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Family

Room For Happiness

Andrew Clements | Oct 7, 2026

"Michael, what a wonderful surprise! Thank you for letting me know and for reading my post."

- Andrew Clements

Investing

Rich or Wealthy?

R Quinn | Oct 5, 2026

"You can be in the 12% income bracket but the 0% capital gains bracket or have a 27% marginal rate, so this can be tricky."

- Randy Dobkin

Happiness

YEARS AGO, while practicing law, I was a frequent contributor to Humble Dollar. I loved Jonathan Clements’s vision for the site - a corner of the financial universe built on clarity, frugality, and the quiet dignity of living within one’s means. Then my life took a sharp pivot. I left legal practice to teach gifted-and-talented students and coach varsity athletics at a public magnet high school. Almost immediately, my submissions here dried up. I was consuming entire days guiding brilliant teenagers through complex history, breaking down match film, and grading papers long past sunset and on weekends. I wrote to Jonathan with genuine regret, apologizing for going dark on such a wonderful enterprise. His reply was quintessential Jonathan: he explained to me with characteristic, succinct warmth that his own adult child was a teacher, adding that he wasn’t sure there was a higher calling on Earth. He was right about the calling. But what nobody warns you about a calling is its capacity to consume you whole if you let it. The Cliff Edge This past year, the math simply broke. Between high-load AP teaching, head coaching, and the relentless calendar of high school athletics, I was regularly clocking 17- to 18-hour days during soccer season. My central nervous system finally redlined badly. Worse, I realized with a gut punch that I had missed nearly the entire senior year of my oldest son while running on that treadmill. This realization hit me at his graduation when I felt physically exhausted and unable to enjoy what should have been one of the proudest moments of my life. I was determined to make it up to him in whatever way I could (for example, we are visiting him today at college, and we go often to see him in San Antonio - a 90-minute drive from Austin). Moreover, I will not repeat this mistake and will enjoy the years I have left with my two high-school-aged daughters. With teenagers preparing to leave the nest and a close family member facing severe illness, I stepped away. I took a sabbatical. Maybe it will delay our retirement slightly, but as I will express further below, I am not sure I will ever really retire. The Void Financial planners love to reduce retirement to a single milestone: "The Number." The spreadsheets run 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations, the house is paid off, the withdrawal rates are dialed in, and the industry assures you: You have arrived. You are safe. At 45, I had not retired in the traditional sense, but I had stepped off the cliff of full-time professional identity because my body told me I needed to. And what I discovered in the sudden, unanticipated quiet is something many retirees spend years agonizing over without having the vocabulary to describe: The number is not the answer. When you abruptly remove the machinery of a demanding daily routine, you don't instantly find nirvana. You find a void. In a recent discussion on non-financial retirement readiness, former financial adviser Tyler Gardner framed this dilemma in his video on non-financial retirement needs around Self-Determination Theory, pioneered by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. Deci and Ryan posited that human well-being rests on three basic psychological nutrients: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. For all its stress and bureaucratic friction, a demanding career supplies all three automatically. When you walk away from work, those three nutrients can vanish before your celebratory cake is even eaten. If you don't deliberately rebuild them, the fallout can be physiological. The Trap of "Mental Retirement" In aging literature, researchers study a sobering phenomenon bluntly termed "mental retirement" - the cognitive softening that occurs when a person ceases to be intellectually stretched. A decade-long study from Binghamton University examining China’s rural pension expansion revealed that early retirement significantly accelerated cognitive decline. Crucially, the researchers noted that the negative impact of reduced social and mental engagement outweighed the physical benefits of improved nutrition and sleep that the pension provided. Work forced us to solve problems under pressure. Sabbaticals and retirements do not. To counteract that loss, I had to create self-imposed challenges. During my grueling years in the classroom, exercise was the first thing pushed off the ledge. On leave, I reclaimed the time. I started chasing benchmarks for physical competence. Recently, I set out to regain a grueling standard: 10 continuous minutes on the Jacob’s Ladder. It was a benchmark an elite special operator had given me when I served as an Army JAG supporting special operations in Afghanistan in my late twenties. My first time back on the ladder? I barely completed one minute and staggered off it trembling and nauseous. But every week, I kept working at it - sometimes adding a few seconds and other times several minutes until I got to 10 minutes again this week. Crossing that threshold didn't merely burn calories; it restored a measurable gradient of physical competence and, with it, confidence. Whether it is conquering a brutal conditioning standard, learning a language, or mastering an instrument, we need something where we can objectively say: I am better at this today than I was last month. I will now find a new physical benchmark to pursue, while coming back occasionally to that masochistic Jacob's Ladder. The 40 Invisible People The second nutrient, relatedness, is where most folks get ambushed. When people contemplate retirement, they assume their social health depends on their spouse or a handful of close friends. But work provides something entirely different: a vast scaffolding of "weak ties." In a landmark 2014 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn found that daily subjective happiness and feelings of belonging rose noticeably on days when people had more peripheral interactions - even something as fleeting as a 20-second genuine exchange with a coffee barista. Broader public health research reinforces this with astonishing gravity. A massive meta-analysis led by Julianne Holt-Lunstad spanning over 300,000 individuals found that strong social integration increased survival likelihood by 50%. Remarkably, the mortality benefit was strongest for complex, varied social networks (the diverse web of people you bump into) rather than simple binary measures like living with someone. When I taught, I had hundreds of involuntary interactions before lunch: hallway greetings, banter with the front desk, coaching video sessions, cafeteria check-ins. On my sabbatical, I plunged into writing a historical thriller called The Blood Money Ledger set during the Vietnam War - a passion project rooted in my love of history and informed by my own military service. I was thrilled to find that the fiction flowed with unexpected ease. In fact, I am now leaning toward turning my main character, Tom Calder, into a series of books about morality, the law, and institutional rot. But writing is, by definition, solitary confinement. Left entirely unmanaged, isolation is insidious. To survive it, I had to engineer artificial friction:

I go to the gym at the exact same hour every day to see the familiar faces of regulars.
Once a week, a close friend and I meet at a local coffee shop; he reads while I hammer out words for the book. It’s quiet, parallel work, but the ambient presence makes the solitary act of writing sustainable.
I signed up for an evening furniture-making class to work with my hands alongside people I wouldn't otherwise meet - a skill I am going to start out terrible at and eventually become... less terrible at.
I took on a volunteer docent shift at the Austin History Center, trading archival stories with curious strangers.

None of these people are lifelong confidants - except my close friend who joins me for coffee. But together, they rebuild the 40 casual touchpoints work used to gift me for free. Anticipation Over Accumulation The final hazard is structural: time without seams. When we dream of retirement, we picture unstructured calendars and checking off items on an expansive bucket list. But behavioral psychology shows we often misunderstand how human satisfaction works. In a well-known 2010 study by Dutch researcher Jeroen Nawijn tracking over 1,500 adults, vacationers exhibited significantly higher happiness before their trips than non-vacationers. The post-trip happiness bump, however, was negligible and evaporated rapidly. Even though I haven't written for Humble Dollar much in the past several years, I have been a frequent lurker, and know that this is a topic we all understand well. The engine of joy is almost entirely anticipation, not completion. A bucket list should never be treated like a grocery list where the goal is an empty page. If you clear out your list with no new ambitions behind it, life goes flat. The real art is maintaining a continuous horizon of things you are eagerly anticipating: an upcoming course, a seasonal trip, an archival project, or a fresh manuscript draft. We are in the midst of using high school and college graduation presents as family adventures we take. For my son's graduation gift - he loves soccer - I took him and his soccer-obsessed sister to the World Cup. My other daughter, who is very much not soccer-obsessed, and my wife visited a spa together for significantly less money. Win-win. The Real Ledger The Monday morning after your final Friday, your spreadsheet will not ask how you are doing, provide an intellectual hill to climb, or hand you an unexpected laugh across a desk. The number is just the admission ticket that we too often obsess over. The actual show begins when you decide what will make your days count. John Goodell was a deputy director of policy and general counsel at the Texas Pension Review Board. Currently an Army Reservist, he previously served 14 years on active duty before leaving to become the general counsel at the Texas Veterans Commission. John has spent much of his career working with public sector employees on tax, investment, estate planning and retirement issues. His biggest passion is spending time with his wife and kids. Check out John's earlier articles.

Saving

FINANCIAL MISTAKES

Kenneth Tobin | Oct 7, 2026

"My 2 greatest impacts, were my Father who bought and sold a few stocks to increase his wealth, we were very middle class. He always sent me for the newspaper, Red Streak with Final Markets for the day, 1950's. The next big impact was in Engineering School at IIT in Chicago, took a course called Engineering Economy by Grant Ireson. This course taught me a lot, present value of money, compounding, time value of money, rate-of-return analysis, depreciation, and cash-flow comparisons. This turned on the lights for me, and then later in life Bogle, Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett. At 80 I am following Buffett overall, with 85% stocks in the S&P and 15% cash. If I live to 100, I do not want inflation to take away what I have, Dad died at 101."

- William Dorner

From HumbleDollar Founder Jonathan Clements

Investing

Behaving Badly

OTHERS MIGHT BE hoping to add to their wealth by picking the next hot stock. But here at HumbleDollar, we’re much more concerned about…

In Retirement

Momentarily Embarrassed by “Not Much”

Mark Crothers | Oct 9, 2026

"Dan, I’m exhausted just reading your proposed explanation. Maybe you should reopen Dan’s Tax Prep. It might be more restful than retirement 😁"

- Mark Crothers

Investing

Market Risks

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Oct 10, 2026

YOU MAY BE familiar with a concept known as Pascal’s wager. Named for Blaise Pascal, a devout seventeenth-century French mathematician, it was a thought experiment in which he tried to weigh, in logical terms, the costs and benefits of believing in God. His conclusion: The cost of not believing—a potential eternity of damnation—was so extreme that it far outweighed any other consideration. I mention Pascal’s wager because a common question is whether similar logic might apply to financial decision-making. While not perfectly analogous, I do think the central premise of Pascal’s wager is useful—that we should be attuned to situations where the relative outcomes may be lopsided. Consider the stock market, where two types of risk are, in my opinion, often underappreciated. The first of these risks is, counterintuitively, that market history can be unhelpful and misleading. Look back at the U.S. stock market over the past 100 years, and you’ll find that its average annual return has been right around 10%, thus doubling about every seven years. Through that lens, the stock market has been a powerful and reliable way to build wealth. The problem, though, is that this 10% figure is a long-term average return. Look at the market’s actual returns from year to year, and they’re anything but average. Some years are better than average, but some are much worse. As I noted last week, there have been a handful of years in which a worker entering retirement would have faced severe headwinds. These include 1929, of course, as well as 1969 and 2000. Most other years wouldn’t have posed as much of a challenge. But since there’s no way to know which sequence of returns any of us will encounter in our own retirements, we can’t rely on the market’s long-term average. In fact, we almost need to ignore that number and instead insulate our portfolios against those worst case scenarios. Long-term averages, unfortunately, don’t apply to any one individual. That’s the risk in looking at market history. The market’s current conditions can be equally misleading. That’s because, when the market is strong, as it is today, investors tend to draw one of two equally problematic conclusions. Some look at recent performance and conclude that it’s likely to continue. This is known as recency bias, but it’s a way of thinking that’s entirely understandable. After all, it’s totally rational to expect and assume that tomorrow won’t look dramatically different from today, because most of the time that’s the way things turn out. But from time to time, things do really change. Because those changes are the exception rather than the norm, though, and because they often arrive without warning, recency bias continues to be a powerful force that can lull investors into a false sense of security. Other investors look at a highflying market and draw an entirely different conclusion. They focus on metrics like the market’s price-to-earnings ratio (P/E)—which is undeniably elevated—and conclude that the market is skating on thin ice and thus likely to drop. That seems rational. The problem with this conclusion, though, is that valuation tools like the P/E ratio aren’t perfectly predictive; they only look predictive. This has been known for a long time, but this week, a new paper by researcher Cullen Roche provided additional perspective to support this point. The paper is titled, “Valuations Matter. Just Not the Way Wall Street Says.” The central premise: The market’s P/E ratio has almost zero predictive power in the near term. Statistically, it tells us virtually nothing about returns over the coming 12-month period. When are valuation metrics helpful? In Roche’s research, he finds that metrics like the P/E are only roughly indicative of future returns and only over a 10-year period. The bottom line: Whether one is an optimist or a pessimist, the data tell us that we should be careful to avoid bets that go too far out on a limb in any one direction. That presents a problem, though: If we shouldn’t look at market history and shouldn’t put too much stock in where the market is today, then how should we think about our finances? Here are three suggestions:

Set an asset allocation target for your portfolio and then manage to that target. In general, the result will be that you’ll sell stocks when they’re high and buy when they’re low, which is exactly the right result. And by taking this approach, you’ll avoid the generally unhelpful advice of market commentators claiming to be able to read the economic tea leaves.
Put most of your focus on your own financial plan. I suggest tracking what I call the big four: your income and expenses, assets and liabilities. If you can get these numbers on one sheet of paper and track them over time, I see that as maybe the most productive financial exercise.
Avoid “exciting” investments. It would be easy to look at a company like Nvidia, which has seen its stock gain 14,000% over the past 10 years, and feel motivated to search for the next market leader. Intuitively, we know this is harder than it looks, and the data confirm that stock-picking is extraordinarily difficult. But according to some studies, it’s even harder than that. Research by Hendrik Bessembinder has found that the median lifetime return of all of the stocks that have traded on U.S. exchanges historically is actually negative. Just 4% of all stocks have accounted for all of the market’s returns in excess of Treasury bills.

As Pascal might have suggested, look for ways to tilt the odds in your favor even when the future is, ultimately, unknowable. 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.

In Retirement

Strategic Retirement Income

Gordy Vytlacil | Oct 3, 2026

"Good to note the distinction. I hadn’t heard that guidance from BB so glad you shared it."

- Michael1

Lists

Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 6

Jonathan Clements | Oct 2, 2026

"Very true. The accommodations didn't impact our enjoyment at all. We actually got a chuckle out of it. Much of our family travel with our children was in a Sears cabin tent. Those memories are the best."

- RCC

Life Events

Laundered

ArticleJeffrey K. Actor | Oct 3, 2026

FINANCIAL EMERGENCIES have a way of compounding when least expected. This is often coined as a correlated risk. I call it running out of clean underwear. My father used to profess, in emergencies, that turning pairs inside out was a legitimate way to extend undergarment use under duress. Financially, this is merely extending the life of a depreciating asset. I am sure my mother would have refuted this concept. Nevertheless, before you judge me too harshly, allow me to share the situational details. Three weeks ago our 7 year old washing machine, an example of aging capital equipment, began exhibiting signs of being possessed. Wash cycles were accompanied with grinding noises and violent walks across the floor. Spin cycles initiated poltergeist-like behavior, with heavy banging and metallic thuds made by nether-world demons. An internet search revealed the probable cause of the machine’s paranormal behavior, which was likely broken suspension rods or damaged shock absorbers holding the inner tub in place. After watching 8 or 9 YouTube videos, I decided that I had the inner fortitude to de-demonize our beloved washing machine. And being thrifty, I wished to avoid the major capital expenditure of replacing the washer. I consider myself handy and even pride myself on the 65% success rate for fixing household appliances. Yes, I freely admit that past performance is no guarantee of success. However, since I was attempting to maintain my existing emergency fund, I ordered new drum springs; at 7 years old it seemed financially responsible to repair rather than replace the machine. Upon arrival of the rods, I subsequently installed them in a mere 3 hours (I like to think of myself as methodical, rather than speedy). With a screwdriver in hand, one bruised elbow, and my pride on the line, I separated the whites from the darks and ran a load. Success! Unfortunately, the clean clothes ran up against another obstacle. Our 10 year old dryer must have been jealous of the attention its utility counterpart received. What are the odds that both a washer and a dryer would malfunction in the same week? Call it correlated asset failure. In my house, in hindsight, the odds were pretty darn high. One appliance repair was manageable. Two was beginning to feel like collusion between utilities. To make matters worse, the washing machine was only functional for two loads. Just because you can purchase parts on the internet does not guarantee long term utility after installment, in essence rendering my original repair invalid. Sunken costs for a depreciating asset. In this case, I probably broke a plastic piece holding the inner tub while replacing the springs. Unfortunately, I was lulled into a false sense of security, and was outside the house when those diabolical mechanical fiends struck again. When I returned, the washer was in full demonic dance, this time mischievously thumping our 17 year old water heater. The water tank wanted no part of the dance, and promptly sprung a supply line leak. Great. In hindsight, advocating for a larger emergency fund balance would have been prudent for someone like me with a known 35% failure rate. I ran to the big box store to purchase a new pipe and some sealing tape, but silly me, I forgot to take measurements of the tank and valves. I called my wife in the parking lot to assist. My mistake was to ask her to check if the tank’s intake valve was functional. It was not, evident by her high pitched scream and the clear sound of water gushing. Note to self: remember to shut off the main water supply before asking the wife to help with water tank issues. Did I mention that our daughter’s future in-laws were coming to dinner the next day? In the end, we purchased a new water heater and were only without water for two days. We also purchased a washing machine, but it took roughly three weeks for delivery, as we required a difficult footprint size to fill the space occupied by the previous device. Our emergency fund survived, albeit at a lower level than anticipated. As a side note, I was able to fix the dryer, for the most part, so that a full replacement was not necessary. The experience taught me a few lessons. First, household financial risks may appear independent, yet often this is not the case. It was easy to fathom we had our unexpected events covered with our existing emergency fund. Yet compounding systemic appliance failures pushed the unexpected expenses towards our theoretical limits. Second, my father was only partially correct. Underwear is not a renewable asset. I should also think about establishing a separate Fruit of the Loom reserve account to accompany our current emergency fund. A decision my mother would have approved. Jeffrey K. Actor, PhD, was a professor at a major medical school in Houston for more than 25 years, serving as an academic researcher with interests in how immune responses function to fight pathogenic diseases. Jeff’s retirement goals are to write short science fiction stories, volunteer in the community and spend time in his garden. Check out his earlier articles.

Investing

Financial Ruin for Beginners

Mark Crothers | Oct 6, 2026

"Jeff, spot on. “Proprietary” usually means the seller won’t explain it, and “strategy” means it changes when the results disappoint."

- Mark Crothers

In Retirement

Is now the time for an annuity?

R Quinn | Oct 2, 2026

"You lost me at fair."

- MiddleAmerican

Family

Room For Happiness

Andrew Clements | Oct 7, 2026

"Michael, what a wonderful surprise! Thank you for letting me know and for reading my post."

- Andrew Clements

Investing

Rich or Wealthy?

R Quinn | Oct 5, 2026

"You can be in the 12% income bracket but the 0% capital gains bracket or have a 27% marginal rate, so this can be tricky."

- Randy Dobkin

Happiness

The Number Is Not The Answer

ArticleJohn Goodell | Oct 10, 2026

I go to the gym at the exact same hour every day to see the familiar faces of regulars.
Once a week, a close friend and I meet at a local coffee shop; he reads while I hammer out words for the book. It’s quiet, parallel work, but the ambient presence makes the solitary act of writing sustainable.
I signed up for an evening furniture-making class to work with my hands alongside people I wouldn't otherwise meet - a skill I am going to start out terrible at and eventually become... less terrible at.
I took on a volunteer docent shift at the Austin History Center, trading archival stories with curious strangers.

Saving

FINANCIAL MISTAKES

Kenneth Tobin | Oct 7, 2026

- William Dorner

From HumbleDollar Founder Jonathan Clements

Investing

Behaving Badly

OTHERS MIGHT BE hoping to add to their wealth by picking the next hot stock. But here at HumbleDollar, we’re much more concerned about…

In Retirement

Momentarily Embarrassed by “Not Much”

Mark Crothers | Oct 9, 2026

"Dan, I’m exhausted just reading your proposed explanation. Maybe you should reopen Dan’s Tax Prep. It might be more restful than retirement 😁"

- Mark Crothers

Investing

Market Risks

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Oct 10, 2026

Set an asset allocation target for your portfolio and then manage to that target. In general, the result will be that you’ll sell stocks when they’re high and buy when they’re low, which is exactly the right result. And by taking this approach, you’ll avoid the generally unhelpful advice of market commentators claiming to be able to read the economic tea leaves.
Put most of your focus on your own financial plan. I suggest tracking what I call the big four: your income and expenses, assets and liabilities. If you can get these numbers on one sheet of paper and track them over time, I see that as maybe the most productive financial exercise.
Avoid “exciting” investments. It would be easy to look at a company like Nvidia, which has seen its stock gain 14,000% over the past 10 years, and feel motivated to search for the next market leader. Intuitively, we know this is harder than it looks, and the data confirm that stock-picking is extraordinarily difficult. But according to some studies, it’s even harder than that. Research by Hendrik Bessembinder has found that the median lifetime return of all of the stocks that have traded on U.S. exchanges historically is actually negative. Just 4% of all stocks have accounted for all of the market’s returns in excess of Treasury bills.

In Retirement

Strategic Retirement Income

Gordy Vytlacil | Oct 3, 2026

"Good to note the distinction. I hadn’t heard that guidance from BB so glad you shared it."

- Michael1

Lists

Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 6

Jonathan Clements | Oct 2, 2026

- RCC

Manifesto

Oct 11, 2026

NO. 6: OUR FINANCIAL life involves endless tradeoffs. We usually have a good idea of what our dollars are buying us. But to be good stewards of our wealth, we should also ponder what we’re giving up.

Truths

Oct 11, 2026

NO. 115: HOMES aren’t as safe an investment as they feel. A house is a big, undiversified and often leveraged investment bet. Yet owning a home seems less unnerving than owning stocks—because we don’t get constant price updates. The same illusion holds for other infrequently valued investments, like hedge funds, timber and private equity.

act

Oct 10, 2026

TAKE LOSSES in your taxable account. Suppose you have a stock or fund that’s worth less than your total cost, including any reinvested dividends. If you sell, you can use the realized loss to offset capital gains and up to $3,000 in ordinary income. Is it an investment you’d like to continue owning? If you plan to buy it back, watch out for the wash-sale rule.

Truths

Oct 9, 2026

NO. 59: OUR RISK tolerance isn’t stable. There’s our portfolio’s risk—and then there’s the risk we can stomach. The latter changes with the markets: We often grow braver as stocks climb. Our tolerance also changes with experience: As we age, we may become more comfortable with stocks, even as retirement’s approach should prompt us to throttle back.

Money Guide

Manifesto

Oct 11, 2026

Spotlight: Houses

The condo, HOA, senior citizen conundrum

R Quinn | Apr 19, 2026

Our condo HOA monthly fee is $950. It was $700 when we purchased in September 2018. All of the increase was higher costs associated with upkeep and maintenance, not improvements or added services. Now it’s likely the increase in July will be 7.4% to $1,020.…

My Favorite Room

DAN SMITH | Sep 17, 2026

Chrissy and I have had a fun year. A road trip across the country to visit Chris’s niece in California, we have re-discovered the joy of live concerts, and have had some nice day and overnight trips so far this year. We are looking forward…

Coastal Retirement? Have You Considered These Costs?

Mark Crothers | Oct 30, 2025

I guess it's one of those dreams, when retirement finally comes, buying a coastal property and living by the sea. It's an appealing scenario, and a lot of people make the leap to live their best life at the coast. But if you're thinking about…

The Home Ownership Gamble

kristinehayes2014 | Apr 5, 2026

I’ve spent a fair amount of time documenting my financial journey here on HumbleDollar. Some regular readers might remember me documenting both the purchase of a home (in 2018) as well as the sale of that home (in 2022). I purchased the house (an…

Percentage that “age in place”

Keith Pleas | May 24, 2026

My wife asked me yesterday "did you know that 93% of seniors age in place?". Really? That didn't sound right. Where we live on Mercer Island (next to Seattle) there are many retirement communities, including a large one on the lake called Covenant Shores that…

Home Prices and Affordability

Langston Holland | Feb 8, 2026

Home affordability has been the talk of the town for a while and it inspired me to get a feel for the forest in a domain largely cluttered with political opinion instead of scientific method. My objective was to distill the relevant data as much…

They Made the Lists

Ken Cutler | Dec 12, 2023

THERE’S AN OLD SAYING: Good things come in threes. That’s certainly been true for one aspect of my life. I’ve lived in just three locations—and all of them have been featured in national “best places” lists. My early years were in Moorestown, New Jersey, a quiet town with a population of some 20,000. It’s an affluent suburb of Philadelphia that…

My Parents’ Retirement

Ken Cutler | Mar 13, 2024

DAD WAS AN ACCOUNTANT. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, taking classes at night while working full-time. He also studied engineering at another Philadelphia college, again taking classes at night. Dad would have enjoyed being an engineer, but he could only take on so much while working a day job. He never completed that degree. Being sharp…

First Quarter 2025

Ken Cutler | Apr 7, 2025

In January, I outlined a host of money moves I’d made in the first 16 months after retiring from full-time work. Financially, things did not slow down in the first three months of 2025. Here are some of my first quarter financial actions and experiences: Distributed gifts to charity. We cluster charitable contributions so that we can itemize on our…

Wrapping It Up

Ken Cutler | Mar 26, 2026

As best as I can tell, I’ve transitioned into the early stage of my life’s fourth quarter. Certainly, I could be at the tail end of my third quarter and, not to be presumptuous, there’s a chance that I’m closer to the end of the fourth quarter without realizing it. At this stage, there’s no new financial wisdom for me…

Prophet Motive

Ken Cutler | Feb 2, 2024

LARRY BURKETT WAS one of my early financial influences. Burkett, who passed away from cancer in 2003 at age 64, had a daily program called Money Matters on our local Christian radio station. For years, it came on during my commute home from work, and I’d faithfully tune in. Burkett was a prolific author, publishing more than 70 books. His…

Taste Those Savings

Ken Cutler | Dec 18, 2023

I GET A THRILL FROM saving money on groceries. We have customer loyalty cards for the two local grocery stores where we do most of our shopping. The sales receipts list total savings for that shopping trip. I love to see big numbers on that line. I’m a prodigious cereal eater, and my favorite is Cheerios. The regular price for…

Room For Happiness

Rich or Wealthy?

The Number Is Not The Answer

FINANCIAL MISTAKES

Behaving Badly

Momentarily Embarrassed by “Not Much”

Market Risks

Strategic Retirement Income

Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 6

Laundered

Financial Ruin for Beginners

Is now the time for an annuity?

Room For Happiness

Rich or Wealthy?

The Number Is Not The Answer

FINANCIAL MISTAKES

Behaving Badly

Momentarily Embarrassed by “Not Much”

Market Risks

Strategic Retirement Income

Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 6

Free Newsletter

Get Educated

Manifesto

Truths

act

Truths

Money Guide

Manifesto

Spotlight: Houses

The condo, HOA, senior citizen conundrum

My Favorite Room

Coastal Retirement? Have You Considered These Costs?

The Home Ownership Gamble

Percentage that “age in place”

Home Prices and Affordability

Spotlight: Cutler

They Made the Lists

My Parents’ Retirement

First Quarter 2025

Wrapping It Up

Prophet Motive

Taste Those Savings