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What I Retired To

"Dana, thanks for sharing this. It’s a great reminder that retirement can still stretch us in unexpected ways. Stepping outside our comfort zone can be a little daunting, but it often leads to some of the most rewarding experiences. It sounds like you found a role that was both meaningful and enjoyable, and I hope you get to reprise that offstage scream next summer!"
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) are a Generational Bargain Right Now

"Good afternoon Michael, When I became active in buying TIPS I had a similar concern about the direction of the value the investments I was selling to fund our TIPS purchases. What has helped me in my decisions was the comment David Enna has made on his website as to the primary purpose of TIPS- I Bonds and TIPS are not “get rich” investments; they are best used for capital preservation and inflation protection. They can be purchased through the Treasury or other providers without fees, commissions or carrying charges. Please do your own research before investing. I like the embedded feature that a 10 year rolling TIPS ladder provides me in that I believe I will have created a reasonable additional inflation protected income stream, as risk-less as I have found, that will to a large extent replace my spouse's social security benefit that will drop off (and be replaced by a higher survivor spouse benefit) when I pass. I have a single one year rung left to complete on my 10 year ladder mostly held currently in our traditional IRAs and plan to move the rungs of the ladder from our traditional IRAs to our Roth IRAs over the next decade to also make the TIPS future income stream tax free in addition to the inflation protection they provide. Upon my death, other than to assume/transfer the TIPS in my traditional IRA and Roth IRA into her own IRA's, no action on her part is necessary other than withdrawing the proceeds when each TIPS mature each year. Should my wife's finances be such that if she does not need the value of the TIPS when I die then she could choose to disclaim as primary beneficiary and the TIPS ownership would then pass to my contingent beneficiaries, our children. I also considered a joint deferred annuity that would begin when the first spouse dies but the lack of inflation protection and the inability to access the principal if needed resulted in my deciding not to buy such an annuity even though we are giving up the fixed nominal income stream for life that an annuity offers. Best, Bill"
- William Perry
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Today in Financial History

"Notice that I said I may hire an advisor someday if or when needed? This assumes that I will recognize that time is approaching and have time to interview and hire someone. Life often does not work that way. And you answered my unasked question, that is "why pay someone now to do what I may need someday, but just not yet?" By working with your advisor now, you can reasonably expect that your advisor will continue to follow your preferred strategy in the future, with or without your oversight. Smart move."
- Jack Hannam
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Taking a Loss?

"You are right. The only thing that matters is the price today and how this fits in your AA. What you paid for it is irrelevant to your decision."
- Jerry Pinkard
Read more »

Widow Tax

THE WIDOW TAX is sold to the wrong households. It gets pitched to affluent couples as the reason to convert to a Roth or buy life insurance. The pitch says that when one spouse dies, the survivor files single, lands in a higher bracket, and gets clobbered. I ran the numbers for three couples at three incomes, and at the comfortable end the widow tax often costs nothing, or even less than nothing. The real cost lands lower down, on households nobody is selling anything to. What follows uses 2026 federal figures to show what the widow tax actually does in dollars, not in scary percentage points. The pattern runs opposite to the marketing. The higher your income, the smaller the hit, and the lower you go, the more it bites. Three Things Move When the first spouse dies, three things change, and they get bundled under one frightening label. One Social Security check stops, and a pension may shrink or end. That is lost income, and it is usually the largest of the three. It is not a tax. Spending shifts as well. The survivor pays one Medicare premium instead of two, but the mortgage still comes out of the same account. The third change is the only one the tax code causes: narrower single brackets, a smaller standard deduction and lower thresholds for the Medicare surcharge. The widow tax is that third piece alone, and the three households below measure how big it really is. The Affluent Couple Both spouses are over 65. Their income is about $360,000: $80,000 from Social Security, $210,000 from a pension and required minimum distributions, plus $30,000 in qualified dividends and $40,000 in long-term gains. They sit in the 24% bracket, and both already pay the Medicare surcharge. One spouse dies. The survivor keeps the larger Social Security check and most of the other income, landing at roughly $308,000. As a couple, they paid about $53,900 in federal income tax and a Medicare surcharge of about $9,240. As a single filer, the survivor pays about $55,000 in federal tax and a surcharge of about $6,355. The effective rate rises from 15.7% to 18.7%, which is the headline people remember. But the federal tax barely moves, up only about $1,100, because the survivor has less income to tax. The Medicare surcharge actually falls about $2,900, because two enrollees in the couple's joint tier cost more than one survivor a tier above. Net it all out, and the survivor pays about $1,800 a year less than the couple did. The rate went up, and the dollars went down. At the high end, the widow tax measured in money hands back a small refund. This is why the Roth conversion pitch aimed at comfortable couples misfires. If converting to Roth would cut the survivor's future taxable income without cutting the couple's lifestyle, the converted money was surplus. Surplus is money the survivor never needed to replace. Edward McQuarrie, a finance professor emeritus at Santa Clara University, made a version of this argument in a 2023 paper. He found the dollar hit inconsequential for affluent couples, and located any real cost lower down, where the Social Security torpedo bites. Where It Actually Bites Drop down to a couple with $180,000 of income: $60,000 from Social Security and $120,000 from a pension and required minimum distributions, all ordinary income. Both are over 65. The couple files jointly at $180,000; the survivor files single at about $150,000. As a couple, they paid about $17,148 in federal tax and no Medicare surcharge. The survivor pays about $22,737 in federal tax and a new surcharge of about $2,885. The federal tax rises about $5,600, and a surprising chunk of that comes from the collapse of the new $6,000 senior deduction, which phases out against a lower income threshold for singles. Then the survivor crosses into a Medicare surcharge tier the couple never paid. The total cost of widowhood here is roughly $8,500 a year, set against a $30,000 income loss. This is the one band where both the dollars and the rate move the wrong way. Now take a couple with $90,000 of income: $38,500 from Social Security, about the national average for two retired spouses, plus $51,500 from a pension and distributions. The survivor keeps the larger Social Security check and the full pension, landing at $73,500. As a couple, they paid about $3,433 in federal tax, at an effective rate of 3.8%. The survivor pays about $5,278, at an effective rate of 7.2%. There's no Medicare surcharge at this income, and there never will be. But the survivor's effective rate nearly doubles, because more of the Social Security benefit becomes taxable, up to the 85% ceiling, when the single thresholds replace the joint ones. The added tax is about $1,845, and the lost income is $16,500. Real money for a household least able to absorb it. It doubles the effective rate, and it hurts.  Read the three together and the widow tax points the wrong way from the marketing. At $360,000 it costs less than nothing, roughly a $1,800 annual saving. At $180,000 it costs about $8,500. At $90,000 it costs about $1,850, but the effective rate doubles. The affluent couples being sold protection don't need it. The middle couples who feel the sting are not being sold anything, and they're the ones for whom a few thousand dollars a year actually constrains a life. The tax code has three different mechanisms, and which one finds you depends almost entirely on your income. At the top, the Medicare surcharge does the work, and it falls. In the middle, the surcharge appears from zero. At the bottom, the Social Security torpedo raises the taxability of the benefit from 75% to 85%. The mechanism changes with the income, and so does the household's ability to absorb the hit. Plan Ahead This is where the widow tax conversation usually stops, and where I think it should start. The moves most likely to leave a survivor better off are the ones you make years before, and they help whether or not the widow tax ever bites. Converting traditional IRA money to Roth over several years before retirement smooths your taxable income. It lowers the required minimum distributions that will later push a single filer into higher brackets. It can also keep a survivor under a Medicare surcharge tier the couple never worried about. Drawing accounts in a sensible order, spending down the right buckets first, reduces the future tax base that a single bracket structure will tax more steeply. Managing required distributions as they grow, rather than letting them balloon off a rising balance, limits the single bracket exposure that builds across a long widowhood. A more tax-efficient bequest helps the people who inherit what is left. None of that is widow rescue. It is good multi-year planning that happens to compound in the survivor's favor. The widow tax is one input to that planning, not the reason for it. The reason is that the year your spouse dies is the worst possible year to be making financial decisions, and the more of those decisions you have already made, the fewer you hand to someone who is grieving. You can do a rough version of this at your own kitchen table, and you should, ideally long before you need to. Estimate the survivor's income after the smaller Social Security check and any pension change, then estimate the survivor's spending from your actual budget, not a generic rule of thumb. Subtract. If reliable after-tax income still supports the life the survivor wants, with margin, the tax rate was never the thing to worry about. Then project the survivor's federal tax, the net investment income tax where it applies and the Medicare surcharge as a single filer, and compare it to the couple. Keep the tax separate from the lost income, so you can see what the tax code actually did. Sometimes, as the affluent couple shows, it does you a small favor. Only then does a planning move earn a look, and only if you can answer what it costs today, what it might save later, who benefits and what has to come true for it to work. The widow tax is real, but it isn't the catastrophe it's sold as. At higher incomes it's not a cost at all. Lower down it is a real cost, and the lower you go, the more it's worth measuring, because the households it constrains have the least margin to spare. The planning that matters most is the kind you do years ahead, smoothing income, holding down future distributions, managing the surcharge tiers and putting the estate in order. Do that, and you've done right by your survivor, for reasons that have little to do with fear and a great deal to do with care. You'll have done it in the years when you still had the time, and the clarity, to do it well. ________________________________________________________________________________ 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.
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Credit Card Debt.

"I pay off credit debt monthly, but I don’t limit myself to one card because part of your credit score is based on the percentage of credit utilization. Your utilization rate will be lower (and credit score higher) if you have multiple credit card accounts."
- corrupt
Read more »

Can we be completely safe?

"My BIL was a victim of ID theft… They took control of his phone, and resetting all his password's was impossible since he no longer had a phone to use as the second factor. It took months to straighten out."
- corrupt
Read more »

Degrees of Doubt: When Higher Education Misses the Mark

"The widely cast net is catching students that require remedial classes in math, English and reading. Is it any surprise that today’s students are unable to think critically?"
- corrupt
Read more »

Inflation, prices, COLAs, retirement and the last 16 years

"Not early, but when I claimed I was still working and collecting a pension. Otherwise it would be unlikely we could have saved it all, but that stopped several years ago. My point was if a person can delay until age 70 presumably they don’t need SS until then so collect sooner and invest it until you do need it. Of course the tradeoff is a lower SS benefit for life vs accumulated assets that may or may not provide income to offset the lower SS benefit. The gamble also depends on how long the person lives past age 70. On the other hand, the invested funds are always available to someone. I’m not selling the idea, just something I am happy with the result."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Go While You Still Can

"Thank you, David. I finally got around to reading the article. We just got home yesterday from a wonderful long weekend in Chicago. We had wanted to return after our first trip awhile back since we had missed some things we wanted to do b/c of the weather. We had a great time. Highly recommend the architectural riverboat tour. We also visited the Art Institute this time and there is no way you can get through it all in one day. We came home refreshed and lots of good memories. It was good to not think about family stuff. Chris"
- baldscreen
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FIFA Financials

"Speaking as someone from a less affluent country (which virtually everywhere is relative to the US). I could personally have afforded to fly to the US and even attend matches. But the extraordinary price gouging by FIFA, local hotels, even public transport was something I would have deemed to make it exceptionally poor value . Would I have got $10,000 of value from attending a couple of matches? Highly unlikely. In any event I have a "home" Euros in 2 years which will likely be much more affordable if I really want to see top level international football."
- bbbobbins
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Fear of the Unknown…

"exercise, keep moving. enjoy liberation. theoretically all the saving of money is so's we can have time. it's like buying time. it does and can compound."
- John Kaczka
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What I Retired To

"Dana, thanks for sharing this. It’s a great reminder that retirement can still stretch us in unexpected ways. Stepping outside our comfort zone can be a little daunting, but it often leads to some of the most rewarding experiences. It sounds like you found a role that was both meaningful and enjoyable, and I hope you get to reprise that offstage scream next summer!"
- Andrew Clements
Read more »

Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) are a Generational Bargain Right Now

"Good afternoon Michael, When I became active in buying TIPS I had a similar concern about the direction of the value the investments I was selling to fund our TIPS purchases. What has helped me in my decisions was the comment David Enna has made on his website as to the primary purpose of TIPS- I Bonds and TIPS are not “get rich” investments; they are best used for capital preservation and inflation protection. They can be purchased through the Treasury or other providers without fees, commissions or carrying charges. Please do your own research before investing. I like the embedded feature that a 10 year rolling TIPS ladder provides me in that I believe I will have created a reasonable additional inflation protected income stream, as risk-less as I have found, that will to a large extent replace my spouse's social security benefit that will drop off (and be replaced by a higher survivor spouse benefit) when I pass. I have a single one year rung left to complete on my 10 year ladder mostly held currently in our traditional IRAs and plan to move the rungs of the ladder from our traditional IRAs to our Roth IRAs over the next decade to also make the TIPS future income stream tax free in addition to the inflation protection they provide. Upon my death, other than to assume/transfer the TIPS in my traditional IRA and Roth IRA into her own IRA's, no action on her part is necessary other than withdrawing the proceeds when each TIPS mature each year. Should my wife's finances be such that if she does not need the value of the TIPS when I die then she could choose to disclaim as primary beneficiary and the TIPS ownership would then pass to my contingent beneficiaries, our children. I also considered a joint deferred annuity that would begin when the first spouse dies but the lack of inflation protection and the inability to access the principal if needed resulted in my deciding not to buy such an annuity even though we are giving up the fixed nominal income stream for life that an annuity offers. Best, Bill"
- William Perry
Read more »

Today in Financial History

"Notice that I said I may hire an advisor someday if or when needed? This assumes that I will recognize that time is approaching and have time to interview and hire someone. Life often does not work that way. And you answered my unasked question, that is "why pay someone now to do what I may need someday, but just not yet?" By working with your advisor now, you can reasonably expect that your advisor will continue to follow your preferred strategy in the future, with or without your oversight. Smart move."
- Jack Hannam
Read more »

Taking a Loss?

"You are right. The only thing that matters is the price today and how this fits in your AA. What you paid for it is irrelevant to your decision."
- Jerry Pinkard
Read more »

Widow Tax

THE WIDOW TAX is sold to the wrong households. It gets pitched to affluent couples as the reason to convert to a Roth or buy life insurance. The pitch says that when one spouse dies, the survivor files single, lands in a higher bracket, and gets clobbered. I ran the numbers for three couples at three incomes, and at the comfortable end the widow tax often costs nothing, or even less than nothing. The real cost lands lower down, on households nobody is selling anything to. What follows uses 2026 federal figures to show what the widow tax actually does in dollars, not in scary percentage points. The pattern runs opposite to the marketing. The higher your income, the smaller the hit, and the lower you go, the more it bites. Three Things Move When the first spouse dies, three things change, and they get bundled under one frightening label. One Social Security check stops, and a pension may shrink or end. That is lost income, and it is usually the largest of the three. It is not a tax. Spending shifts as well. The survivor pays one Medicare premium instead of two, but the mortgage still comes out of the same account. The third change is the only one the tax code causes: narrower single brackets, a smaller standard deduction and lower thresholds for the Medicare surcharge. The widow tax is that third piece alone, and the three households below measure how big it really is. The Affluent Couple Both spouses are over 65. Their income is about $360,000: $80,000 from Social Security, $210,000 from a pension and required minimum distributions, plus $30,000 in qualified dividends and $40,000 in long-term gains. They sit in the 24% bracket, and both already pay the Medicare surcharge. One spouse dies. The survivor keeps the larger Social Security check and most of the other income, landing at roughly $308,000. As a couple, they paid about $53,900 in federal income tax and a Medicare surcharge of about $9,240. As a single filer, the survivor pays about $55,000 in federal tax and a surcharge of about $6,355. The effective rate rises from 15.7% to 18.7%, which is the headline people remember. But the federal tax barely moves, up only about $1,100, because the survivor has less income to tax. The Medicare surcharge actually falls about $2,900, because two enrollees in the couple's joint tier cost more than one survivor a tier above. Net it all out, and the survivor pays about $1,800 a year less than the couple did. The rate went up, and the dollars went down. At the high end, the widow tax measured in money hands back a small refund. This is why the Roth conversion pitch aimed at comfortable couples misfires. If converting to Roth would cut the survivor's future taxable income without cutting the couple's lifestyle, the converted money was surplus. Surplus is money the survivor never needed to replace. Edward McQuarrie, a finance professor emeritus at Santa Clara University, made a version of this argument in a 2023 paper. He found the dollar hit inconsequential for affluent couples, and located any real cost lower down, where the Social Security torpedo bites. Where It Actually Bites Drop down to a couple with $180,000 of income: $60,000 from Social Security and $120,000 from a pension and required minimum distributions, all ordinary income. Both are over 65. The couple files jointly at $180,000; the survivor files single at about $150,000. As a couple, they paid about $17,148 in federal tax and no Medicare surcharge. The survivor pays about $22,737 in federal tax and a new surcharge of about $2,885. The federal tax rises about $5,600, and a surprising chunk of that comes from the collapse of the new $6,000 senior deduction, which phases out against a lower income threshold for singles. Then the survivor crosses into a Medicare surcharge tier the couple never paid. The total cost of widowhood here is roughly $8,500 a year, set against a $30,000 income loss. This is the one band where both the dollars and the rate move the wrong way. Now take a couple with $90,000 of income: $38,500 from Social Security, about the national average for two retired spouses, plus $51,500 from a pension and distributions. The survivor keeps the larger Social Security check and the full pension, landing at $73,500. As a couple, they paid about $3,433 in federal tax, at an effective rate of 3.8%. The survivor pays about $5,278, at an effective rate of 7.2%. There's no Medicare surcharge at this income, and there never will be. But the survivor's effective rate nearly doubles, because more of the Social Security benefit becomes taxable, up to the 85% ceiling, when the single thresholds replace the joint ones. The added tax is about $1,845, and the lost income is $16,500. Real money for a household least able to absorb it. It doubles the effective rate, and it hurts.  Read the three together and the widow tax points the wrong way from the marketing. At $360,000 it costs less than nothing, roughly a $1,800 annual saving. At $180,000 it costs about $8,500. At $90,000 it costs about $1,850, but the effective rate doubles. The affluent couples being sold protection don't need it. The middle couples who feel the sting are not being sold anything, and they're the ones for whom a few thousand dollars a year actually constrains a life. The tax code has three different mechanisms, and which one finds you depends almost entirely on your income. At the top, the Medicare surcharge does the work, and it falls. In the middle, the surcharge appears from zero. At the bottom, the Social Security torpedo raises the taxability of the benefit from 75% to 85%. The mechanism changes with the income, and so does the household's ability to absorb the hit. Plan Ahead This is where the widow tax conversation usually stops, and where I think it should start. The moves most likely to leave a survivor better off are the ones you make years before, and they help whether or not the widow tax ever bites. Converting traditional IRA money to Roth over several years before retirement smooths your taxable income. It lowers the required minimum distributions that will later push a single filer into higher brackets. It can also keep a survivor under a Medicare surcharge tier the couple never worried about. Drawing accounts in a sensible order, spending down the right buckets first, reduces the future tax base that a single bracket structure will tax more steeply. Managing required distributions as they grow, rather than letting them balloon off a rising balance, limits the single bracket exposure that builds across a long widowhood. A more tax-efficient bequest helps the people who inherit what is left. None of that is widow rescue. It is good multi-year planning that happens to compound in the survivor's favor. The widow tax is one input to that planning, not the reason for it. The reason is that the year your spouse dies is the worst possible year to be making financial decisions, and the more of those decisions you have already made, the fewer you hand to someone who is grieving. You can do a rough version of this at your own kitchen table, and you should, ideally long before you need to. Estimate the survivor's income after the smaller Social Security check and any pension change, then estimate the survivor's spending from your actual budget, not a generic rule of thumb. Subtract. If reliable after-tax income still supports the life the survivor wants, with margin, the tax rate was never the thing to worry about. Then project the survivor's federal tax, the net investment income tax where it applies and the Medicare surcharge as a single filer, and compare it to the couple. Keep the tax separate from the lost income, so you can see what the tax code actually did. Sometimes, as the affluent couple shows, it does you a small favor. Only then does a planning move earn a look, and only if you can answer what it costs today, what it might save later, who benefits and what has to come true for it to work. The widow tax is real, but it isn't the catastrophe it's sold as. At higher incomes it's not a cost at all. Lower down it is a real cost, and the lower you go, the more it's worth measuring, because the households it constrains have the least margin to spare. The planning that matters most is the kind you do years ahead, smoothing income, holding down future distributions, managing the surcharge tiers and putting the estate in order. Do that, and you've done right by your survivor, for reasons that have little to do with fear and a great deal to do with care. You'll have done it in the years when you still had the time, and the clarity, to do it well. ________________________________________________________________________________ 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.
Read more »

Credit Card Debt.

"I pay off credit debt monthly, but I don’t limit myself to one card because part of your credit score is based on the percentage of credit utilization. Your utilization rate will be lower (and credit score higher) if you have multiple credit card accounts."
- corrupt
Read more »

Can we be completely safe?

"My BIL was a victim of ID theft… They took control of his phone, and resetting all his password's was impossible since he no longer had a phone to use as the second factor. It took months to straighten out."
- corrupt
Read more »

Degrees of Doubt: When Higher Education Misses the Mark

"The widely cast net is catching students that require remedial classes in math, English and reading. Is it any surprise that today’s students are unable to think critically?"
- corrupt
Read more »

Inflation, prices, COLAs, retirement and the last 16 years

"Not early, but when I claimed I was still working and collecting a pension. Otherwise it would be unlikely we could have saved it all, but that stopped several years ago. My point was if a person can delay until age 70 presumably they don’t need SS until then so collect sooner and invest it until you do need it. Of course the tradeoff is a lower SS benefit for life vs accumulated assets that may or may not provide income to offset the lower SS benefit. The gamble also depends on how long the person lives past age 70. On the other hand, the invested funds are always available to someone. I’m not selling the idea, just something I am happy with the result."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Free Newsletter

Get Educated

Manifesto

NO. 13: FACED with an unknown future, we should diversify our investments, buy insurance, keep some cash—and accept that, in retrospect, these precautions will often seem unnecessary.

act

CALCULATE YOUR monthly nonmortgage debt payments as a percentage of your pretax monthly income. We’re talking here about car payments, student loans and minimum credit card payments. Aim to keep these payments to less than 10% of monthly income, though that can be a tough target to hit if you’re a new college graduate with student loans.

Truths

NO. 44: GOOD companies can be bad stocks. Why? Investors bid up the share prices of widely admired, fast-growing companies—but the stocks often falter when the companies fall short of investors' lofty expectations. Meanwhile, investors shun troubled, slower-growing companies, so even so-so corporate performance can result in strong market returns.

humans

NO. 19: WE GET great pleasure from anticipation. The best part of any event—vacation, buying a car, the family reunion—is often the period beforehand. As we look forward to such events, we can daydream about how much fun we’ll have. Want to get the most out of anticipation? Ponder purchases far in advance—and consider all manner of possibilities.

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Manifesto

NO. 13: FACED with an unknown future, we should diversify our investments, buy insurance, keep some cash—and accept that, in retrospect, these precautions will often seem unnecessary.

Spotlight: Charity

Our Charity

WHEN I WAS IN THE workforce, it was easy to give to charity. Now that I’m semi-retired, it seems like more of a struggle—for four reasons:

Because I’m no longer employed fulltime, I can’t donate through payroll deduction, which used to make giving simple and automatic.
Leaving fulltime employment often results in reduced or uncertain income, and sometimes both. Today, I find it harder to know how much I can afford to give.
Retirement heightens thoughts of leaving a legacy to children and other heirs.

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QCDs: Concerns for First Timers

As someone who has never done a QCD, this article by CPA Mike Piper (www.OpenSocialSecurity.com, Bogleheads speaker, etc.) was very helpful. Anyone with experience on making QCDs, IRS inquiries about QCDs, etc., have any wisdom or personal experience to add to this?

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Giving Made Easy

I’M NOT ONE TO DIVE into the mysteries of the tax code in an effort to avoid paying Uncle Sam. But I’ve lately stumbled onto something that many others are already well-versed in and which has been around since 2006: qualified charitable distributions.

If I make a contribution from my traditional IRA directly to a charity, the withdrawal is excluded from the taxable income reported by my wife and me and, indeed, it counts toward my required minimum distribution.

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Jonathan Is Everywhere on the Internet

Another great link from Mike Piper’s Oblivious Investor newsletter is this interview on the Bogleheads Podcast:
https://bogleheads.podbean.com/e/episode-82-jonathan-clements-jason-zweig-and-christine-benz-are-special-guests-on-this-podcast-host-rick-ferri/

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Getting Others Going

Want to help a young person get started on a lifetime of investing? Hear all about the Jonathan Clements Getting Going on Savings Initiative on this podcast hosted by Rick Ferri. My fellow guests on the podcast were Morningstar’s Christine Benz and The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig. Please give a listen—and please consider donating. One way to donate: Buy copies of  The Best of Jonathan Clements, a collection of my Wall Street Journal columns.

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Our annual give it away meeting

Connie and I just had our annual financial meeting- how best to give money away. 
Every since I discovered QCDs – you know what that is, right, I enjoy avoiding taxes on a RMD. 
As long as I have to take the money out of my IRA, I like putting it to good use – tax-free if possible.
Where does it go? A chunk goes to church and several religious organizations- Connie’s call. 
We give to a food pantry on Cape Cod and one local.

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Spotlight: stelea99

Remembering 9/11

Twenty-four years ago today, I was still confused about my routine since retiring the prior month.  My spouse had the tv on she and called to me to come to the family room to see coverage of the 1st tower on fire in New York.   I was really aghast.  The stock market had cratered, and looking at the video, I knew that the building would ultimately collapse.  Who could know about the profound impact this event would have on our society.  It wasn’t just the loss of life and damages to the City of New York, it was the feeling of not being safe any more. I remember getting ready to go for a walk and after opening our garage door stepping out to see my neighbor Don leaning against his car.  He looked carefree and I then asked him if he had heard the news.  He had not, and didn’t believe me, until he went into his house and turned on his tv.  He came back out in a few minutes very shook up.  Until he passed in 2014, every year on 9/11 when he saw me he would remember that day again. What were you doing on 9/11 when you heard?  How did you feel?  What impact did that event have on your life?
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Dealing With Tech Changes

Gosh, is it just me? Am I the only one who wishes that the pace of tech “Progress” would just slow down? I mean, I just updated to the latest IOS version, and I just read that there its another one coming soon and I have yet to use a single new feature from the last one. All these tech changes make it harder to deal with life including ones money. Do you have your ID.ME credentials set up yet? Without this or some other new government wide PW scheme, you can’t get into the IRS, the VA or perhaps Treasury Direct. And, what about Passkeys? I haven’t got a clue. I use a PW manager which works on both Win devices and Apple devices. I understand how it works and syncs. Someone told me that these Passkeys are safer and stored in a device keychain. Don’t know what that is either. I don’t allow any browser to retain login info. I’m happy without using passkeys…..whatever they are. My personal info has been stolen many times via big companies failing to protect my data that I trusted them to keep safe. My sons think I am behind the times because I don’t use my phone to control my thermostat and house lights remotely. I don’t have or want a Ring doorbell camera either. I know that I could show my Costco card on my smart phone, but I don’t see that as easier than getting the Costco card out of my wallet. Ditto Apple pay. Most places I shop are not compatible. Some of this tech is good. I like the smartphone link in a car that enables hands-free phone usage. My Apple Watch has been very helpful in dealing with medical issues and tracking some fitness activities. I was…
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Dealing with Financial Affairs for Someone Else…..

This is a thought exercise… Suppose you are the son or daughter of a reasonably tech competent older person. They have asked you to step in to act on their behalf should they be unable to do so on their own. The would name you as primary on their Durable Power of Attorney. You have agreed and are in the process of trying to understand how your parent deals with their finances now. In your research you have discovered the following information: 1) Your parent uses a variety of tech equipment to deal with finances. This equipment includes a Windows 11 PC, an Apple IPhone, and an Apple IPad. 2) These devices all have a PW manager installed. The PW manager automatically synchronizes data across all devices. 3) The IPhone uses facial recognition in addition to a numerical access code. The IPad uses fingerprint data for access in addition to a numerical access code. The Windows PC only uses a numerical access code. 4) The parent has 2 bank accounts, 5 credit card accounts of which only 2 are really used, and 4 brokerage accounts (1 broker). 5) There is a bill pay service at one of the banks which is used to pay any bills which are not set up to be paid automatically via direct debits, or credit card debits. The credit cars are auto pay through the bill pay service. 6) The parent uses Quicken to record all financial transactions for all accounts and has done so for 25 years. 7) Most bills are delivered via your parent’s primary email address. Exceptions are property taxes and HOA fees and a cell phone bill. 8) The parent does their own taxes using TurboTax desktop and stores all the returns and data in Dropbox. You quickly determine that you…
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Mutual Funds Vs. ETFs Which do you prefer and Why?

I noticed in one of the responses to a recent article that someone expressed some concern about investing in ETFs as opposed to Mutual Funds.  I thought if might be helpful to talk about this topic.  To help open the discussion here is a link to FINRA’s page on the topic: https://www.finra.org/investors/insights/etf-vs-mutual-fund Just one more advantage not mentioned in that summary, is that gifting mutual fund shares is hard to do, whereas gifting ETFs is relatively easy.  To gift appreciated ETFs to my grandchildren (over 18), I have just had them open an account at Schwab and then send me the account number.  Schwab has a form on line (you can also print) which you can complete and submit and presto in a day or two the shares show up in their account.  I can also specific which lots are involved in the gift…With mutual funds, you might be looking at a trip to the bank for a signature guarantee for a substantial gift. If you like ETFs, Why?   If you worry about ETFs Why?
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How might early retirement at say age 55 affect your FRA SS benefits?

The actual formula for how benefits are determined is somewhat cloaked in mystery (at least to me).  Before I retired in mid 2001 at age 55, I tried to at least take a look at this topic.  The SS website at the time had a calculator which you could use to estimate future benefits.  I think it began with an estimate  based on you continuing  to work at your current annual income level until FRA.  So I already  had an approximation of what might get if I continued to work.  Then you could customize this by putting in different income numbers.  I put in zeros and hit enter.   When I looked at the output, the difference between working and not working was minimal.  Of course I had more years of employment than the number of years required, and had many years of hitting the maximum which was taxed. I don’t know if this was a fluke or not.  It is something to consider, if you aren’t going to get a higher benefit by working until 66 or your FRA.
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24-Hour Trading

There are concepts in our lives that trouble me.  One of them is our inability to really establish a price (value) for anything.  I am already getting a headache writing about this.  We have arrived at a time when the price of many things has become dynamic.  And, I am not thinking about inflation now, although that increases the challenge.  From movie tickets to airline seats, the price of a head of lettuce, the cost of one share of VTI, gasoline, etc. prices float.   At least, right now, the NYSE closes each trading day, and for a few minutes, for some securities that are not traded in the after-market, I can get an idea of what the value of my portfolio might be, maybe.  With the possibility of 24-hour trading over the near horizon, we face a future in which you can never know, with any precision, your net worth.  You can know what it used to be at some time in the past probably at a particular minute in time, but you cannot know what it is worth now.  With 24-hour trading, you could go to sleep at ten pm and when the market crashes at 2:39 am you won’t know until the morning.   What will mutual fund managers do?  With no fixed closing price will they use the price at the time they actually process your order, the price at the time you placed the order, or some arbitrary time/price.  Will you be satisfied with a price that is lower than that when you placed your order? I am sure that some readers will say that it doesn’t matter;that you don’t have to have precise values because everyone knows that prices fluctuate,  Well, how satisfying can it be when you have been aiming to cross the…
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