Home - HumbleDollar

The Advantage We Bring

Andrew Clements | Oct 28, 2026

"Mark, what a lovely connection to have sustained for 35 years. Watching each other’s children grow up, and now sharing grandchildren’s milestones, makes Jorge part of your family’s story, and you part of his. Yet your reflection on his long working days while you enjoy retirement captures the thought behind my article. The warmth is real, and so is the difference in the choices available to us. I share your hope that Jorge gets time to rest, travel and enjoy his family. After so many years helping others enjoy their holidays, I hope he has plenty of his own ahead."

- Andrew Clements

In Retirement

The pension conundrum and a solution

R Quinn | Oct 26, 2026

"Thanks Dick for an interesting piece. I'm a bit of broken record on this topic, but the challenges of retirement saving make me glad to be part of Australia's compulsory superannuation scheme. Every single Australian employees compulsorily gets 12% of their salary put into a fund that is typically only available at age 60. This system was phased in over decades, has its flaws and glitches, but IMHO is a wonderful thing for Australians."

- greg_j_tomamichel

Retirement

Roth conversion cash flow

Severly Independent | Oct 24, 2026

"Too many options! Just give me the best plan. That doesn't seem to work that well."

- Randy Dobkin

Behavior

Monopoly

D.J. | Oct 27, 2026

"Wow, what a great read, including all the comments. In recent years we were gifted games 'Toledopoly' and 'Game of Thronesopoly'. They sit not-opened in the closet. You have given me the idea to get them out, and also a great tutorial for winning. Thanks, DJ!"

- Dan Smith

From HumbleDollar Founder Jonathan Clements

Careers

Late Shift

LIKE A SLOW-MOTION train wreck, we’ve spent recent decades inching toward a world where we have too few workers and too many retirees dependent…

In Retirement

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.

In Retirement

Social Security “Haircuts”

achnk53 | Oct 25, 2026

"That is also the case with the national debt which a scarier issue than social security. Neither party wants to address anything that will affect people’s lives."

- Nick Politakis

In Retirement

Inherited IRA Trap

ArticleJohn Urban | Oct 24, 2026

EVERY JANUARY, if you own an IRA and money must come out of it that year, your custodian writes to you. The letter gives you the amount or offers to work it out. We barely read it, but it is doing more than we notice. Most people never miss a required distribution, and the reason is not diligence. It is that somebody tells them. Inherited IRAs are different. The IRS notice that creates the requirement says reporting is not required for the IRAs of deceased owners, and an inherited IRA is exactly that. No letter is owed to the person who inherits, and in many cases none arrives. When nobody tells us anything needs doing, we assume nothing does. Here that assumption is expensive. The question behind the question Everyone remembers the 10-year rule. It answers one question: when does the account have to be empty? It does not answer the one that costs money: does something have to come out this year? That turns on a fact about the person who died. Had they reached the age at which their own distributions had to begin? It is 72 for anyone born before 1951, 73 for those born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Take the common case, an adult child inheriting a traditional IRA. If the parent died before reaching that age, nothing has to come out until the account is emptied at the end of year 10. If the parent died on or after it, a required minimum distribution, or RMD, is due every year in the meantime, and the account still has to be empty at the end of year 10. That second case is the one people get wrong. The 10-year rule is widely remembered as permission to leave the money alone until year 10, and for a great many people who inherit, it is not. Other beneficiaries have their own timing, among them a disabled or chronically ill beneficiary, a minor child, and anyone less than 10 years younger than the person who died. Inherited Roth IRAs differ again, and a spouse has choices nobody else has. All of it sits in the SECURE Act and its 2022 successor, which is what to search. Take too little and the shortfall carries an excise tax of 25% of what should have come out, or 10% if you correct it promptly. That is on top of the income tax you owe when the money finally comes out. And there are two ways to trigger it. Taking too little in a year is one. The other is reaching the end of year 10 with money still in the account, because whatever is left on that date is treated as a shortfall too. What four quiet years cost A widow turns 76 the year after her husband dies. He was 78, well past the age his own distributions had to begin. She has Social Security of $36,000, a pension of $24,000, and his IRA, still titled as an inherited account, holding $480,000. She does not need the money, no reminder arrives from the custodian, and so she takes none of it for four years while the account grows at 5%. Because he had already passed that age, and because she left the account titled as inherited, she owes a distribution in every one of those years. At 76 she should have taken $34,043. At 77, $37,895. At 78, $42,000. At 79, $46,694, by which point the untouched balance has grown to $555,660. She has missed $160,631 of required distributions. At 25%, the excise tax on that is $40,158. Corrected in time it would be $16,063. Now the part I expected to be worse than it is. When she corrects, all four distributions come out in a single year, and I assumed that bunching would be the quiet disaster. Spread across four years, the distributions cost her $37,566 in federal income tax. Bunched into one, $38,783. The difference is $1,216. If you have been told the danger of a missed distribution is the bracket you land in when you fix it, check that against your own numbers before believing it. The bigger surprise came from Medicare. The surcharge nobody sees Take the distributions on time and her Medicare surcharge is zero in all four years. Bunch them into a single return and it is $6,355. That bill does not arrive with the tax. Medicare sets your Part B and Part D premiums from your income two years earlier, so the surcharge turns up long after the correction has been filed and forgotten, attached to something that does not look like a tax at all. Add it up. Four quiet years cost her about $47,700 she need not have spent: $40,158 of excise tax, $1,216 of extra income tax from the bunching, and $6,355 of Medicare surcharge. The $37,566 of income tax on the distributions themselves was never avoidable and was never the problem. In none of those four years did anyone write to her. The first letter came from the IRS, years late, and fixing it by then meant amended returns and a Form 5329 for every year. What actually prevents it Not vigilance. Nobody is vigilant about a rule they have not heard of, and the custodian was never obliged to tell you. If you have already inherited, two facts settle almost all of it. The year the person died, and whether by then they had reached the age their own distributions had to begin. Your custodian can tell you how the account is titled. Nobody but you is going to find that second date. And if you are reading this married, with both of you alive and nothing yet owed, you are in the only position from which this is easy. Work out the year each of you reaches that age. For whichever of you dies first, that is the year deciding whether the survivor owes a distribution the year after the death. Write both years down, with a line saying why they matter, and put them with your trust, your will and the beneficiary designations, where the survivor will actually come across them. The account will not remind anyone that a clock started. The only reliable reminder is the one you write down before you need it. A note of thanks The shape of this article came from William Perry, who spent his working years preparing returns and described in a comment thread how these cases reach a preparer. His account of the letter arriving to the widow years later convinced me the annual question deserved a piece of its own. ________________________________________________________________________________ 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.

Investing

Do I really need International funds in my portfolio? I say no.

Bruce Roberts | Oct 26, 2026

"I agree Bruce. I am a longtime investor and currently own VEA, which is a broadly diversified ETF index of Euro countries. I have owned other mutual funds and ETFs focused on international markets. My experience and observation is that US markets are better performers and I agree with your logic of US based multi national companies."

- Jerry Pinkard

Family

Jonathan, How I Wish You Were Here

Andrew Clements | Oct 25, 2026

"Thank you, Dan. Those belongings sound like such personal reminders of your dad. I imagine you can sometimes picture him wearing those caps or that watch. Jonathan’s words do something similar for me: I recognize his voice, feel close to him for a moment, and then feel his absence all over again. His illness and death were so hard to comprehend, knowing how carefully he looked after himself. I appreciate you sharing these memories of your dad."

- Andrew Clements

Health

Four things you might want to consider when thinking about paying for healthcare.

R Quinn | Nov 20, 2025

"These are great points to consider. One aspect of healthcare costs that often catches people off guard is the sheer complexity of the billing process itself. From what we see building healthcare software at OSP, the fragmentation between providers, payers, and out-of-pocket tracking can lead to massive billing inefficiencies. When patients are thinking about how to pay for care, understanding their explanation of benefits (EOB) and advocating for billing transparency is just as important as choosing the right insurance plan. The backend technology is slowly improving with better Revenue Cycle Management systems, but as consumers, we still have to stay incredibly vigilant about what we're actually being charged for."

- shawn davidson

Markets

Doubling the Bear Market Low

Mark Crothers | Oct 22, 2026

"That "lost in translation" does tend to annoy me."

- Mark Crothers

Family

The Advantage We Bring

Andrew Clements | Oct 28, 2026

- Andrew Clements

In Retirement

The pension conundrum and a solution

R Quinn | Oct 26, 2026

- greg_j_tomamichel

Retirement

Roth conversion cash flow

Severly Independent | Oct 24, 2026

"Too many options! Just give me the best plan. That doesn't seem to work that well."

- Randy Dobkin

Behavior

Monopoly

D.J. | Oct 27, 2026

- Dan Smith

From HumbleDollar Founder Jonathan Clements

Careers

Late Shift

LIKE A SLOW-MOTION train wreck, we’ve spent recent decades inching toward a world where we have too few workers and too many retirees dependent…

In Retirement

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

In Retirement

Social Security “Haircuts”

achnk53 | Oct 25, 2026

"That is also the case with the national debt which a scarier issue than social security. Neither party wants to address anything that will affect people’s lives."

- Nick Politakis

In Retirement

Inherited IRA Trap

ArticleJohn Urban | Oct 24, 2026

Investing

Do I really need International funds in my portfolio? I say no.

Bruce Roberts | Oct 26, 2026

- Jerry Pinkard

Manifesto

Oct 28, 2026

NO. 68: AS INDIVIDUAL investors, we enjoy a key advantage: While money managers risk losing their job if their short-run results are lousy, we can invest for the truly long term.

act

Oct 28, 2026

MAKE SURE MUNIS make sense. High-income earners are often told to buy tax-free municipal bonds in their taxable account. But often, it's smarter to hold higher-yielding taxable bonds in a retirement account, while buying tax-efficient stock index funds in your taxable account. Even if munis make sense today, that may change if your income drops once you retire.

humans

Oct 27, 2026

NO. 18: SPENDING can give us a thrill. Just had a rough day? Others may cheer themselves up with comfort food or a beer. But for some, the antidote is to make a purchase or two, because this spending lifts their spirits. But thanks to hedonic adaptation, the thrill doesn’t last long and, taken to an extreme, such spending could cause financial problems.

Truths

Oct 27, 2026

NO. 14: IT ISN’T SO BAD—as long as we expect it. What’s unnerving is when our investments perform far worse than we ever imagined. We aren’t bothered by 1% stock-market losses—that can happen on an ordinary trading day—but we’re alarmed by the idea that the $1 share price of our money-market mutual fund might “break the buck” and fall 1% to 99 cents.

Money Guide

Manifesto

Oct 28, 2026

NO. 68: AS INDIVIDUAL investors, we enjoy a key advantage: While money managers risk losing their job if their short-run results are lousy, we can invest for the truly long term.

Spotlight: Markets

Doubling the Bear Market Low

Mark Crothers | Oct 22, 2026

Four years ago, in mid-October 2022, the last real bear market hit bottom. Since then, markets have rebounded so strongly that an investor who held a steady 90:10 or 85:15 allocation, adding no new money, has likely passed the psychological milestone of doubling their portfolio…

A $1,000 Conversation With My Daughter

Mark Crothers | Jun 7, 2026

A few weeks ago my 27-year-old daughter mentioned she'd been hearing a lot about memecoins. That conversation sparked this text, which I wrote for her first and then revised for HD. I hesitated over the slight political connotation, but on reflection the underlying lesson feels…

Resist the Urge to Act

Mark Crothers | Apr 11, 2026

BEFORE WE GET into it, a brief word. We lost Jonathan last year, and those of us who followed his work felt it more than we perhaps expected. He had a saying that I always liked - that there are really only twenty stories in…

Trump Account

Bogdan Sheremeta | Feb 21, 2026

TRUMP ACCOUNT WAS created as part of the OBBBA signed on July 4, 2025. I've been getting a lot of messages about it, because there is a lot of conflicting information. The IRS has also posted some instructions for the account. My goal with this post…

Volatility is your Best Friend

Mark Crothers | Mar 4, 2026

One of the stranger paradoxes in finance is volatility — the degree to which an asset's price swings up or down over time. Most investors hear the word and flinch. But once you understand what volatility actually is, and what it makes possible, you might…

What, Me Worry?

W.D. Housley | Mar 12, 2026

“What, me worry?” — Alfred E. Neuman What should worry me more—inflation or market declines? Both reduce the value of our savings, but they behave very differently. Inflation tends to work slowly and quietly. Market declines, by contrast, often happen quickly and visibly. Consider several…

Finding Your Purpose

Mike Drak | Jun 16, 2023

IN MY LAST ARTICLE, I wrote about how Harvard and other colleges are offering programs to help growth-oriented retirees find new meaning and purpose. Having a sense of purpose improves our quality of life and provides a sense of well-being. But most of us, including this writer, can’t afford Harvard’s program. That’s why I’m going to show you how to…

Life’s Not a Beach

Mike Drak | Jan 21, 2022

WE’VE BEEN BRAINWASHED by advertisers and financial firms into believing that retirees are a homogeneous group who all want the same things. They aren't. Instead, they have differing needs, values and wants, and this divergence is getting greater because of things like increasing longevity, dwindling job security and the elimination of pensions. Let’s consider the standard bell-shaped distribution curve—and then…

Pushing Myself

Mike Drak | Jan 29, 2023

I LIKE CHALLENGING myself to do hard things. I guess it’s just the way I’m wired. Recently, I started thinking about the hardest things I’ve done. Convincing my wife to marry me was hard. She was a tough sell. But eventually I wore her down and got the deal done—one of my best deals, by the way. Attempting Ironman Cozumel…

Ironman Training Update

Mike Drak | Jun 10, 2025

This past weekend I did the 200k Ride To Conquer Cancer. On Saturday we rode from Toronto to Hamilton and on Sunday from Hamilton to Niagara Falls. I knew it was going to be hard because I had only done one 100k training ride so far this year because of the bad weather we were having. Also I suffer from…

Talking My Book

Mike Drak | Apr 4, 2024

I'M TURNING 70 THIS year, and that’s got me thinking about the legacy I’ll leave behind. Legacy for me involves much more than bequeathing money to the kids. It’s about the contribution I’ve been able to make and the people I've helped along the way. Since retiring, I’ve been on a mission to help folks have a better retirement. This…

My Best Investment

Mike Drak | Nov 2, 2022

CHRIS CROWLEY IS co-author of Younger Next Year, a book that opened my eyes to what’s possible in retirement. When I grow up, I want to be just like Chris. Since turning age 75, he’s managed to find the energy to publish five books. At 86, he’s still having fun skiing downhill, going on 30-mile bike rides, leg pressing…

The Advantage We Bring

The pension conundrum and a solution

Roth conversion cash flow

Monopoly

Late Shift

Widow’s IRA Choice

Social Security “Haircuts”

Inherited IRA Trap

Do I really need International funds in my portfolio? I say no.

Jonathan, How I Wish You Were Here

Four things you might want to consider when thinking about paying for healthcare.

Doubling the Bear Market Low

The Advantage We Bring

The pension conundrum and a solution

Roth conversion cash flow

Monopoly

Late Shift

Widow’s IRA Choice

Social Security “Haircuts”

Inherited IRA Trap

Do I really need International funds in my portfolio? I say no.

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Get Educated

Manifesto

act

humans

Truths

Money Guide

Manifesto

Spotlight: Markets

Doubling the Bear Market Low

A $1,000 Conversation With My Daughter

Resist the Urge to Act

Trump Account

Volatility is your Best Friend

What, Me Worry?

Spotlight: Drak

Finding Your Purpose

Life’s Not a Beach

Pushing Myself

Ironman Training Update

Talking My Book

My Best Investment