Taught by My Parents
Ken Begley | Nov 1, 2023
MY DAD LIVED TO BE age 92 and my mom is going strong at 95. I was involved with my father’s care as he struggled with dementia, and I continue to assist my mother, who still lives independently. Helping an elderly family member? Here are 16 important lessons that I’ve learned. 1. Don’t be blind. My dad started developing dementia five years before his cognitive ability totally fell off a cliff. No one in the family wanted to recognize his deterioration, though my mother—who was his principal caregiver—kept bringing it up. The sad fact is, most people hate to admit there’s a serious health problem because it means they’ll have to deal with it. But it’s almost guaranteed to get worse if you do nothing. 2. Get the paperwork done. My parents had wills and living wills. A will helps determine who inherits your property. A living will details your health preferences for your doctors and loved ones, should you later be unable to express your wishes. I was already an executor and trustee of some family trusts. Dementia was making my dad increasingly confused, angry and paranoid. Dad and Mom had a pretty substantial amount of money. I asked Dad to make out a power of attorney (POA), but I said I didn’t want him to name me. Meanwhile, my mother didn’t have the desire, ability or necessary knowledge to make financial decisions, so she wasn’t an option. Instead, I suggested Dad should grant power of attorney to two of my brothers, who could then act on his behalf if he became incapacitated. This helped to keep him from getting paranoid—because I wasn’t asking for this authority for myself. 3. A power of attorney often isn’t the only piece of paperwork required. Some financial institutions don’t recognize generic powers…
Read more » Shop Till You Drop
Ken Begley | Dec 12, 2023
HERE'S A RECIPE FOR disaster: a good internet connection, plenty of storage space, lots of time on your hands—and credit cards. Impulsive shopping has a name, oniomania, and the above recipe makes it all too easy. If you have a credit card, research suggests you’ll spend significantly more than if you were paying with cash or a check. The availability of 24/7 online shopping makes it just that much worse. Here are eight signs—besides the pile of packages outside our front door each day—that tells me impulsive spending has reached our house: 1. You get a “charge” each time you place an order. I’m not just talking about the credit card charge. You see something online and you think, “Wouldn’t that be nice to have?” It’s an item you wouldn’t have gone looking for—and wouldn’t have bought—otherwise. Now, with the tap of a few laptop keys, it’ll be delivered to your door. You get the added thrill of waiting for it to come, including tracking its delivery online. 2. You think you’re saving money. We love our Amazon Prime membership and our Amazon Prime 5% cash back credit card. The free shipping, with free returns and Prime Video thrown in, means we’re constantly saving. Problem is, all the money we’re saving puts a big dent in our bank account. 3. You forget what you ordered. My job is to monitor our credit card charges. My spouse doesn’t buy a few big things. Instead, she buys a ton of little things each month. We have a huge amount of small charges on our credit card. I’ve found charges that she initially denied making because she simply forgot about them. I challenged one such charge with the credit card company, only to later admit it was a purchase we’d forgotten about. 4.…
Read more » All Hat No Cattle
Ken Begley | Aug 14, 2024
IT'S ONLY BEEN relatively recently that mankind has come to rely on banks, brokerage firms and investment companies to build wealth. Tangible property—land, gold bars, houses, livestock and so on—was the standard of wealth just a couple of centuries ago. The Bible frequently cites cattle to signify someone’s wealth. If folks had “cattle on a thousand hills,” they were a billionaire in that era. Wealth was something that you could physically lay your hands on. By contrast, today, we can look up accounts on our computer and, in a flash, determine our net worth. It’s funny when you think about it: Figures on a computer screen can make our spirits soar and plunge. Meanwhile, physical assets can still represent wealth, of course. But some folks take this to an extreme—to their detriment. Let me explain. I’m an accountant by nature and training. Numbers on paper or a computer screen mean real wealth to me. It gives me a feeling of security knowing that my wealth is safely locked in a bank vault or somewhere similar that a thief can’t reach. Yes, scams and fraud exist. But I figure my intangible wealth is mostly safe as long as I act prudently and carefully watch over it. What about physical assets? They just don’t mean that much to me. My wife and I didn’t go for the lavish home when we built our house 32 years ago. Sure, houses can go up in value, but to us it’s just a functional living space. We didn’t build the house because we thought it would be a good investment. Yes, the house has value, but its worth just doesn’t feel as real to me as money on a computer screen. Owning our home does spare us the cost of renting. Yet we still have to…
Read more » Don’t Go There
Ken Begley | Jul 6, 2023
I'VE MADE A LOT OF investing mistakes in my time. In fact, if I ever wrote a book on investing, the title would probably be Don’t Go There, It Sucks. I’m a Kentucky hillbilly and, yes, that’s hillbilly talk. Another local colloquialism is, “Careful, or you’ll end up like Scrambo Hill.” I don’t know who Scrambo was. But apparently, he resided around our parts at one time, and you don’t want to end up at the bottom of the barrow like him. Let me say first that Cindy and I are financially secure today because we’re supersavers—and despite my investing skills. My two big mistakes are fairly common: trying to time the market and constantly shifting my investment style. You know what? Everybody has heard of Warren Buffett. He’s the senior statesman of Wall Street with an investment record to die for. Has anybody heard of Ken Begley? Uh, doesn’t ring a bell? Well, that’s my name at the top of this column. So, if everybody has heard of Warren Buffett and Warren constantly says that he can’t time the market, why does Begley think he can? That wasn’t a trick question. He can’t or, rather, I can’t. So, why do I try? Out of sheer freaking fear. Here’s what I’ve learned about myself: I have been a part of many a good panic and sometimes led a few. Why? I can’t stand losing money, even if it’s only short-term paper losses, and it sometimes causes me to make rash decisions. I’m not stupid, but sometimes I can be. Cindy and I had accumulated what, for us, was a large net worth in the late 1990s, with a fair amount of our money in the stock market. Even with a relatively conservative portfolio, the sinking and soaring of said market…
Read more » Nothing Saved
Ken Begley | Jul 10, 2023
THIS IS MY SIXTH STORY for HumbleDollar. You don’t know how happy you’ve made this old hick from Kentucky feel by taking the time to read my stuff, let alone comment on it. I've done and continue to do a lot of dumb things in my walk down life’s path. I hope to share most of them to give you something to think about and maybe avoid on your own. Today, it’s something I call “stupid saving.” Saving is great, but sometimes you really aren’t saving anything. My family is universally known in our town for holding onto money. A local philosopher once said, “If that family lived on an island that had nothing but rocks then, by the end of the year, they would have all the rocks.” That’s just the way we are. We waste nothing and use everything until it’s so worn out that even the Salvation Army won’t take it. Shoot, I bought a car so small and that got such great gas mileage that you could fill up the tank, drive it around all day and still have enough gas by sunset for a sizable explosion if someone runs into you. But enough about me. Or maybe not. I want to give you an example of “stupid saving.” In the country, we tend to have very big yards because land is so cheap. Our house sits on a 1.5-acre plot. To be honest, I hate big yards. But the fellow that sold us the house wouldn’t let me buy any less. So, with big yards come big responsibilities, assuming you don’t want to make the neighbors mad. You’ll do a lot of mowing, raking, weed eating, bush and tree pruning, leaf blowing and so on and so forth. Let me tell you that “so on…
Read more » Learned in Uniform
Ken Begley | Aug 23, 2023
I SPENT ALMOST 43 years either on active duty or in the reserves for the Navy and Army. Yes, I’ve been around. The following is my list of the top 17 items—including some pertinent financial details—that might surprise those who have never served in the military. No. 1: Our primary mission is not to fight wars. Instead, it’s to be so big, so bad, so mean, so well equipped, so well trained and so well led that any potential enemy in its right mind wouldn’t want to fight us. Failing that, our secondary mission is to fight and win wars. No. 2: If we had a draft, we would be less likely to become involved in armed conflicts. We haven’t had a draft since 1973. If every family faced the prospect of their children serving in combat, there’d be less willingness to go to war unless it was absolutely necessary. As it happens, all males age 18 to 25 are still required to register with the Selective Service System in case a draft is ever reinstated. No. 3: The military doesn’t choose which wars to fight. You and your elected representatives choose wars. The treaties that our government signs generally determine which potential conflicts we become involved in. Political solutions should be a first resort, military action the last. No. 4: We fire a lot of bullets in combat. It was estimated that 50,000 rounds were fired to kill a single soldier in Vietnam. In fact, I was told that automatic weapons with large magazines were invented for the military because we’re notoriously bad shots when under the strain of combat. No. 5: Few people become members of the military. Today, about 0.5% of our population serve in the armed forces. That means that if, you have 1,000 people graduating…
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