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Independence Day

D.J.  |  Jun 29, 2026

"Those reinvested dividends do make for an interesting dynamic, Dick. On another note, your mention of the Enron fiasco is worth highlighting. And they weren't the only reason to be wary of employee stock in the early 2000s. Scandals at WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing and others that led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act."
- D.J.
Read more »

Lessons Learned Along the Way

Dan Smith  |  Jun 25, 2026

"Which, of course, is all very true today as it was during your journey. Where there is a will there is most often a way. Nobody can sit in one job and expect to get anywhere. They are lucky to keep up with inflation. Everyone still has opportunities, there is no rigged system keeping people down. Education is important, but it is not the most important factor. The most important determinant for any success is the person you see in the mirror each morning."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Why can’t more people plan for their retirement future?

R Quinn  |  Jun 27, 2026

"The only kale in our house goes into Portuguese kale soup where the taste is lost among the chorizo."
- R Quinn
Read more »

The Price of a Cool Pillow

Mark Crothers  |  Jun 25, 2026

"That's spooky — would you believe we're actually in the middle of packing up to do exactly that right now! We head to the coastal house this Wednesday and we're planning to stay through to the end of September."
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

Luck, Stupidity, Automation and Inertia

Mark Crothers  |  Jun 27, 2026

"My husband taught at the U of Wisconsin so his pension is part of the state plan. Since he opted for the 50/50 split, half of his contribution went into defined benefit; half to defined contribution. So I think the second half worked like a 403B— just my guess. This choice wasn’t popular and the state stopped offering the choice a few years after he signed up. He was grandfathered in, so I imagine his contribution total must have roller coastered through 44 years— we didn’t pay any attention. When I started working at UW, defined benefit was the only option, but a few years before we retired, the state opened up the 50% all stock option. My husband could have continued the 50/50 split in retirement. His pension then would have been half based on the core state fund and half on the results of the total stock fund. (With the latter option, beneficiaries take the gain or loss each year; the core fund is more conservatively managed and the results are smoothed over 5 years..) He chose to get out of stock fund about a year before we retired. We weren’t willing to gamble in retirement. But with his pension and mine, we’re very comfortable having pretty close to 100% of our IRAs and Roths in stock. WI’s pension is fully funded, and not a burden on taxpayers.. There is no COLA, but there is an annual distribution if the fund exceeds its expected costa. In the years we’ve been retired, we’ve received increases every year but one. We could also see decreases— but the 5 year smoothing has so far prevented that from happening."
- Marilyn Lavin
Read more »

Automatic Income stream? How important to you?

R Quinn  |  Jun 26, 2026

"The ability to select an annuity as a 401(k) option is in principle very positive. The devil is in the details. One issue with annuities in general is the prevalence of excessive (and prepaid) fees. Another issue is the discount rate/earnings expectations formula for calculating the payout. In the retail annuity world, both of these can abused to the point that they become predatory in nature. Where that occurs, they usually conspire to penalize the annuitant greatly. Only if these two negatives can be eliminated or made truly fair will the 401(k) annuity work."
- Martin McCue
Read more »

Quiet Failure: The Stories We Tell about Money

Javier  |  Jun 28, 2026

"My approach to/attitude toward money is partly built from family origins and partly by faith convictions. My husband and I both grew up in very modest conditions—I’d say barely lower middle-class on both sides. I always had to work for what I wanted, and that gave me a strong work ethic that I have to this day. I have a strong need for security and have never wanted to take risks with our finances. I also wanted my kids to have enough and never feel like the “poorest kid in the neighborhood,” which is how I grew up. At the same time, because of our religious faith, we feel strongly about giving to charity and have always done that even in our young married years when finances were very tight."
- DrLefty
Read more »

When to Leave Your Portfolio Alone

Mark Gardner  |  Jun 26, 2026

"It does sometimes create tax liability - a cost to manage your risk. I try to be tax efficient with my rebalancing to the best of my ability. Yes, redirecting dividends is a good strategy as well to rebalance to your target band."
- Mark Gardner
Read more »

Luck, Stupidity, and Getting Ripped Off

Mark Crothers  |  Jun 28, 2026

"Mark, I have two separate accounts. Here's my over-simplified response: My IRA proceeds, when withdrawn, are counted as regular income. My investment account proceeds, when withdrawn, will have gains computed between the original purchase price and the sold price. I don't really plan to withdraw from this account. My best-laid plans are for the kids to inherit this account and benefit from the basis step-up that would happen when I croak."
- Jeff Bond
Read more »

Investment Wisdom

ArticleAdam M. Grossman  |  Jun 27, 2026

THE INVESTMENT WORLD is full of storytellers. And while these folks might be entertaining, they generally aren’t very helpful. There’s one category of stories, however, that I do think is useful: They’re what I might call investment fables. They’re apocryphal stories that likely aren’t real. But they’re helpful nonetheless because each carries a useful lesson. Here are some of the more popular ones. Consumer choice. In 1999, Richard Mille and a partner launched a company to make wristwatches. By 2001, the company was ready to begin taking orders for its first model, the RM 001. They knew they wanted to target a high-end market, so they chose the Financial Times for their first advertisement. According to legend, however, a graphic designer at the newspaper made a mistake. Instead of including the watch’s intended price of $13,500, an extra zero was added, making the price $135,000. At first, the company was furious at the newspaper for the mistake. But then the phone started to ring. The sky-high price turned out to be attractive to a certain class of buyers, and the initial run of the 001 quickly sold out. Today, Richard Mille sells several models priced in the hundreds of thousands, and some limited editions carry price tags north of $1 million. For its part, the company denies this story, maintaining that $135,000 was always the price it intended. But whether this story is true or not, it illustrates a concept in personal finance known as the Veblen effect. This occurs when the traditional shape of a demand curve gets turned upside down. Instead of consumers buying less of something as its price rises, when it comes to Veblen goods, consumers want to buy more as the price increases. Hermes handbags and Ferrari sportscars are other examples. What should we make of the Veblen effect? To answer this question, it’s worth examining its origins. Thorstein Veblen was a sociologist and economist. Perhaps owing to his background as the sixth of 12 children growing up in modest, rural surroundings, Veblen became broadly critical of capitalism. In his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, he coined the term “conspicuous consumption.” And while Veblen didn’t explicitly see himself as a socialist, he leaned in that direction. He would have been bitterly critical of something like a Richard Mille watch. In making spending decisions, though, I wouldn’t worry too much about value judgments like this. The reality is that each of us is different, and we each value different things. That’s why I prefer to stick to the numbers. The most important thing, in my view, is simply to have a framework for your household finances, to ensure that your overall spending level is in line with your long-term plan. Other people’s subjective judgments, in my opinion, shouldn’t factor in. Investment gains. When it comes to investing, what’s the best strategy? According to lore, Fidelity Investments once looked into this question by examining the performance of all of the accounts on its platform. What did they find? The accounts that had done the best were those that had been abandoned due to the death of the owner, with the result that the investments hadn’t changed for years. There’s no evidence that this story is true, but it’s repeated frequently because it aligns with real data. In studies going back more than 25 years, research has shown that frequent trading is generally associated with worse investment results. This is true for both individual and professional investors. To be sure, some active managers have delivered impressive results. In the past, this has included the likes of Warren Buffett and James Simons. More recently, a 24-year-old named Leopold Aschenbrenner has delivered returns of more than 1,000% in the two years since he founded a hedge fund to bet on AI stocks. But cases like this are the exceptions that prove the rule. For most investors, most of the time, the data tell us that it’s better to trade less rather than more. Market tops. On a related note, there’s a tale about Joseph Kennedy—President Kennedy’s father. He was an active investor in the 1920s, but he said he realized it was time to sell when the fellow giving him a shoeshine one day started offering stock tips. What’s interesting about this story is that Kennedy did actually sell his stocks and even took a short position early in 1929, earning him a fortune when the market dropped. The shoeshine aspect of this story likely isn’t true. But it’s a favorite because it carries a useful message. Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham has often talked about the market signals he pays attention to. In addition to P/E ratios and other quantitative measures, he’s noted that he looks for “signs of craziness”—things like the GameStop mania in 2021. When the stock market begins to look more like a casino—and when we see YouTube influencers making stock calls from their gaming chairs—Grantham gets nervous. Intuitively, this does make sense, but it may not be very useful. Consider how the market has performed in recent years. After Grantham urged caution in 2021, the market did drop in 2022. But then it rose in 2023, 2024, 2025 and in the first half of 2026. So an investor who sold in 2021 would have missed out on significant gains. The bottom line: Just as the number of world-class stock-pickers is limited, so too is the number of tactical traders who have profited in the way Joe Kennedy did by getting out at just the right moment. Market forecasts. What’s a better way to think about the stock market? According to another Wall Street tale, J.P. Morgan was once asked what he thought the market would do over the coming year. His reply: “It will fluctuate.” There’s no evidence that Morgan ever actually said this, but in this case too, the story is popular because it sounds right. And in my view, this is exactly the right way to think about the stock market. At the end of the day, the only thing we can know for sure about the stock market is that it will either go up, go down or stay about the same. If we can structure our portfolios so we won’t be too negatively affected whichever way it goes, that, in my opinion, is the road to success.   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.
Read more »

Billy’s Certificate – 1937

W.D. Housley  |  Jun 24, 2026

"I always thought it a lot of money too."
- W.D. Housley
Read more »

What’s in your portfolio ?

Larry  |  Jun 12, 2026

"John, Thanks for providing the link! Very good article, I enjoyed the read…covers a lot."
- Andy Morrison
Read more »

Independence Day

D.J.  |  Jun 29, 2026

"Those reinvested dividends do make for an interesting dynamic, Dick. On another note, your mention of the Enron fiasco is worth highlighting. And they weren't the only reason to be wary of employee stock in the early 2000s. Scandals at WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing and others that led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act."
- D.J.
Read more »

Lessons Learned Along the Way

Dan Smith  |  Jun 25, 2026

"Which, of course, is all very true today as it was during your journey. Where there is a will there is most often a way. Nobody can sit in one job and expect to get anywhere. They are lucky to keep up with inflation. Everyone still has opportunities, there is no rigged system keeping people down. Education is important, but it is not the most important factor. The most important determinant for any success is the person you see in the mirror each morning."
- R Quinn
Read more »

Why can’t more people plan for their retirement future?

R Quinn  |  Jun 27, 2026

"The only kale in our house goes into Portuguese kale soup where the taste is lost among the chorizo."
- R Quinn
Read more »

The Price of a Cool Pillow

Mark Crothers  |  Jun 25, 2026

"That's spooky — would you believe we're actually in the middle of packing up to do exactly that right now! We head to the coastal house this Wednesday and we're planning to stay through to the end of September."
- Mark Crothers
Read more »

Luck, Stupidity, Automation and Inertia

Mark Crothers  |  Jun 27, 2026

"My husband taught at the U of Wisconsin so his pension is part of the state plan. Since he opted for the 50/50 split, half of his contribution went into defined benefit; half to defined contribution. So I think the second half worked like a 403B— just my guess. This choice wasn’t popular and the state stopped offering the choice a few years after he signed up. He was grandfathered in, so I imagine his contribution total must have roller coastered through 44 years— we didn’t pay any attention. When I started working at UW, defined benefit was the only option, but a few years before we retired, the state opened up the 50% all stock option. My husband could have continued the 50/50 split in retirement. His pension then would have been half based on the core state fund and half on the results of the total stock fund. (With the latter option, beneficiaries take the gain or loss each year; the core fund is more conservatively managed and the results are smoothed over 5 years..) He chose to get out of stock fund about a year before we retired. We weren’t willing to gamble in retirement. But with his pension and mine, we’re very comfortable having pretty close to 100% of our IRAs and Roths in stock. WI’s pension is fully funded, and not a burden on taxpayers.. There is no COLA, but there is an annual distribution if the fund exceeds its expected costa. In the years we’ve been retired, we’ve received increases every year but one. We could also see decreases— but the 5 year smoothing has so far prevented that from happening."
- Marilyn Lavin
Read more »

Automatic Income stream? How important to you?

R Quinn  |  Jun 26, 2026

"The ability to select an annuity as a 401(k) option is in principle very positive. The devil is in the details. One issue with annuities in general is the prevalence of excessive (and prepaid) fees. Another issue is the discount rate/earnings expectations formula for calculating the payout. In the retail annuity world, both of these can abused to the point that they become predatory in nature. Where that occurs, they usually conspire to penalize the annuitant greatly. Only if these two negatives can be eliminated or made truly fair will the 401(k) annuity work."
- Martin McCue
Read more »

Quiet Failure: The Stories We Tell about Money

Javier  |  Jun 28, 2026

"My approach to/attitude toward money is partly built from family origins and partly by faith convictions. My husband and I both grew up in very modest conditions—I’d say barely lower middle-class on both sides. I always had to work for what I wanted, and that gave me a strong work ethic that I have to this day. I have a strong need for security and have never wanted to take risks with our finances. I also wanted my kids to have enough and never feel like the “poorest kid in the neighborhood,” which is how I grew up. At the same time, because of our religious faith, we feel strongly about giving to charity and have always done that even in our young married years when finances were very tight."
- DrLefty
Read more »

When to Leave Your Portfolio Alone

Mark Gardner  |  Jun 26, 2026

"It does sometimes create tax liability - a cost to manage your risk. I try to be tax efficient with my rebalancing to the best of my ability. Yes, redirecting dividends is a good strategy as well to rebalance to your target band."
- Mark Gardner
Read more »

Luck, Stupidity, and Getting Ripped Off

Mark Crothers  |  Jun 28, 2026

"Mark, I have two separate accounts. Here's my over-simplified response: My IRA proceeds, when withdrawn, are counted as regular income. My investment account proceeds, when withdrawn, will have gains computed between the original purchase price and the sold price. I don't really plan to withdraw from this account. My best-laid plans are for the kids to inherit this account and benefit from the basis step-up that would happen when I croak."
- Jeff Bond
Read more »

Investment Wisdom

ArticleAdam M. Grossman  |  Jun 27, 2026

THE INVESTMENT WORLD is full of storytellers. And while these folks might be entertaining, they generally aren’t very helpful. There’s one category of stories, however, that I do think is useful: They’re what I might call investment fables. They’re apocryphal stories that likely aren’t real. But they’re helpful nonetheless because each carries a useful lesson. Here are some of the more popular ones. Consumer choice. In 1999, Richard Mille and a partner launched a company to make wristwatches. By 2001, the company was ready to begin taking orders for its first model, the RM 001. They knew they wanted to target a high-end market, so they chose the Financial Times for their first advertisement. According to legend, however, a graphic designer at the newspaper made a mistake. Instead of including the watch’s intended price of $13,500, an extra zero was added, making the price $135,000. At first, the company was furious at the newspaper for the mistake. But then the phone started to ring. The sky-high price turned out to be attractive to a certain class of buyers, and the initial run of the 001 quickly sold out. Today, Richard Mille sells several models priced in the hundreds of thousands, and some limited editions carry price tags north of $1 million. For its part, the company denies this story, maintaining that $135,000 was always the price it intended. But whether this story is true or not, it illustrates a concept in personal finance known as the Veblen effect. This occurs when the traditional shape of a demand curve gets turned upside down. Instead of consumers buying less of something as its price rises, when it comes to Veblen goods, consumers want to buy more as the price increases. Hermes handbags and Ferrari sportscars are other examples. What should we make of the Veblen effect? To answer this question, it’s worth examining its origins. Thorstein Veblen was a sociologist and economist. Perhaps owing to his background as the sixth of 12 children growing up in modest, rural surroundings, Veblen became broadly critical of capitalism. In his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, he coined the term “conspicuous consumption.” And while Veblen didn’t explicitly see himself as a socialist, he leaned in that direction. He would have been bitterly critical of something like a Richard Mille watch. In making spending decisions, though, I wouldn’t worry too much about value judgments like this. The reality is that each of us is different, and we each value different things. That’s why I prefer to stick to the numbers. The most important thing, in my view, is simply to have a framework for your household finances, to ensure that your overall spending level is in line with your long-term plan. Other people’s subjective judgments, in my opinion, shouldn’t factor in. Investment gains. When it comes to investing, what’s the best strategy? According to lore, Fidelity Investments once looked into this question by examining the performance of all of the accounts on its platform. What did they find? The accounts that had done the best were those that had been abandoned due to the death of the owner, with the result that the investments hadn’t changed for years. There’s no evidence that this story is true, but it’s repeated frequently because it aligns with real data. In studies going back more than 25 years, research has shown that frequent trading is generally associated with worse investment results. This is true for both individual and professional investors. To be sure, some active managers have delivered impressive results. In the past, this has included the likes of Warren Buffett and James Simons. More recently, a 24-year-old named Leopold Aschenbrenner has delivered returns of more than 1,000% in the two years since he founded a hedge fund to bet on AI stocks. But cases like this are the exceptions that prove the rule. For most investors, most of the time, the data tell us that it’s better to trade less rather than more. Market tops. On a related note, there’s a tale about Joseph Kennedy—President Kennedy’s father. He was an active investor in the 1920s, but he said he realized it was time to sell when the fellow giving him a shoeshine one day started offering stock tips. What’s interesting about this story is that Kennedy did actually sell his stocks and even took a short position early in 1929, earning him a fortune when the market dropped. The shoeshine aspect of this story likely isn’t true. But it’s a favorite because it carries a useful message. Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham has often talked about the market signals he pays attention to. In addition to P/E ratios and other quantitative measures, he’s noted that he looks for “signs of craziness”—things like the GameStop mania in 2021. When the stock market begins to look more like a casino—and when we see YouTube influencers making stock calls from their gaming chairs—Grantham gets nervous. Intuitively, this does make sense, but it may not be very useful. Consider how the market has performed in recent years. After Grantham urged caution in 2021, the market did drop in 2022. But then it rose in 2023, 2024, 2025 and in the first half of 2026. So an investor who sold in 2021 would have missed out on significant gains. The bottom line: Just as the number of world-class stock-pickers is limited, so too is the number of tactical traders who have profited in the way Joe Kennedy did by getting out at just the right moment. Market forecasts. What’s a better way to think about the stock market? According to another Wall Street tale, J.P. Morgan was once asked what he thought the market would do over the coming year. His reply: “It will fluctuate.” There’s no evidence that Morgan ever actually said this, but in this case too, the story is popular because it sounds right. And in my view, this is exactly the right way to think about the stock market. At the end of the day, the only thing we can know for sure about the stock market is that it will either go up, go down or stay about the same. If we can structure our portfolios so we won’t be too negatively affected whichever way it goes, that, in my opinion, is the road to success.   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.
Read more »

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Get Educated

Manifesto

Jun 28, 2026

NO. 15: WE SHOULD retire our debts before we retire from our job. Paying off debt cuts our living expenses, plus that debt is likely costing us more than we’re earning on our bonds.

think

Jun 29, 2026

OVERCONFIDENCE. Most of us believe we’re above-average drivers, smarter than most and better looking. This overconfidence is often a good thing—it can boost happiness and help our careers—but it’s terrible for investment results. As they try to beat the market, the overconfident trade too much, take unnecessary risk and buy costly investments.

humans

Jun 28, 2026

NO. 34: WE overestimate our investment results. Got folks boasting about their portfolio’s performance? They may be ignoring the losers they’ve sold, bragging based on a few winners and failing to compare to an appropriate index. They may also suffer from the endowment effect, believing their winners have performed better than they really have.

act

Jun 27, 2026

INVEST YOUR TAXABLE account thoughtfully. If you purchase the wrong investments in your taxable account, you may be reluctant to sell because you’ll trigger capital gains taxes. A good choice: low-cost U.S. and international total stock market index funds, which should be tax-efficient—and which shouldn’t ever lag far behind the market averages.

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Great debates

Manifesto

Jun 28, 2026

NO. 15: WE SHOULD retire our debts before we retire from our job. Paying off debt cuts our living expenses, plus that debt is likely costing us more than we’re earning on our bonds.

Spotlight: Life Events

A Diamond Wedding Anniversary

Marjorie Kondrack   |  Apr 9, 2025

I wore a gown of Chantilly lace—the sun caught the sparkles in my bridal headdress. My husband was resplendent in his tuxedo—the sun was shining on a beautiful April morning —Our wedding day, 60 years ago, April, 1965.
While The choice of a spouse is among the most important decisions most people ever make,  it’s a choice that comes with no guarantees of long term happiness.  That said, we all have an ideal vision of the person we would like to marry. 

Read more »

Lesson Five From Taking Care of a 102 yo in Her Last Year of Life- Politics and the News Has the Potential to Ruin Relationships

David Lancaster   |  Apr 19, 2025

Hi, my name is David, and I am a newsaholic! There I’ve said it. Admitting you have an addiction is the first step to recovery, right?
All my life I have been addicted to reading the news. I like to be informed about the goings on locally, nationally, and internationally. I think it is a way for me to lower my anxiety. Over the past 8-9 years however things have changed.
What does this have to do with taking care of my mother in law?

Read more »

After It’s Over

DAN SMITH   |  Nov 21, 2024

One of HD’s newer authors, Alina Fisch has a great article about Bucket Lists, but it was something in her bio that really caught my attention. Alina is a fee only financial advisor focused on helping single and divorced women.
My experience with the subject comes from my own divorce, as well as a handful of my income tax clients who found themselves in that situation.
These women were all good people and loving moms whose marriages ended for a variety of reasons.

Read more »

From Public Housing to Early Retirement: A Path Forged in Adversity

Mark Crothers   |  Jul 18, 2025

In my childhood, I grew up in public housing. From the age of 11, I attended what in the UK is the rough equivalent of a public high school. This was during a very volatile and violent phase of societal change in my country, set against a backdrop of illegal paramilitary organisations. They effectively “hoovered up” a high portion of my childhood friends, regurgitating them as dead bodies or incarcerated prisoners with no future. This was the reality of my childhood and formative years.

Read more »

Times Like These

Mike Drak   |  Apr 23, 2025

I really feel for people  who are unexpectedly losing their jobs late career because of the DOGE cuts.
I experienced something similar when I was pushed out of my 36 year banking job at age 59. I was a good performer, but when they want to get you they get you.
I struggled for a couple of years but the good news is that I finally figured things out and at age 70 I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

Read more »

The Unsettling Relief of Saying Goodbye

Mark Crothers   |  Jul 21, 2025

It would have been my mum’s 91st birthday this week. She passed two years ago this June after the long goodbye from the thousand small cuts of dementia. Although I experienced grief and sadness, it truly was a relief to bid my mum the final farewell after the long marathon of loss over many years. I gave a final kiss to the echo of the woman before me as the heat of life left mum’s body.

Read more »

Spotlight: Ferris

Six Months In! (from Dana/DrLefty)

DrLefty   |  Jan 1, 2026

Happy New Year, HumbleDollar folks! Today, besides being the first day of 2026, is also the six-month anniversary of my retirement. How's it going so far? I thought I'd follow up on a couple of posts from last year--this one was a year ago today (a "six months out" post). So far, I absolutely love being retired. Seriously, I'm just ecstatic about it. I said to my husband recently, "I thought I'd miss it (my career) a little bit." After all, even though university politics had soured me on my day job, I always loved teaching, and I enjoyed it right up through my last day of class in June. But I'm just feeling a sense of relief about the absence of responsibility. The Biggest News. After a few months of watching me live my best life, my husband started rethinking the "maybe I'll work until 70" plan (we're 65). His contract with his firm requires six months notice, so he's planning to give notice on April 1 for an October 1 retirement date. (Why that date? He has a couple of projects he wants to see through, and bonuses are paid in August.) It's possible that they'll ask him to stay on either as a part-time employee or as a consultant--he has a pretty specific skill set that will be hard to replace--and he's open to that, but he's committed to being done with full-time employment by October 1, 2026. How I'm Spending Time. That has gone pretty much as I expected. After a lot of travel over the summer, we had a quieter fall mostly at home. I'm working on several academic writing projects (a new edition of one of my books, journal articles from my final two research projects, and a new collection I'm co-editing). I'm trying to work on those…
Read more »

Final Countdown

Dana Ferris   |  Aug 22, 2024

I'VE DECIDED UPON MY retirement date: July 1, 2025. We just passed the one-year countdown point, so I thought I’d share some of my ideas and plans for my final year in the workforce. This countdown idea, of course, isn’t original with me. Indeed, there are apps that you can put on your phone to count down the time until retirement. I was primarily inspired by a retirement blogger named Fritz Gilbert. He’s way more decisive than I am. Gilbert started his blog several years before his planned retirement date, and has meticulously documented his journey leading up to retirement and the time since. Besides setting a date, I’ve already completed a couple of preparatory steps. I’ve attended several retirement webinars offered by my current university’s retirement program and my previous university’s program. I now understand the timelines for filing retirement paperwork, and I have those dates on my calendar for next spring. One year to go: Financial tasks. One thing I thought I’d be doing during this final year is stress-testing our retirement spending plan. We have a spreadsheet of sorts that roughs out what we think our monthly expenses will be. But since my husband may not retire next year when I do, we don’t need a trial run of our more austere spending plan—yet. Instead, I’ll need to think about a household budget that will change in two distinct and related ways. First, my take-home income will go up. I’ll be receiving pensions from two university systems, and together they will replace more than 80% of my current gross income. Meanwhile, I’ll no longer be making contributions to my university pension, Social Security and Medicare, and my 403(b) and 457 retirement plans. These contributions, together with federal and state tax withholding, easily devour more than 50% of…
Read more »

Count Me Out

Dana Ferris   |  May 10, 2024

MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE movie is the Coen brothers’ 2000 classic, O Brother, Where Art Thou? At one point, Holly Hunter’s character, Penelope, declares, “I’ve said my piece and I’ve counted to three.” Her estranged husband, played by George Clooney, understood from long experience that once she had “counted to three,” her mind couldn’t be changed. Last summer, I wrote an article that explored the decisions my husband and I are working through about our retirement date and location. I concluded, “This is harder than it might seem. I may be writing a completely different article six months from now.” Well, here I am, not much more than six months later, and my own immediate future is coming into focus, at least the “when” part. In my earlier article, I said that we were deciding between July 1, 2025, and July 1, 2026, as our retirement date. I received a lot of great questions in the comments section, including several along the lines of “You sound ready—why wait?” and “Run the numbers. Would an extra year really make that much of a difference?” Why wait? My university pension will be based on three things: a multiplier based on my age at retirement; my years of service credit; and the average of my highest three years of salary. The age factor maxes out at 60, so that’s no longer a consideration. At my rank—I’m an advanced full professor—I get reviewed for merit increases every three years. I was reviewed in 2022 and was fortunate to receive the highest possible raise. I decided then that, unless a health crisis intervened, I should stick it out until at least 2025 to lock that final pay increase into my pension calculation. That’s also the year I’ll turn 65, hit 35 years of service credit and…
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New Year’s Resolutions, Target Date Funds, and My New Friend Gemini

DrLefty   |  Jan 4, 2026

I’ve been having a lot of great discussions with my new AI friend, Google Gemini. (Why not ChatGPT? I do consult it sometimes, but I don’t want to pony up for a paid account.) I like Gemini because it’s very positive. “Words of affirmation” are my love language! In recent days, I’ve discussed how to balance my Peloton cycling and rowing to get an optimal workout mix to meet my health goals (Gemini gave me GREAT advice on this and was highly impressed with my near-perfect form scores on the Row) and how to convert a chicken-and-rice recipe that my husband has been requesting for the Instant Pot. I’m making it for dinner tonight and will report back. 🙏 I also discussed our retirement portfolio with Gemini. I should preface this by saying that I’ve never been very interested in investing, which I know is an odd thing to admit on a site like this. Our money has been parked in target date funds because neither one of us wanted to bother. But I do wonder, especially as we both transition into retirement, if this “strategy” is a sound one. There are people—the guy in our local Schwab office, advisors from the Empower dashboard where I track our accounts—who would love to talk to us about this, but I’m always dubious of getting just one person’s spin on things, whether it’s investing, cycling/rowing, how much protein I should eat, etc. A thing I really like about AI is its ability to instantly synthesize information from a lot of different sources, and it doesn’t have a specific agenda like a human adviser might. Anyway, this is what I explained to Gemini: We have three target date funds—Vanguard 2025 (my husband’s rollover IRA from his previous job, about 30% of the total);…
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Another IRMAA Question

DrLefty   |  Nov 5, 2025

Jerry’s post reminded me of something I’ve been wondering about. We both hit 65 this year and started Medicare. We pay a hefty IRMAA up charge because it’s based on our 2023 income, when we were both working. I retired in July. Though I’m drawing pension income, my gross income has obviously dropped. However, between my pensions, my husband’s pension, and his current salary, I’m guessing that filing for a change in status reconsideration wouldn’t adjust the big picture. BUT—my husband has now settled on retiring next year (October 1). That means that as of 2027, our income will drop substantially, and it should lower our IRMAA hit considerably. My question is: Do I need to file the form now (having retired) about my change in status, even if it won’t change the IRMAA charge for 2026? Will it be too late to ask for the adjustment after he also retires?
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Oops!

DrLefty   |  Oct 25, 2025

I received an email from my previous employer a few weeks ago. I’ll paraphrase: “Ooops. When we processed your last paycheck in June, we failed to deduct your elected contributions to your 403B and 457 accounts.” Now, I knew this because my final paycheck was quite a bit larger than I’d expected, but I thought I’d just misunderstood how the dates worked. (I separated from my employer on June 28, retired on July 1, and my final paycheck, in arrears for June, was processed somewhere between June 27-30.) Oh, well, I’ll just pay a bit more in taxes because of this. Or so I thought. Nope. Apparently if the employer makes that mistake, they have to compensate the employee: “In accordance with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidelines, [my employer] will correct this by making a Qualified Nonelective Contribution (QNEC) for the plan(s) listed below…” It turned out to be 50% of what I would have contributed that month to the two accounts. To be clear, it was my employer’s money, not mine. They’re just required by this IRS guideline to give it me. With the two contributions put together, it came out to just under $3000 of free money! It landed in my Fidelity accounts a couple of days ago. Now, as I’ve shared here before, I’d already rolled those accounts over to my Schwab IRA, which was quite an involved process. For this extra little bonus money, I decided to ask Fidelity to just withhold federal and state taxes and withdraw the money and direct-deposit it to my checking account. That turned out to just take a couple of minutes and a few clicks. It will take another day or two, and the take-home amount is just over $2200. Again, this is totally “found” money, so I plan to do something…
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