions based on them. And many of us, including me at times, are prone to confirmation bias, only seeking out information that mirrors our own thinking. Whether it comes from the loudmouth at the end of the bar, or that pundit you follow on cable TV or social media, too often we let such people influence our thinking. Lest you think that I’ve spent too much time studying behavior at local watering holes, please know that—prior to becoming an income-tax preparer—my far-reaching barroom research was conducted during my 30 years spent selling and delivering beer in Toledo. And, yes, I was usually the only sober one in the room. For 30 years, Dan Smith was a driver-salesman and local union representative, before building a successful income-tax practice in Toledo, Ohio. He retired in 2022. Dan has two beautiful daughters, two loving sons-in-law and seven grandchildren. He and Chris, the love of his life, have been together for two great decades and counting. Check out Dan's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

The year was 1988 and I was sitting across the table from my employer and his attorney, I was not a happy camper when they proposed to freeze the defined benefit (DB) pension. Instead, they would divert their contribution into a new 401k plan. I had been a pension trustee representing the union’s interest and had some awareness of some funding issues looming. Most employers are desperate to freeze those DB plans in order to escape the financial liability that can plague their bottom line. At the end of the day the company got their way, but not before agreeing to a matching contribution (in addition to the fixed amount initially proposed) up to $2k per year. The new 401k did a couple things. First it transferred all the risk onto the employees, and second it created the potential to provide those workers with retirement income that far exceeded that of the old pension…. Or not. It all depended on choice. 36 years later I’m able to see the results and can report that they are mixed. The guys that chose to take advantage of the match are now enjoying comfortable retirements. The guys who didn’t plan and save adequately are either struggling or still working. At the time the old pension was frozen, the maximum benefit was only $690 per month. I only had 10 vested credits, and had to split them with my x-wife, leaving me with a whopping $84 monthly check. Fortunately for Chris and me, we choose to live within our means and took full advantage of every saving tool out there. Now fully retired we are more comfortable than we ever imagined possible. In a recent forum topic some commented that not having a lucrative DB pension was detrimental to automating ones finances. I contend that it doesn’t have to be that way. Bad luck aside, it depends on choices.

I DON’T FIT THE USUAL profile of a HumbleDollar reader. I don’t have what I’d consider a high net worth, nor am I a college graduate. Still, I hope my story shows it’s possible to reinvent yourself. Around 1920, my dad’s family moved—with few belongings but a willingness to work—from Tennessee to northwestern Ohio. My dad met my mom while working at Hostess Bakery, and he later worked at Willys-Overland, welding together Jeeps during World War II. I was born a decade later, in 1952.             I remember my dad coming home from work on Friday, after stopping at the bank to cash his paycheck. He and Mom would get out the Dome Budget book to prioritize which biller got what. Still, the first allocation was always a deposit to their savings account. My generation was the first to grow up with TV. During Saturday morning cartoons, we kids were inundated with toy commercials. I remember telling my dad that I wished I could have this or that toy of the week. My dad’s colorful answer is something I carry with me to this day: “Well, Dan, shit in one hand and wish in the other, then tell me which one fills up first.” My first job, at age 16, was as a bag boy at a local supermarket. Eventually, I worked in the beverage department, and I used my connections there to get a job, first with a soft drink distributor and later with a beer distributor. I’d also been going to college to pursue a business degree. But I never cared much for school, and I was earning more than my college-graduate friends. I let those two facts justify one of my life’s worst decisions: dropping out of college. For 30 years, I worked hard on the beer truck and earned a good middle-class income. Of course, the income of my college-graduate friends eventually eclipsed my wages as a driver-salesman. So much for my justification for quitting school. I always had this thing about numbers—and about money and saving. In 1984, Money magazine published an issue with a fill-in-the-blanks exercise to help readers determine if they were on track to retire when they wanted and with enough money. I did the exercise and became hooked on retirement planning. Three decades into my career, two things happened that changed my life: one involving my marriage and the other my job. My wife and I got divorced after 25 years of marriage and after raising two amazing daughters. We split our assets equally and went our separate ways. I was ordered to pay spousal support, which continues to this day. Meanwhile, the pain of job-related arthritis became more frequent, and plantar fasciitis had set in as well. I felt like I was on the verge of total disability, so I left the beer business behind. One son-in-law, who happens to be a financial planner, was impressed with my knowledge of his world. He encouraged me to become a registered representative. I studied for and passed the various exams for the life insurance, health insurance and Series 6 licenses. This did not work out well for me. The main goal of the company I joined was to sell insurance products, such as variable annuities and variable universal life insurance contracts. Don’t get me wrong: I like annuities and life insurance. But when you add that word “variable,” you lose me. Those variable insurance products have killer high fees and, in my opinion, aren’t suitable for most people. I just couldn’t sell them, so I left. Life took two more turns. In my time as a beer-truck driver, I’d picked up rather unlikely skills. I became active in the union, and I was doing all its financial reporting to the Department of Labor and the IRS, and also handling payroll. After leaving the insurance company, I began preparing income-tax returns to make ends meet. It turned out that I was good at it, and friends I’d made while selling insurance began sending me clients—lots of clients. I was a one-man shop with low overhead. I had about 650 clients when I sold the practice in 2022─the year I turned 70─to a buyer who was both a tax attorney and a CPA. Meanwhile, after my divorce, I was middle-aged and unsure about my future marital status. I became analytical about the type of person I’d want as a romantic partner. She would be an intelligent and independent woman who didn’t need a man to survive, and someone who shared my philosophy regarding saving and spending. I figured I’d remain single for a long time. I was wrong again. A few years into single life, I bought a house and became fast friends with a neighbor, Chris. She worked for an accounting firm, so we had a financial background in common. Turns out that we checked each other’s boxes. That was 21 years ago, and our relationship remains awesome. With the combining of our lives came economies of scale. Still, we didn’t change our lifestyle. Instead, Chris began contributing 20% of her income to her 401(k) and maxing out an IRA. I was maxing out my SEP-IRA, IRA and health savings account. Both Chris and I were piling up regular taxable account savings as well. We’ve achieved our goal of a seven-figure net worth, and that doesn’t include home equity. Chris retired at 64 and began her Social Security benefit. I started Social Security when I sold my business last year. Because I waited until 70, my benefit is some $50,000 a year. Chris’s amount is about $25,000 a year. With our home and cars paid off, and no consumer debt, we live well on our Social Security benefits alone. What to do with our savings? I admit I struggle with how much I can safely give away. I’m making progress by donating automatically and monthly. I have a handful of charities I support, such as St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the USO—short for United Service Organizations—and public media. Now that I no longer have earned income and am older than 65, I could file a motion to have the spousal support I still pay reduced to zero. But if I did, my daughters and their husbands would have to help their mother financially. That’s not a burden that I want them to shoulder. Instead, I’ll pay spousal support for as long as possible. At least I get to deduct the alimony on Form 1040. It’s also my goal to leave a sufficient sum to the kids so they can continue to take care of their mom. As I enter the foothills of old age, I just want my kids and seven grandkids to know how much they’re loved and to be happy. I hope that they’re able to learn from my experiences—both the hits and the misses. For 30 years, Dan Smith was a driver-salesman and local union representative, before building a successful income-tax practice in Toledo, Ohio. He retired in 2022. Dan has two beautiful daughters, two loving sons-in-law and seven grandchildren. He and Chris, the love of his life, have been together for two great decades and counting. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

Her life is slipping away as I compose this forum topic. Both her daughters, my daughters, have been camped at her bedside for the past 10 days as hospice provides comfort care until my ex-wife dies. No words of sympathy need be offered to me, she and I fell out of love a long time ago. Still, this is the person responsible for 11 beautiful family members that would not be in my life without her. She has my respect and compassion. Everything changed for this robust 72 year old when a devastating stroke came out of nowhere. Brain surgery at 1am left her with a shaved head and a Frankenstein looking scar, complete with staples holding her together. Now she is in the bed at hospice, struggling for breath, mouth agape, snoring from the effects of sleep apnea. Looking good was her 2nd highest priority topped only by her love for our children. She would be devastated if she knew people were seeing her like this. I appreciate what hospice is doing for her. But where is the dignity? Once the decision was made for palliative care, wouldn’t the option of a more immediate end to the suffering be appropriate. If/when I’m in her shoes, my answer will be yes. I’d like for this option to be a part of my health care directive. My daughters are devout Catholics and would not agree with my thinking. But I don’t see a lot of difference between abandoning medical treatment to allow death and taking a pill to let it happen sooner. I would like to see laws to allow for this. What are your feelings on the subject?