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I will still take the dividends

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"on The Compound and Friends / What Are Your Thoughts on April 7, 2026, with Josh Brown and Michael Batnick. They were discussing a survey by Meb Faber about whether investors understand how dividends work. The question was essentially: If a stock is worth $100 and pays a $5 dividend, what do you have afterward? The correct answer is $95 of stock + $5 cash = $100, not $100 of stock + $5 cash = $105. The striking result they discussed was that about 75% of respondents apparently thought the dividend was essentially “free money”—i.e., that they ended up with $105. Only roughly 25% understood that the stock price adjusts downward for the dividend. "

- Mark Bergman

Being terminated…

gnussen623 | Sep 12, 2026

"My heartfelt advice to you isn't about work or retirement. It's about relationships. A short, curt reply can stick with the questioner for years, for a lifetime. It can cause not just hurt feelings but lasting embarrassment in someone who belatedly realizes that their remark to you may have been thoughtless or even inappropriate. They may never forget an exchange that lasts only seconds. I know you're hurting, but don't spread that hurt around to family and friends. They are far more precious than the job you lost. I have been there and done that, and afterwards wished I had just smiled back. So fake it and smile, and take out your frustration later on a punching bag or a weight rack. Not your people."

- Mike Gaynes

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

WHEN A HUSBAND dies, his widow inherits his IRA. Somewhere in the paperwork of the months that follow there is a decision to make, and nobody presents it to her as one. She can take the account as her own, or she can leave it titled as inherited. Taking it as her own means filling something in. Leaving it means doing nothing, and the IRS tells custodians they may assume that is what she wants. So the account sits where it is, at the same firm, holding money the household always treated as joint, and the decision gets made by nobody. It is the more expensive of the two. Not by a little. Two Tables Every year, a required minimum distribution, or RMD, has to come out of the account. The amount is the balance divided by a number from an IRS table, and there are two tables in play here. Beneficiaries use the Single Life Expectancy table. Owners use the Uniform Lifetime table, which spreads the money over a longer period and therefore asks for less each year. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth about a third of the annual bill. Take a widow of 76 with $480,000. Left titled as an inherited account, she must take $34,043 that year. Had she taken the same account into her own name, she would have to take $20,253. Same money, same woman, same birthday. The difference is which box got ticked in the months after the funeral. It Does Not Happen Once That gap is not a one-year event. Run both versions forward 10 years, same account, same growth, taking exactly what is required and nothing more. The inherited schedule forces out $374,306 over the decade. As owner, $246,281. She pays about $30,600 more in federal income tax getting there, and reaches 85 with roughly $171,000 less still inside the IRA. She has not lost that money. She has been made to take it out early, pay tax on it sooner, and hold it somewhere less sheltered for the rest of her life. That is a slower kind of damage than a penalty, and a larger one, because it renews every January for as long as she lives. A Floor, Not a Ceiling The usual objection to taking the account as your own is that it locks the money up. It does the opposite. A required distribution is a floor, not a ceiling. She can take more in any year she wants it, for any reason, and nobody asks why. What she leaves alone stays sheltered and keeps compounding. The lower figure buys her the choice. The higher one makes it for her, every year, whether the money is needed or not. One Case Runs the Other Way There is a real exception, and it matters enough to state plainly. Money paid out of an inherited IRA escapes the 10% early-withdrawal penalty at any age, because the IRS exempts what is paid to a beneficiary on account of the owner's death. Take the account as your own and you are back under the ordinary rules. So a survivor who is young enough that an early withdrawal would be penalized, and who expects to need the money, has a genuine reason to leave the account exactly where it is. That threshold is 59 and a half. For most couples already retired this will not apply, and the rest of the article governs. Where it does apply, it outranks everything above. Nobody Will Prompt You I wrote recently about the letter that never comes. A custodian has to tell an IRA owner what must be withdrawn each year, and owes an inherited account nothing at all. So the choice decides more than the size of the bill. Take the account as your own and the letter starts arriving, every January, for the rest of your life. Leave it as inherited and you are on your own to remember the RMD. The branch that requires no paperwork is therefore both the more expensive one and the quiet one, and those two facts feed each other. The option that costs more is also the one that removes the annual nudge that might have made you reconsider it. Decide It Before You Have To None of this is hard to work out. It is hard to work out in the eight weeks after a funeral, which is exactly when it gets decided, usually by default. If you are married and you both hold IRAs, settle it now, while it is hypothetical for both of you. Talk through which of you would be likely to need the money soon after the other died. That is what the 59-and-a-half question really asks, and it is a conversation about your circumstances rather than about tax tables. Then decide which way the survivor should go, write it down, and put it with your trust, your will and the beneficiary designations, where a survivor or an executor will actually come across it. Tell whoever else needs to know that it exists. Look at it again as either of you nears the age your own distributions must begin. That is 70 and a half if you were born before July 1949, 72 if you were born between then and the end of 1950, 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. It is the birthday that makes the whole question live. The paperwork will not choose for you. It will simply do nothing, which is a choice, and on these numbers it is the wrong one for most people who make it by accident. ________________________________________________________________________________ John Urban is the founder of RetireSmartIRA, a retirement tax-planning app. Earlier, he founded GT Nexus, a supply-chain software company acquired by Infor in 2015. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Kathy, and enjoys time with family, travel, reading, Bay Area sports, and the occasional deep dive into the fine print of the tax code.

Americans are rushing to collect Social Security. The reason is disturbing

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"I think you have a point. That provision is subject to abuse. The claims tend to rise during poor economic times and high unemployment. But I wouldn’t eliminate it completely. I had a nephew who was totally disabled from birth with CP. He eventually collected SS on his father’s record."

- R Quinn

A Wedding Too Far

Mark Crothers | Sep 7, 2026

"William, we were in the same boat — paying for our own wedding. That's probably why we kept costs down. We'd also just bought our first house six months earlier, so money was really tight."

- Mark Crothers

Free Breakfast

D.J. | Sep 9, 2026

"Hilton? Higher end? Not the ones where I have to stay."

- Rich

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Mark Gardner | Sep 13, 2026

"The original three laws were fine, and should be adopted."

- mytimetotravel

Locking it in

greg_j_tomamichel | Sep 5, 2026

"Great article, keep them coming. We had our way too, it was no loans except for a car and a house. We worked diligently to live within our means, with one worker and one home Mom, with 3 kids. The other angle was we would contribute the max to our IRA's, this worked for us, and now we have a very comfortable retirement. I must admit I pushed the numbers, and I look back, sure those numbers did not work after 50 years, but they also helped us get to a good place. Different strokes for different folks."

- William Dorner

Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 7

Jonathan Clements | Sep 4, 2026

"Jonathan is still giving great advice. Simple an to the point too."

- Brian Kowald

Growing Up In A Big House

DAN SMITH | Sep 9, 2026

"I grew up in a 650-square-foot, two-bedroom condo, surrounded by a loving family, a beautiful garden and close neighbors. I’m not nostalgic for the small home—we were four people, often with visiting relatives, in a very tight space. What I am nostalgic for is the closeness. When I could afford it, I bought a 2,100-square-foot home and was quite happy to have the extra room. But I tried to carry forward the family life I grew up with. That, to me, is what’s worth remembering about those smaller homes—not their size, but the families that filled them. Decades later, we remain close across generations."

- Mark Gardner

What’s your Domicile?

William Perry | Sep 1, 2026

"We know four different couples our age here in town who have bought homes near their kids/grandchildren in other states. Two divide their time between their home base in California and regular extended visits to their kids. In one case, they’ve bought second/third homes in TWO different states because one kid is in Alabama and the other two are in Idaho. The other two are in the process of moving completely to the new state, but they’re both taking it slowly. One is gradually moving stuff in Pods from California to North Carolina, but they’re not planning to put their current home on the market until next spring. The other is planning to just keep their house here “for now.” They actually have two kids/sets of grandkids in Nashville and Memphis and have bought homes in BOTH places. I’m sure the tax implications of all of this are complicated, and since my husband was an attorney in a California tax agency for 20 years, he would tell you that the state of California is very vigilant in getting what it thinks it deserves. I guess, on the other hand, if you’re in a position to buy another home(s) elsewhere and just keep your highly appreciated California home “for now,” you’re probably going to be OK financially when it’s tax time."

- DrLefty

Financial Choices

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Sep 12, 2026

FOR MUCH OF THE seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European monarchs used a financial instrument known as a tontine to help finance their governments. Tontines were first developed in the 1650s by an Italian government worker named Lorenzo Tonti and were similar to annuities: In exchange for a single, lump-sum purchase, tontines offered guaranteed payments for life. But tontines also offered some unique features. Unlike an annuity, where payments end with the death of the owner, tontine holders had the option of tying the payments to another person. A parent, for example, could name their son or daughter on a tontine, thus extending the payments over a much longer period. In the 1750s, however, a Swiss banker named Jacob Beaumont had a realization: While the owners of tontines typically named their children, a quirk in the rules permitted a tontine owner to name any individual. To Beaumont, this presented an opportunity: Why not name the youngest possible person, thus extending the stream of payments even further? In his home town of Geneva, Beaumont identified ideal candidates for this role: young children who came from well-heeled backgrounds and were thus likely to have access to good healthcare. He then began loading up on tontines tied to the very long life expectancies of these children. The strategy worked exactly as expected and delivered Beaumont enormous profits. Other investors then piled in, mimicking Beaumont’s strategy, which, for a time, offered a virtually no-lose opportunity for profit. This went on until the French government, in frustration, discontinued its tontine program. When it comes to financial decisions, it’s the rare situation that’s as obvious as the one that Beaumont identified. Instead, most financial decisions entail some amount of uncertainty and are subject to judgment. Some choices, though, are closer than others to being obvious decisions. Here are six that I see frequently.

Certain Social Security claiming decisions are without question. For example, if you’re married and plan to claim the spousal benefit, it’s important to know that this benefit hits a maximum at full retirement age (FRA), which is now age 67 for most people. Unlike workers’ own benefits, which can continue to increase all the way to age 70, spousal benefits are subject to a different rule, so there’s no benefit for anyone to wait beyond FRA.
You may be familiar with umbrella insurance. This provides additional liability coverage on top of auto and homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance. Because it covers low-likelihood situations, such as someone slipping and falling on your front walk, umbrella coverage is extremely cost effective—sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars per year. I see it as an obvious benefit because the situations it covers, however unlikely, are also the ones that could be the most expensive. And because it would be the insurance company that would face exposure, insurers provide legal defense, at their expense, if there is ever a claim. How much coverage should you have? I generally recommend between $1 million and $5 million, but the key point is that almost any coverage is better than none.
In choosing an asset allocation for your portfolio, I think it’s best to avoid rules of thumb, because everyone is different. At the same time, a recommendation that I see as universal is to avoid extremes. I wouldn’t get too close to 100% bonds because of the corrosive impact of inflation. And I don’t like getting too close to 100% stocks because of the volatility and risk of loss. That’s always been my view, but recent research can help investors narrow the range further. William Bengen, creator of the “4% rule,” published a book last year in which, for the first time, he looked at the question of portfolio longevity through the lens of asset allocation. What he found was that portfolios with stock allocations between 45% and 75% offered the highest sustainable withdrawal rates over multiple decades.

If you’ve recently retired, you may be considering a Roth conversion, whereby you’d move dollars from your pre-tax IRA to a Roth IRA. This is a popular strategy, but the catch is that a tax must be paid when a conversion is completed, and your tax bracket can increase as you convert more. Convert too much, and you can negate the benefit of a conversion. For that reason, it isn’t always obvious whether a conversion is advisable. There is one situation, though, where a conversion offers an almost obvious benefit: If your income, even with a conversion, would be in one of the two lowest tax brackets (10% or 12%), then it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself in a lower bracket than that in the future. In that case, especially because of special deductions provided by the new tax rules, I’d view it as an almost obvious choice to proceed with a conversion up to the top of the 12% bracket.

Looking to make charitable gifts? Because the standard deduction is now so high, fewer taxpayers are able to itemize deductions, and that can limit the tax benefit of donations. But there’s still a way to gain a tax benefit: If you have appreciated stocks in a taxable account, you can donate them to a donor-advised fund. That would allow you to sidestep the capital gains tax that would otherwise be due if you sold those stocks. Many donor-advised funds have no minimums, making this an easy choice, in my view.
If you believe your estate will top the estate tax threshold (about $15 million per person at the federal level, but much lower in certain states), then I would be sure to use the annual exclusion (currently $19,000 per donor and per recipient) to make incremental gifts to your heirs. That's because this annual exclusion is in addition to the lifetime exclusion and doesn’t carry over from year to year.

Note that these gifts don't have to be made in cash if the recipients aren't yet in a position to receive them. As alternatives, you could make contributions to a 529 account or to a trust for their benefit, and these contributions would count toward the annual exclusion. 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.

I will still take the dividends

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

- Mark Bergman

Being terminated…

gnussen623 | Sep 12, 2026

- Mike Gaynes

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

Americans are rushing to collect Social Security. The reason is disturbing

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

- R Quinn

A Wedding Too Far

Mark Crothers | Sep 7, 2026

"William, we were in the same boat — paying for our own wedding. That's probably why we kept costs down. We'd also just bought our first house six months earlier, so money was really tight."

- Mark Crothers

Free Breakfast

D.J. | Sep 9, 2026

"Hilton? Higher end? Not the ones where I have to stay."

- Rich

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Mark Gardner | Sep 13, 2026

"The original three laws were fine, and should be adopted."

- mytimetotravel

Locking it in

greg_j_tomamichel | Sep 5, 2026

- William Dorner

Jonathan’s Parting Thoughts: No. 7

Jonathan Clements | Sep 4, 2026

"Jonathan is still giving great advice. Simple an to the point too."

- Brian Kowald

Financial Choices

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Sep 12, 2026

Certain Social Security claiming decisions are without question. For example, if you’re married and plan to claim the spousal benefit, it’s important to know that this benefit hits a maximum at full retirement age (FRA), which is now age 67 for most people. Unlike workers’ own benefits, which can continue to increase all the way to age 70, spousal benefits are subject to a different rule, so there’s no benefit for anyone to wait beyond FRA.
You may be familiar with umbrella insurance. This provides additional liability coverage on top of auto and homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance. Because it covers low-likelihood situations, such as someone slipping and falling on your front walk, umbrella coverage is extremely cost effective—sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars per year. I see it as an obvious benefit because the situations it covers, however unlikely, are also the ones that could be the most expensive. And because it would be the insurance company that would face exposure, insurers provide legal defense, at their expense, if there is ever a claim. How much coverage should you have? I generally recommend between $1 million and $5 million, but the key point is that almost any coverage is better than none.
In choosing an asset allocation for your portfolio, I think it’s best to avoid rules of thumb, because everyone is different. At the same time, a recommendation that I see as universal is to avoid extremes. I wouldn’t get too close to 100% bonds because of the corrosive impact of inflation. And I don’t like getting too close to 100% stocks because of the volatility and risk of loss. That’s always been my view, but recent research can help investors narrow the range further. William Bengen, creator of the “4% rule,” published a book last year in which, for the first time, he looked at the question of portfolio longevity through the lens of asset allocation. What he found was that portfolios with stock allocations between 45% and 75% offered the highest sustainable withdrawal rates over multiple decades.

If you’ve recently retired, you may be considering a Roth conversion, whereby you’d move dollars from your pre-tax IRA to a Roth IRA. This is a popular strategy, but the catch is that a tax must be paid when a conversion is completed, and your tax bracket can increase as you convert more. Convert too much, and you can negate the benefit of a conversion. For that reason, it isn’t always obvious whether a conversion is advisable. There is one situation, though, where a conversion offers an almost obvious benefit: If your income, even with a conversion, would be in one of the two lowest tax brackets (10% or 12%), then it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself in a lower bracket than that in the future. In that case, especially because of special deductions provided by the new tax rules, I’d view it as an almost obvious choice to proceed with a conversion up to the top of the 12% bracket.

Looking to make charitable gifts? Because the standard deduction is now so high, fewer taxpayers are able to itemize deductions, and that can limit the tax benefit of donations. But there’s still a way to gain a tax benefit: If you have appreciated stocks in a taxable account, you can donate them to a donor-advised fund. That would allow you to sidestep the capital gains tax that would otherwise be due if you sold those stocks. Many donor-advised funds have no minimums, making this an easy choice, in my view.
If you believe your estate will top the estate tax threshold (about $15 million per person at the federal level, but much lower in certain states), then I would be sure to use the annual exclusion (currently $19,000 per donor and per recipient) to make incremental gifts to your heirs. That's because this annual exclusion is in addition to the lifetime exclusion and doesn’t carry over from year to year.

Manifesto

Sep 13, 2026

NO. 32: WE SHOULD start with the global market portfolio—the investments we collectively own—and decide what we don’t want in our portfolio. Often, foreign bonds are the biggest subtraction.

Truths

Sep 13, 2026

NO. 91: A MORTGAGE leverages your home’s price appreciation—and costs you a bundle in interest. If you buy a $300,000 home with $30,000 down and the price climbs 30% to $390,000, your home equity would leap 300% to $120,000. But how much did you pay in mortgage interest to get this gain? Often, the cost of leverage offsets the benefit.

humans

Sep 12, 2026

NO. 5: WE'RE IMPULSIVE. Our brain has two parts: an instinctive side and a contemplative side. Much of the time, we operate on instinct. But with money, our instincts can lead us astray, prompting us to make impulsive spending and investing choices. To reduce the risk of subsequent regret, stop and pause, especially before big financial decisions.

act

Sep 12, 2026

TRY THE BACKDOOR. Is your income too high to fund a Roth IRA? Consider making nondeductible contributions to a traditional IRA and then converting it to a Roth. This can allow you to get money into a Roth at little or no tax cost—provided your nondeductible IRA is your only IRA. If it isn't, the so-called backdoor Roth could trigger a big income tax bill.

Money Guide

Manifesto

Sep 13, 2026

Spotlight: Saving

Secure Act 2.0 Reflections From Across the Pond

Mark Crothers | Jul 27, 2025

Almost half of working-age adults are not paying into a private or workplace pension, the government revealed this week. This headline caught my attention while browsing the BBC News website the other day, and it really made me think!
This is an awful lot of people imperiling their future lives, and with the UK’s pension auto-enrollment system, now in its tenth year of operation, seeming to be pretty successful, it would suggest people are actively going out of their way to opt out of the system.

Tax Gain Harvesting

Bogdan Sheremeta | Nov 8, 2025

MANY PEOPLE ARE familiar with tax loss harvesting, where you sell a losing security/ETF and rebuy a similar, not identical, security/ETF.
But often we don’t really think about the opposite side of the coin: sell a winning security/ETF and rebuy the exact same, or a different, security/ETF.
That strategy is called tax gain harvesting, and because it’s a gain, the wash sale rule doesn’t apply.

Execution
Long-term capital gains can be taxed at 0% depending on your income.

Slow on the Draw

Edmund Marsh | May 9, 2026

RETIREMENT IS LIFE’S most expensive purchase. During our working years, we deprive our present selves of immediate pleasure by refusing to spend money for nicer cars, a bigger house or a vacation to boast about. Instead, we squirrel away those saved dollars with an eye toward keeping the future us fed, clothed and living indoors.
At age 64, after decades of choosing to save and invest a large chunk of each paycheck, rather than spend it,

Spend Nothing

Jonathan Clements | Jun 26, 2025

Saving money is the greatest of the financial virtues—and, for much of my adult life, I could hardly have been more virtuous.
This frugality didn’t come naturally. I wasn’t a “born saver.” Rather, I had no choice. Within a few years of graduating university, I found myself married to a PhD student and raising a family in one of the world’s most expensive urban areas. On my junior reporter’s salary, scrimping and saving were the only options.

Raising Dough

Greg Spears | Jul 25, 2025

The best financial advice I know is “live on less than you earn and save the difference.” But what if there’s no daylight between what you earn and what you spend?
Many of us confront this problem because of four scary expenses: housing, healthcare, student loans and child care. Take housing alone. By my calculations, it would take a six-figure income to buy a $435,300 home, which is the median cost of a U.S. home today according to the National Association of Realtors.* The median U.S.

Path to Retirement

Kenyon Sayler | Nov 17, 2023

SOME FRIENDS WERE recently discussing their investment performance. I couldn’t contribute to the conversation—because I have no idea what our investment returns have been.
The fact is, I don’t find performance information all that valuable, plus it’s relatively hard to calculate since you have to account for both price changes and dividend or interest payments. To be sure, investment returns are useful if you’re looking to determine whether a mutual fund manager is adding returns in excess of a benchmark index,

Danger, Junk Mail

Sonja Haggert | Jul 16, 2026

The nice lady in the card store told me I didn’t need to give her any information because it was on my coupon. I left the store wondering exactly what information that was. According to Jose Lejin, a technical expert I contacted, I needn’t have worried. The barcode with my information told her the coupon belonged to me and might have been tied to a specific promotion. There is a privacy issue here in that the retailer may know the time and place I redeemed their offer. In our correspondence, Jose assumed that this was probably a mass-distributed coupon and not a major concern. A barcode is a concern when it is linked to a loyalty account, such as at your grocery store or country club. If your name and address are attached, someone could copy it, perhaps reuse it, or become too familiar with your shopping habits. The bigger concern here is the pharmacy receipt. The stickers contained on them are a key to your prescription file. Consider all your pharmacy receipts like you would private mail and destroy them appropriately. What about QR Codes? Here, both the experts I spoke with say caution is necessary. Mona Rajhans at Palo Alto Networks defined a QR code as a URL in disguise. When you scan it, your phone follows a link which could reach a fake login page, and in that instant your credentials are gone. She relates that her company catches 11,000 malicious QR codes in a single day. QR codes are most problematic on a parking meter or in a restaurant. A fake code could have been put over the original one, and your money could go to someone else entirely. The best way to protect yourself is to look at the code you are shown before you…

A Million Dreams

Sonja Haggert | Nov 15, 2022

I DIDN'T WIN the Powerball lottery—this time. That’s too bad because I knew exactly what I’d have done with the money. I’ll bet you did, too. I was ready to pay for the education of all of our nieces’ children. “Go where you wanna go,” as the song says. My favorite charity would also have been on the list. Laurel House, a domestic violence agency, does tremendous work in Montgomery County, where we live in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Lest you think I don’t have something personal in mind, there’s a condo in Florida that I’ve had my eye on. And another one in New York City, so I could attend a Broadway show at a moment’s notice. All in my dreams, of course. Because I didn’t win—this time. Which means I won’t be on the evening news. In Pennsylvania, you must fill out a claim form to get your prize. The state will reveal your name, the town or county where you live, and how much you’ve won. Why does the state insist on this? It wants the public to know that you can indeed win, plus the more winners it publicizes, the more people play. Pennsylvania also has an open records law, which makes such information public. With such a revelation, all my friends and neighbors would have known I was RICH. I may have discovered friends and family I didn’t even know about. How would I say “no” to them? More to the point, how do you decide when to say “no” in general? Then there’s the whole issue of safety and scams. My lawyer friend said someone might have filed a bogus lawsuit against me or staged an accident, hoping I would pay up. There are loopholes around the identity issue, such as forming a trust to claim…

Who Stole My Home?

Sonja Haggert | Nov 11, 2024

YOU MIGHT RECALL my article warning about home title theft, where scammers try to claim ownership of your home. Since I wrote the article, the Federal Trade Commission has warned that one preventive measure, so-called title lock insurance, is bogus: It only alerts you to title fraud after the fraud has happened. Thanks to a recent AARP article, there’s now greater awareness about home title fraud and ways to protect yourself. What can you do to prevent title fraud? Check with your county to see if it’ll provide notifications about your property, ensure you haven’t missed a bill or assessment, and set a Google alert for your address. If someone lists your property, you can stop it. If you have rental property or own vacant land, check periodically to see if someone has posted a “for sale” sign. If you’re about to purchase a house or property: Buy title insurance. Beware of bargains. An outrageous deal may be just that. Be skeptical of “for sale by owner.” Fraudsters avoid real estate agents. Talk to a real estate attorney about adding a preventive measure to your property deed when you buy. Make sure the seller is real by having your real estate agent or attorney verify his or her existence. Fraudsters don’t respond to meeting requests or phone calls. Despite all these concerns, there is good news. Title fraud is increasing, but not so much for owner-occupied homes. Moreover, if you bought your home after 1998, most title insurance provides coverage for fraud and forgery that’s discovered after purchase. If you purchased before 1998, inquire about adding coverage.

Check’s in the Mail

Sonja Haggert | May 17, 2019

I HAD TO PAY MY credit card bill, so I went online and set up a payment from my credit union a week before the bill was due. Why not, it’s an online transfer, right? Not always. The payment was due on the 16th. I went online the day before to check my bank account. It said the credit card payment was “sorted” and hadn’t transferred. Same thing the next day and the next. I called my credit card company and the customer service representative was incredibly understanding—probably because I always pay my entire bill on time. Then I called my credit union. The representative told me it was the post office’s fault that my check hadn’t reached the credit card company. What does the post office have to do with an online payment? Apparently a lot. It seems that, in my credit union’s case, if a payment is over a certain dollar amount, it sends an actual paper check. Really? I then asked the obvious question: At what amount should I allow extra time? The representative couldn’t tell me. I was transferred to another customer service representative and she couldn’t tell me, either. She also got very uncomfortable with my questions. I entered the payment on the 9th. If the credit union needed to send out a “real” check, why didn’t it go out the next day? Then there would have been no question the actual check would have arrived on time. To blame the post office was totally absurd. Now for the best part: The credit union said it would reimburse any fees and interest up to $50. Given the size of the card balance I was paying off, this was a pittance. It's a bank. Don’t the folks there know that credit card companies charge interest in the…

A Dark Place

Sonja Haggert | Sep 28, 2022

WHERE WOULD WE BE without the internet, social media, and our smartphones and smartwatches? Can you remember a time when you couldn’t look up the answer to a trivia question at a cocktail party? I love answering the phone on my watch. It takes me back to Dick Tracy. There I was, going along happily in my online universe—until I got an email from McAfee’s identity theft protection service alerting me that my phone number had been found on the dark web. I got the McAfee service courtesy of T-Mobile, my wireless provider, after its data breach. What ensued was an onslaught of spam. Some of the texts were ridiculous, others almost believable. As if that wasn’t disturbing enough, not long afterward, McAfee alerted me that my Social Security and driver’s license numbers were also purportedly found on the dark web. My initial reaction was panic. I went to McAfee’s website and did everything it told me to do. Because my phone number had been found on the dark web, it said to be on the lookout for suspicious calls and to contact my phone carrier if they got out of hand. Changing my phone number was recommended only as a last resort. The website also suggested that I: Put my name on the National Do Not Call Registry. I was already on it. Check my credit reports. Done. I do this continuously. Check all financial accounts. I also do this continuously. I knew that last year the Federal Communications Commission had started requiring large telecom companies to adopt a technical protocol known as STIR/SHAKEN. This requires that calls must originate from the phone number that appears on your phone. I’ve seen the robocalls I receive fall sharply because of this requirement, so I felt this would also happen with the unwanted…

Doesn’t Apply to Me

Sonja Haggert | Aug 16, 2021

DURING A HEATED discussion, the chairman at my old employer grew exasperated with me. “Rules are meant for other people, not me,” he snapped. I had no idea how prevalent that attitude was—until recently. It seems some hospitals and drug companies also feel that the rules don’t apply to them. There have been articles in The Wall Street JournaI about a new rule that went into effect requiring hospitals to show how much they charge for procedures. Many have chosen to ignore the rule, while others have complied, but made it next to impossible to find the information on their website. Similarly, in what Chemical and Engineering News calls “an unprecedented action,” Acceleron Pharma has decided that the rules for clinical trials don’t apply to the company. Its results from a trial are overdue by three years and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is threatening fines. What’s going on here? It seems more and more people are deciding the rules don’t apply to them. What if we all started behaving that way?

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