Set Up to Succeed
Matt C. White | Feb 25, 2022
LOOKING TO IMPROVE your physical and financial health? You might have heard similar sounding advice: All you have to do is burn more calories than you consume—and to spend less than you make. While there's an element of truth to both platitudes, I don't find either helpful. There's a psychological canyon between such abstract ideas and putting them into practice. One thing experience has taught me: If I’m authentically stirred to want to do something, I'll go miles further than if obligation is my only motivation. I also need to come to terms with my own weakness. Willpower and determination can only take me so far. I need help to get where I want to go. After years of floundering, I’ve now been working out five times a week for more than a year. What changed? I finally got honest about my own limitations. My wife Sarah and I found a virtual fitness group with daily video workouts. We don't have to pack a gym bag or drive to a class. There's no need to arrange childcare. The workout routine is prepared for us. We just watch and imitate. We keep each other accountable, and we find encouragement in talking with friends in the group. It's become a therapeutic way to start our day together before the kids get up. What fascinated me about my workout experience: When I humbled myself and accepted help—when I bowled with the gutter guards up and gave myself a chance—it began to change me from the inside out. I began to want to work out, and I began to want to eat better, too. I’ve gone further than I ever thought I would. I've found that the same principle applies to my financial health. When I get truly excited about achieving a financial goal—like…
Read more » Read That Statement
Matt C. White | Jul 21, 2022
HAVE YOU HEARD that you shouldn’t check your 401(k) at times like this? Market volatility can wreak havoc not only with our account balances, but also with our decision-making. Ignoring our 401(k) statements might help us stick with our long-term investment plan. True as that may be, there’s a good reason to peek at your second-quarter statement: to see if you can find a new feature—the lifetime income illustration. It was mandated by Congress as part of the 2019 SECURE Act, but it’s only now showing up on many 401(k) statements. Here are three points to help you make sense of the new feature: Snapshot. These are the monthly payments that your 401(k) could potentially fund if you annuitized the balance as of the statement date—nothing more and nothing less. Other factors can have greater sway over your eventual retirement income, such as future 401(k) contributions, market performance, inflation, how much longer you work and the assets you own outside the 401(k) plan. The estimate ignores all of this. Annuity. Where do the estimated monthly payments come from? The lifetime income illustration assumes your 401(k) account balance is turned into an annuity—with the estimated income based on a uniform set of actuarial assumptions for ages, dates, life expectancy and interest rates that may or may not be true for your situation. The illustration assumes that you’re age 67 on the statement date, which is the simulated annuity start date or, if you're older, your actual age is used in the calculation. You’ll see both a single-life annuity and a qualified joint-and-survivor annuity modeled on your statement. The payments shown are not indexed for inflation. There would be no cost-of-living adjustment, so the monthly amount would lose spending power over time. Mindset. Why did the SECURE Act mandate this new statement feature? Lawmakers…
Read more » No Help
Matt C. White | Jul 4, 2022
OUR LAST SUMMER road trip didn’t exactly go as planned. That ordeal changed my mind about an annual expense I’d been paying without much thought. I gained a new perspective—even if I did learn my lesson the hard way. On a Saturday morning last summer, Sarah and I woke our kids at 4 a.m. for a predawn drive through the mountains of East Tennessee and across the Carolinas. We were on our way to enjoy the beaches of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. For the first eight hours of our planned nine-hour trek, we all watched the trees go by in peace—a significant feat, as any parent will tell you. Then suddenly, every light on the dash began flashing incessantly. The alternator had gone bad and the car battery was failing quickly. When I stepped on the gas, the car would barely accelerate. Luckily, I saw a pizza place coming up on the right. I coasted into the parking lot. Once everyone was inside—where they could enjoy lunch and wait safely for help—I stepped out and dialed AAA. I was calling for a tow using my roadside assistance coverage. To my chagrin, four calls and four hours of waiting produced nothing more than one extended wait-time quote after another. I was told repeatedly that all AAA-affiliated tow truck drivers were busy working on other calls, and the service was doing all it could. As the afternoon wore on, I finally realized that if we ever wanted to get out of that parking lot, I’d have to arrange for help myself. First, I took an Uber to a nearby service shop to secure a loaner car before it closed for the weekend. I’d arrived just in time. I had to give a “desperate dad” speech to convince the shop to release…
Read more » A Home Run
Matt C. White | Sep 12, 2022
MY WIFE SARAH AND I recently dusted off our old Scrabble board. We reviewed the rules and were reminded of the Scrabble Bingo—the 50-point bonus awarded to a player who figures out how to play every letter tile from the tray on a single turn. Neither of us could remember ever achieving the Scrabble Bingo. That wasn’t surprising, we reasoned, because it’s rare for all the stars to align. You’d need the right combination of seven letters, the vision to see the word they can form, and the perfectly accommodating space on the board to play the long word. On top of all that, you’d need to fit with at least one other previously played letter in a crossword-like fashion. Lo and behold, that very night I did it. I used all seven of my letters to intersect perpendicularly with an open “e” on the board—forming the word “infields” and tacking the 50-point bonus onto my score. I share this story not because I think you’ll be dazzled by my Scrabble prowess any more than Sarah was, but because I want you to recognize the significance of a tax planning opportunity that may be open to you—with the kind of serendipity that reminds me of the Scrabble Bingo. The tax break I have in mind is the personal residence gain exclusion. It’s the one that allows a married couple to sell their home and completely wipe out all taxes on a gain of up to $500,000. The exclusion is $250,000 for a single individual. Let me explain how the stars are aligning right now to make this tax benefit more relevant than ever to more people than ever—and how it could deliver a tax bonanza for those looking to move. Here's the trio of remarkable conditions that are coming together:…
Read more » Time to Settle Up
Matt C. White | Apr 12, 2022
TAX DAY IS ALMOST here, and I have a feeling that some of you may be less than excited. The cash that changes hands every year around this time gets a lot of attention, but it tells an incomplete story. The size of the check you write—or the refund you’re receiving—doesn’t, by itself, say much of anything about your tax situation. Back in the days before technology made transferring money so convenient, did you ever let a tab run both ways with a friend? Perhaps you were traveling and decided to take turns paying for meals, and then settled up any difference at the end of the trip. Just by looking at the cash that changes hands when it’s time to settle up, you wouldn’t know whether every meal had been a pricey fine-dining experience or gas station sushi. All you would know is whether you did a good job of taking turns paying and keeping the difference low. Ditto for your tax refund or the sum owed. Your total tax liability is a convoluted function of many factors—certainly the amount of income and the deductions that reduce it, but also the types of income, the corresponding tax rates that apply, and the credits that reduce your tax bill dollar for dollar. In many cases, the applicability of these factors depends on your income level—because some of them gradually phase in or out. The big question is, how well have you been taking turns paying throughout the year with your friend, the IRS? How did you complete your Form W-4 Employee’s Withholding Certificate? How much withholding did you have on retirement plan withdrawals or annuity payments? If you had income from investments, asset sales or self-employment, did you make quarterly estimated tax payments and, if so, how much? It’s tempting…
Read more » Christmas All Year
Matt C. White | Dec 24, 2021
I GAVE THE BEST PEP talk I could muster, but it didn’t help. Our family of four entered Walmart in solidarity, planning to buy gifts to fill an Operation Christmas Child shoebox. Two of us left early in disarray. I had to wrestle my screaming two-year-old all the way to the car because she knew only one way to approach the toy department—with herself in mind. Eliza melted down over her refusal to part with a cheap plastic toy. As much as we romanticize the idea of giving, it seems we have a hard time actually doing it. A growing body of research shows that giving does more for us than spending. It sparks various psychological and physiological benefits, including pleasure, greater sustained happiness and decreased likelihood of depression. What’s peculiar about such findings is that, even though most of us aren’t surprised to hear that giving makes us happier, we still default to the opposite behavior—and think spending on ourselves will lead to greater satisfaction. If giving doesn’t come naturally, wouldn’t it make sense to study how to get better at it? How can we get ourselves to give more? The fact is, if our aim is to maximize money’s utility for bettering our lives, then giving is the lever we need to pull. Unfortunately, I doubt that studying the research—no matter how convincing—will help much. Perhaps logic and reason could sway an open mind seeking to make an informed decision, but it’s powerless against those whose minds are already made up. In the movie Home Alone, I don’t think Kevin McCallister could have changed Harry and Marv’s ways with a detailed presentation on the benefits of giving. [xyz-ihs snippet="Holiday-Donate"] If logic won’t work, perhaps emotion can. Christmas is an emotional time. It is, after all, the season of giving.…
Read more »
How much to provide a college student monthly?
Chris | Apr 25, 2026
A Life You Build
Jeff Peck | Apr 19, 2026
Live a little
greg_j_tomamichel | Apr 25, 2026
Rethinking the “Right” Time for Social Security
Andrew Clements | Apr 23, 2026
Investing Fundamentals: A Simple Guide for Beginners
William Housley | Apr 24, 2026
Lonely Island (Correct Edit)
Mark Crothers | Apr 22, 2026
Around the Obstacles
ArticleDan Smith | Apr 25, 2026
- My continued employment as a delivery driver would likely have left me on Social Security Disability (SSDI) by age 55.
- I was very interested in personal finance, and knew many people in that field who would help me get my foot in the door.
- I had acquired bookkeeping, payroll, and tax prep skills through my involvement with my local union, though I never pictured myself as the type to sit behind a desk, in a dimly lit office, crunching numbers beneath the glow of one of those green shade banker’s lamps.
- As a last resort, I could fall back on my truck driving skills, using my commercial drivers license to get a job hauling ‘no-touch’ freight of some sort.
- Last but not least, I needed a place to live. “Hello, mom and dad, I need my room back”. Sleeping on the twin mattress I gave up 25 years earlier, was not part of my plan.
- I was determined not to let my occupation as a beer truck driver dictate my future job prospects.
Where did I want to be?- Where to live? Living with the folks was never meant to be a long term thing. After three months of that, I signed my first ever apartment lease as a lessee, as opposed to a lessor. That lasted two years, until a very large increase in the rent caused me to buy a duplex, and become a lessor again.
- Where to work? I continued my work as a delivery driver for three more years. My position as the local union president, and my five paid weeks of vacation actually kept me off of the truck much of the time. That enabled me to tolerate the maladies that would eventually force me out of that job. Having absolutely no desire to spend the balance of my life languishing on SSDI and a minimal IRA balance, I set off on the path to becoming a financial services guy. That did not work out, and if you want more information on that, here’s a link.
- To make ends meet, I turned to my last resort; driving a truck. Piloting an 18-wheeler was not how I envisioned my remaining working days. And although the freight was ‘no touch’, driving 600 miles every day in a Kenworth tractor is still pretty hard on your vertebrae. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do to survive and to keep your eye on your finish line. My heart goes out to full time drivers, that job is no walk in the park.
- And what about love? My preference was to be in a relationship, but not any relationship. I wanted a good partner, I wanted to be a good partner as well. What qualities would I look for in a new partner? Independent, established, confident, and nice. Was I asking too much?
Making it All Work Finally, preparation collided with opportunity. In other words, I got lucky. Remember when I told you I didn’t picture myself as ever being a bean-counter? Two established financial services guys set me up with free office space and began funneling tax prep clients to me. What began with me preparing taxes for about three dozen of my union brothers, instantly turned into over 100 clients. There I was, a bean counter of sorts. I kept that truck driving job for several more years. And remember that duplex I bought after the rent spiked at my apartment? Well, there was this girl living next door. Enter Chrissy. We became best friends. She is no longer my neighbor. She is now my spouse. Of course, at the time we met, aside from being a nice guy, I wasn’t much of a catch. Man, she took a chance on me. As my client count went up, my days driving the big-rig went down. When the client count got to about 400, I retired forever from driving. No more trips to Chicago, Des Moines, Snow Shoe PA, or Jersey City. Chrissy and I began pounding 40% of our gross pay into savings. It would take until I was 70, but working together, we got to a place each of us only dreamed we would be. By living within our means, and keeping lifestyle creep to a minimum, we surpassed our goals. Chris retired at 64 and helped me during my final three years as a tax preparer. Lucky for me, Federal Wage and Hour never found out that I violated the minimum wage laws by never paying her in the first place. I sold the practice at age 70. I prepared 650 tax returns in my final year. It’s important to note that during our journey, we did not starve ourselves of food nor fun. We counted 27 trips during our first ten years together. Chris was great at finding great deals to various destinations in the Caribbean, and we turned several of her business trips into mini vacations as well. It’s important to prepare for the future, but have some fun along the way as well. I hope this piece inspires someone who is still on the road, dealing with similar obstacles, and wondering if there was a way around them.The great COLA debate-maybe not the expected solution.
R Quinn | Apr 26, 2026
Why I use a Donor-Advised Fund
David S | Feb 21, 2026
Tax Free Income Trap, Dealing With MAGI
DAN SMITH | Apr 21, 2026
Hidden Surcharge
DAN SMITH | Apr 21, 2026
Something to Think About
David Lancaster | Mar 24, 2026
Driving Prices
ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Apr 25, 2026