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Lonely Island

Mark Crothers | Apr 22, 2026

"I am experiencing a similar issue with Avelo Airlines, which arbitrarily canceled a leg of our flight and shifted us to similar seats on a flight a day later, which we can make happen but it leaves us with questions that need answering. I found myself 415th in the call rotation because they are of course "experiencing heavier than normal call volume" so I left a callback number. That was three days ago. Crickets. So I took to social media and, voila, I got responses from three different Avelo accounts. So maybe today I'll get some things resolved. Or not."

- Ted Tompkins

Tax Free Income Trap, Dealing With MAGI

DAN SMITH | Apr 21, 2026

"Thanks, Dan. Useful information."

- Edmund Marsh

The IRA Decision That Affects Your Kids

David Lancaster | Apr 17, 2026

"My understanding is yes if the state specific rules are followed and the disclaimer is filed timely. Dr. Dahle's post in the above linked post lists six key general aspects for a disclaimer to be valid. I think the need to file a disclaimer could often be eliminated with appropriate planning and action during life."

- William Perry

Financial Tension

William Housley | Apr 17, 2026

"Curry is smart… he will figure out how to invest."

- William Housley

Hidden Surcharge

DAN SMITH | Apr 21, 2026

"Amazing!"

- Nick Politakis

Driving a Bargain

ArticleLogan Murray | May 20, 2022

"NEVER BORROW MONEY to buy a depreciating asset." This personal finance tip is often used to dissuade folks from taking out car loans. But does a car really leave folks poorer?

When we value an asset, it’s typically thought of as its dollar value on a balance sheet. The monetary value of my car might indeed decline, and quickly at that, but it has far more usefulness than my personal balance sheet shows. When I consider my car’s true value, I think of how much it improves my life.

I made a major change in 2018, moving from Philadelphia to Scottsdale, Arizona. I landed with two suitcases, a backpack and my cat. I had a job starting in three weeks in the heart of Old Town Scottsdale—a pricey area.

In Philadelphia, I’d never needed a car. There’s great public transportation and I could get almost anywhere by walking or taking the train. If you’ve ever been to Phoenix and its surrounding suburbs, it’s a different story. It sprawls in every direction and lacks decent public transportation.

As a young professional 2,000 miles from home, I needed to travel this big expanse. I also wanted to do some exploring in the West, so I took out a loan to buy a new car.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever recoup the money I paid for the vehicle. In fact, I suspect that my car will always be asking me for more money—for maintenance and repairs—even after I’ve paid off the loan. That’s fine. My expectations are set on this because I see so much additional value in owning a car.

Monetary benefits. Old Town Scottsdale’s rents are at least 20% higher than some surrounding areas. I can live less expensively nearby as long as I can handle a 10- to 15-minute commute.

My car also provides me access to a larger pool of jobs. On top of that, I have reliable transportation, which makes me a more dependable employee. Finally, in this gig economy, a car opens up opportunities for self-employment, a side gig or temporary income during a gap in employment. This could come from signing on with services like Uber, DoorDash and Instacart.

Emotional benefits. My car is truly liberating. It can buy me time by making travel more convenient. It allows me to live where I want and gain happiness through new experiences outside of my neighborhood. The ability to go anywhere at any time is hugely appealing.

If it takes a loan to realize these benefits, I’m willing to bear that cost. I think most Americans would agree with me. Even when you’ve decided that a car is worth buying, however, another financial argument breaks out. It’s about whether it’s better to buy a new car or a used one. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"]

This is where I find the biggest ridicule from finance influencers. They advise never to buy a new car, and especially never to buy a new car with a loan. That’s because the moment you drive a new car off the dealer lot, it takes a big hit, thanks to depreciation.

Perhaps, in an ideal world, we’d all buy a good used car with cash. But that option isn’t available to many people. Moreover, even if you can afford to pay cash, there can be a good reason to buck the conventional wisdom. The benefit I’ve received from buying a new car can be summarized in one word: reliability.

A new car brings me peace of mind, knowing it’s unlikely I’ll be waiting on the side of the road for AAA. I don’t have to leave an extra hour early for work in case my car doesn’t get me there. I also knew I’d be traveling along dirt roads and across state lines to do some exploring, so reliability was nonnegotiable with my car purchase.

A new car works out well for me on another level. I’m not a car guy. I lack the understanding of how to take care of one. The new car warranty typically covers the scheduled service for the first few years. I’m happy to pay more to get that responsibility off my plate.

My goal has never been to turn around and sell my car for a decent sum when I’m done using it. Instead, I want to pull out all the value I can along the way. I’ll increase both my life experiences and my financial wealth through its use—and not by selling it at the end. Logan Murray is a solo financial advisor. His company Pocket Project offers subscription-based financial planning services to young professionals. For more financial insights, read Logan’s blog, connect with him on LinkedIn and check out his earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

The condo, HOA, senior citizen conundrum

R Quinn | Apr 19, 2026

"True in some cases, but if you can buy a $900,000 condo in one of the wealthiest town in Nj, perhaps the northeast, you likely don’t have a limited monthly budget - or shouldn’t."

- R Quinn

Staying Rational

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Apr 18, 2026

IT'S BEEN MORE than six years since Covid first entered our vocabulary. It goes without saying that investors have experienced a lot, and for better or worse, recent market events provide some useful lessons. The first has to do with the nature of the stock market. What drives stock prices? Open a finance textbook, and the answer will be clear: The value of a stock should equal the sum of the company’s future profits. This idea is known as intrinsic value, and it’s the textbook explanation of how stock prices work. But there’s clearly a disconnect, since stock prices bounce around far more than the math suggests they should. How can we square this circle? Over the long term, the data tell us that intrinsic value is a valid idea. Chart the price of any given stock, then overlay the company’s profits, and there will often be a reasonably close relationship. But only if you’re Rip Van Winkle. Over shorter periods of time, anything can happen. Stocks often move far above or far below their intrinsic values in response to the news of the day. Especially during times of economic uncertainty, intrinsic value analysis is typically cast aside and replaced by some combination of emotion, conjecture, speculation and storytelling. That’s what we saw in the early months of 2020. Stores were closed, employees had been sent home and the economy went into recession. And since no one had a crystal ball, that’s when storytellers were able to step in with their extreme predictions, causing the stock market to drop more than 30% in the space of six weeks. The lesson for investors: No one can predict when the next crisis will roll around or what form it will take. But there is one very reasonable way to be able to keep it in perspective: by remembering that, at the end of the day, intrinsic value is what matters, and ultimately that’s what drives stock prices. Basic arithmetic illustrates how this can help us manage through the next crisis. Consider that the price-to-earnings ratio of the U.S. stock market has historically averaged around 16. The average company’s total stock market value, in other words, has been equal to about 16 times its annual profits. Now let’s imagine that the next crisis results in every company in America losing an entire year of earnings. That’s extreme and hasn’t happened since the Depression, but it’s useful as a thought experiment. In that scenario, what would be the impact to those companies’ intrinsic value? In simple terms, it would be just one-sixteenth, or a modest 6%. What if a crisis were so severe that a company lost two years of earnings? Using this simple model, the impact would be about 12%. This is meaningful, I believe, because crises typically result in stock price declines that are far more severe than just 6% or 12%. In 2000 and in 2008, the market dropped more than 50%. While every crisis is different, I think it’s useful to keep these numbers in mind whenever the next geopolitical event causes stocks to drop. When that occurs, storytellers will inevitably take over, and the news will be downbeat. But if stocks drop to an extreme degree, as they have in the past, we can probably view it as an overreaction. That won’t help anyone’s portfolio recover any faster, but it should help us tune out the worst of the forecasters and maintain our equanimity. How else can you maintain an even keel during a market crisis? It’s important to understand the impact of recency bias. This bias is the tendency to extrapolate from current conditions, to assume that the future will look like the present, and to downplay the possibility that things might change. That tendency is what contributed to the cycle of negative news during the depths of 2020, and this is why I think it’s so important for investors to be aware of market history. Again, extensive analysis isn’t required. We need only look back across some of the crises the country has weathered, from the Civil War to the Depression to World War II. In each case, the economy recovered and went on to become larger and stronger than before. The lesson for investors: In the depths of a crisis, it’s very difficult to know when or how it will end. But a sense of history can help carry us through. Those are ways to manage through a crisis. Covid also provided a lesson on how to prepare—specifically, how to prepare our portfolios—for a future downturn. In 2022, investors were caught flat-footed when popular total-bond market funds delivered surprising losses. These funds are one pillar of the well-known three-fund portfolio and have traditionally been viewed as the default choice for a set-it-and-forget-it bond allocation. But in 2022, when the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates, these funds dropped a surprising 13%. That was during the same year that the U.S. stock market dropped nearly 20%, creating a very difficult situation for those in retirement and needing to withdraw from their portfolios. The lesson for investors: Total-bond market funds may be well diversified, but they carry risk along another very important dimension known as duration. This is a bond metric that measures, in simple terms, how long it will take for bondholders to be repaid, and it’s a key determinant of risk. The longer the duration, the greater the risk of loss when rates rise. While total-bond market funds have holdings across a broad range of durations, they average out to nearly six years. That’s why they lost so much value in 2022. What’s the alternative? Short-term bond funds tend to have a duration in the neighborhood of just two years. As a result, in 2022, short-term government bond funds like Vanguard’s Short-Term Treasury ETF (ticker: VGSH) lost a far more manageable 4% of their value. To be sure, every crisis is different, and it’s easy to rationalize about the past once it’s in the past. But these lessons, I think, can help us better prepare both our emotions and our portfolios for whatever comes next. 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.

A Life You Build

Jeff Peck | Apr 19, 2026

"Thank you, Jeff, for sharing your inspiring story. One of the greatest gifts of getting older is the ability to look back at the mountains we’ve climbed and realize—despite the doubts along the way—that we did better than we ever gave ourselves credit for."

- Andrew Clements

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

DAN SMITH | Apr 12, 2026

"Martin, I resemble your remark! As a regular Costco shopper and a patron of hardware stores, I am in total agreement."

- DAN SMITH

Carrying Humble Dollar Forward

Andrew Clements | Apr 7, 2026

"Thank you for the comment, retirement can definitely be scary but if it's well thought out it can be a wonderful journey."

- Andrew Clements

Scent of a Cheapskate: Frugality Gone Wrong

Mark Crothers | Apr 17, 2026

"Sounds like a much, much worse version of my day spent sawing up an old rabbit hutch and taking it to the landfill myself instead of paying our waste hauler a few dollars extra to haul it away! That was 35 or so years ago, but I still remember it -- so the idea of sawing up an oil tank and dispos... let's not even go there! Thanks for posting."

- urbie53ca4a2392

Lonely Island

Mark Crothers | Apr 22, 2026

- Ted Tompkins

Tax Free Income Trap, Dealing With MAGI

DAN SMITH | Apr 21, 2026

"Thanks, Dan. Useful information."

- Edmund Marsh

The IRA Decision That Affects Your Kids

David Lancaster | Apr 17, 2026

- William Perry

Financial Tension

William Housley | Apr 17, 2026

"Curry is smart… he will figure out how to invest."

- William Housley

Hidden Surcharge

DAN SMITH | Apr 21, 2026

"Amazing!"

- Nick Politakis

Driving a Bargain

ArticleLogan Murray | May 20, 2022

"NEVER BORROW MONEY to buy a depreciating asset." This personal finance tip is often used to dissuade folks from taking out car loans. But does a car really leave folks poorer?

As a young professional 2,000 miles from home, I needed to travel this big expanse. I also wanted to do some exploring in the West, so I took out a loan to buy a new car.

Monetary benefits. Old Town Scottsdale’s rents are at least 20% higher than some surrounding areas. I can live less expensively nearby as long as I can handle a 10- to 15-minute commute.

The condo, HOA, senior citizen conundrum

R Quinn | Apr 19, 2026

"True in some cases, but if you can buy a $900,000 condo in one of the wealthiest town in Nj, perhaps the northeast, you likely don’t have a limited monthly budget - or shouldn’t."

- R Quinn

Staying Rational

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Apr 18, 2026

A Life You Build

Jeff Peck | Apr 19, 2026

- Andrew Clements

Manifesto

Apr 22, 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

Apr 22, 2026

BUYING A CAR? Think twice before financing it through the dealership. While dealership loans are convenient, the interest rate charged will include the dealership’s markup. You can likely get a lower rate by going to a bank or credit union—or using a home equity line of credit. One warning: Interest on home equity borrowing for a car purchase is no longer tax-deductible.

Truths

Apr 21, 2026

NO. 20: DOLLAR-COST averaging isn’t magical—but it is worthwhile. Investing the same sum every month in stocks supposedly improves the odds of making money. But in truth, dollar-cost averaging is about investor psychology: It helps us to overcome our reluctance to invest in stocks, instills discipline and makes stock market declines more palatable.

act

Apr 20, 2026

ALERT U.S. EMBASSIES to your travel plans. Before leaving on a foreign trip, sign up for the State Department's free Smart Traveler Enrollment Program and detail where you’re going. The local U.S. embassy or consulate will then contact you if, say, there’s a natural disaster or terrorist incident while you’re traveling abroad—and it may be able to offer advice or help.

Money Guide

Manifesto

Apr 22, 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: Cars

No Help

Matt C. White | Jul 4, 2022

OUR LAST SUMMER road trip didn’t exactly go as planned. That ordeal changed my mind about an annual expense I’d been paying without much thought. I gained a new perspective—even if I did learn my lesson the hard way.
On a Saturday morning last summer, Sarah and I woke our kids at 4 a.m. for a predawn drive through the mountains of East Tennessee and across the Carolinas. We were on our way to enjoy the beaches of Hilton Head Island,

Ode to a Civic

Isaac Cathey | Dec 23, 2020

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM posits that a car is a poor investment, at least from a financial standpoint. It’s extraordinarily difficult to turn a profit, especially over the long term.
According to Carfax, the owner of a new car can expect the vehicle to lose 20% of its value in the first year and 10% annually thereafter. Beyond depreciation, owning a car involves fuel and maintenance costs, insurance premiums, parking fees, registration fees, tolls, sales tax,

Mercedes and Me

Richard Quinn | Sep 11, 2019

MY FATHER WAS A CAR salesman. For the last 20 years of his career, he sold Mercedes and he was good at it. He even won a sales contest that included a trip to Germany to tour the factory.
Unfortunately, selling Mercedes does not mean you can afford one. But he did get to drive them. As a kid, I was also hooked. When I was 17, I was allowed to drive a 190SL in the local July 4th parade.

They’ve Gone Soft

Tom Scott | Nov 3, 2023

MY WIFE AND I BOUGHT a used hybrid Toyota RAV4 recently. We saw it at a dealership and bought it that day.
This wasn’t an impulse purchase. We knew it was time to replace my 10-year-old Subaru Forester, and we’d done research on hybrids and electric vehicles. Because the new car would be our distance traveling vehicle, and my occasional work transportation, we wanted the flexibility of a hybrid. In time, we’ll replace our second car with an electric vehicle for local driving.

I Need Car Advice

R Quinn | Jan 24, 2025

My ten year old car needs $8,000 in repairs. It’s worth about $5,500. I’m thinking not worth more investment.
So, do I pay cash, loan or lease?
Take a deal on a loaner with 6,100 miles or go for something new?
Have to decide in four days. HELP😩

Ride of a Lifetime

Ron Wayne | Apr 13, 2022

SAVED A BUNCH of money so you could retire and buy that sporty car you always wanted? My advice: Do it.
In almost 50 years of owning vehicles, I have bought just one car that was almost fully impractical. It had a shallow shelf of a trunk. My wife couldn’t drive it because it had a stick shift. More than a few times, I had to start it by pushing it down a hill,

All Stocks

John Yeigh | Feb 15, 2019

AFTER THE MARKET turbulence of recent months, the idea of a 100% stock portfolio would strike many folks as crazy. Yet, when I was in the workforce, that's pretty much what I owned. I never felt my all-stock portfolio was particularly risky. My wife and I had solid paychecks to rely on. We always maxed out our retirement plans, while also adding to other accounts, and then lived on whatever remained. While the stock market’s volatility and the occasional downturns may have been disconcerting, they never changed our all-in stock approach for our long-term savings. In the event of a major downturn, we felt we could always continue working to rebuild our savings and, if necessary, delay our retirement. In addition to the security offered by our paychecks, the risk of an all-stock portfolio was somewhat mitigated by other areas of our financial life. Like most folks, we were earning Social Security benefits. I was also fortunate to be covered by a traditional pension plan, providing further retirement funds with no stock market risk. On top of that, we had significant and growing home equity. These various resources provided a solid, multi-legged stool for retirement. In addition, we ended up with another half leg, thanks to an inheritance and some income from a side business, though we never counted on these. Our confidence in our all-in approach was further bolstered by our conservative stock portfolio. We mainly invested in broad, low-cost U.S. stock market index funds, with almost no foreign market exposure and never any emerging markets investments. I figured I’d let U.S. companies manage our foreign market exposure, along with the related currency and political risk. No doubt we incurred occasional opportunity costs, missing out on hot markets and hot sectors. But our tortoise approach allowed us to stay…

Helping Ourselves

John Yeigh | Mar 24, 2022

WE NEEDED MONEY to close on a new home. The mortgage process progressed smoothly—until the underwriters suddenly rejected the property right before closing. To get together the money needed to close, my wife and I had to resort to loan sharks—ourselves. We borrowed from our IRAs. The rules allow tax-free distributions for either a 60-day rollover to a new IRA or reinvestment back into the same IRA. When we called Vanguard Group to execute our “rollovers,” the phone reps were well-versed on this short-term, self-funded loan strategy. They even advised us on the critical rules. The money must be reinvested in an IRA within 60 days or taxes are owed on the withdrawal. Rollovers are allowed only once per 12-month period across all IRA accounts. Since IRA rules apply to individuals, household members can take advantage of the strategy at the same time. Why was all this necessary? The mortgage application process, property appraisal and title search were slow going, thanks to today’s hot housing market. The mortgage process took a lethargic 70 days, only for us to get rejected due to extra land and summer cabins included in the purchase. Those items added value to the property but didn’t “conform.” We would have been smart to have lined up alternative financing possibilities, such as setting up a home equity line of credit on our old house, arranging to borrow against our taxable investment accounts or pursuing a higher-cost mortgage option elsewhere—one that acknowledged the property’s unusual features. Following the rejection, we immediately pursued a cash-out refinancing on our existing home. We got a head start by using the same lender that had refused to write us a mortgage on the new property. This refinancing payout landed in our bank account 20 days after closing on the new property. We…

Losing My Balance

John Yeigh | Feb 14, 2020

CNBC ANCHOR BECKY Quick recently summed up today’s retirement investing dilemma in one sentence: “You’re never going to make enough money if you have 40% of your money in bonds.” She, along with many pundits, believe the old standby recommendation to invest 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds—the classic balanced portfolio—is dead. Google “60/40 asset allocation” and the majority of recent articles have titles that include such words as “eulogy,” “endangered,” “dead,” “the end of” and “not good enough.” Likewise, I regularly chat about investment strategies with friends and none is rushing to buy bonds or extend maturities at today’s low interest rates. Even “bond king” Jeffrey Gundlach suggested in a December 2019 interview that “corporate bond exposure [in the U.S.] should be at an absolute minimum level right now.” While many articles and pundits deride the old balanced portfolio, surprisingly few articles suggest a simple yet sound alternative. CNBC’s Quick inadvertently identified it when she stated, “I have some cash so that I make sure that I have a cushion… but I don’t have anything in bonds.” Quick’s views mirror that of my friends and me, as we invest in today’s low-interest rate environment. Our approach: Maintain enough cash to weather a stock pullback, while investing the rest entirely in stocks. How much should you keep in cash? Think about how much money you need each year from your portfolio to supplement other income sources, like Social Security, pensions and income annuities. Since the Second World War, there have been a dozen major declines of 20%-plus. From the start of these bear markets, it took an average of almost three years for share prices to return to their earlier peak, with the absolute longest taking seven-and-a-half years. In other words, the historical data suggests retirees might hold cash equal…

Securing Lower Taxes

John Yeigh | Jan 5, 2023

THE TWO SECURE ACTS—2019’s and 2022’s—may inadvertently increase the federal and state tax rates on tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s, 403(b)s and IRAs. While well-intentioned, the laws result in required withdrawals being bunched into fewer years—which could push people into higher tax brackets. But there are ways this tax toll might be lightened or avoided, as you’ll see. With tax-deferred accounts, the normal advice is to delay taxable distributions for as long as possible to give more time for investment growth. That rule might need to be ditched. Why? For starters, the two SECURE Acts have raised the age when required minimum distributions (RMDs) must begin—from age 70½ in 2020 to age 72 in 2022, 73 in 2023 and 75 in 2033. Now, consider that the average lifespan of Americans fell during COVID-19. In practice, then, there might be just a decade or so of required withdrawal years before the balance goes to beneficiaries. And that could be quite a taxing event. Widows and widowers, for example, can owe higher taxes than married couples with equivalent incomes. Widows with taxable incomes between roughly $45,000 and $90,000 would pay a 22% top marginal tax rate, versus 12% for a married couple filing a joint return showing similar income. This is the so-called “widow’s tax,” which has been well-documented on HumbleDollar and elsewhere. Similarly, children or grandchildren who inherit might be hitting their peak earning years—and paying taxes at their highest marginal rate. Compounding the problem, 2019’s SECURE Act shortened the distribution period for inherited IRAs to 10 years for most beneficiaries. Previously, distributions could be taken over a beneficiary’s remaining actuarial lifespan—the so-called stretch IRA. If we assume that these heirs take equal annual distributions, they’d need to withdraw roughly 10% a year, instead of the 3% to 5% per…

Take a Break

John Yeigh | Nov 7, 2019

SAVE FIRST FOR THE kids’ college or for your own retirement? Pundits generally recommend that parents put themselves first. But I’d argue the question demands a more nuanced answer. The tax code offers numerous tax-savings opportunities for families with dependent children—and those tax breaks shouldn’t be overlooked. To be sure, for cash-strapped parents, the top two financial priorities should be building up an emergency fund and putting at least enough in their 401(k) or 403(b) to capture the full employer match. Already doing that? Instead of shoveling further money into retirement plans, consider whether you’d be better off exploiting these seven kid-related tax strategies: 1. A 529 plan is arguably the best tax-favored college savings account. The plans come in two flavors. Prepaid tuition plans allow you to buy credits toward the cost of particular colleges, effectively locking in current tuition rates. Meanwhile, 529 savings plans offer the opportunity to earn tax-free gains by investing in a menu of mutual funds. Note that 529 money is an asset that can affect financial aid eligibility. Want flexibility? Think twice before opening a prepaid tuition plan. One friend funded a prepaid plan, but his kids later balked at all the in-state colleges covered by the plan. The go-to website to review all things 529 is SavingforCollege.com. 2. Like 529 plans, Coverdell education savings accounts offer tax-free growth to pay for qualified education expenses. Coverdells can also be used for primary and secondary schools—now also an option for 529s, thanks to 2017’s tax law. The downside: Coverdells have a relatively modest $2,000 per year contribution limit, plus there are income limits on who can fund these accounts. We contributed to Coverdells for just a couple of years and used the money for high school costs, so our tax savings proved quite small. Today’s…

Give Early and Often

John Yeigh | Feb 22, 2024

KEY PROVISIONS IN 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will expire in 2026 unless Congress steps in. That means folks have a two-year window to prepare. What’s at stake? Income-tax rates will increase for many taxpayers. This creates an incentive to boost income over the next few years by, say, undertaking Roth conversions to shrink traditional retirement accounts and thereby lowering future required minimum distributions. The sunsetting of key TCJA provisions would also cut the threshold for federal estate taxes in half, from an estimated $14 million per individual in 2025 to $7.1 million in 2026. The limit for married couples is double these amounts, though—to capture a deceased spouse’s estate-tax exclusion—the surviving spouse must typically file an estate tax return within nine months of the first spouse’s death. Got wealth that’s above the projected 2026 threshold of $7.1 million for individuals and $14.2 million for married couples? You should almost certainly consult an estate attorney. Two common strategies are to use trusts or lifetime gifting to capture today’s high exemptions before 2026. The IRS has confirmed that there will be no “claw-back” if you take advantage of today’s high threshold. The lower 2026 estate exemptions of $7.1 million or $14.2 million—assuming today’s higher limits are allowed to sunset—would continue to cover 99.8% of us. Still, retirees with a few million dollars of financial assets might want to review their estate plan, especially if they’re married or if they have significant assets in traditional retirement accounts, where all withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income. Why? Married couples can face tax and income penalties after the first spouse dies—what’s commonly referred to as the “widow’s penalty.” The surviving spouse is potentially subject to the quadruple whammy of a reduced standard deduction, filing as a single taxpayer rather than married filing…

Lonely Island

Tax Free Income Trap, Dealing With MAGI

The IRA Decision That Affects Your Kids

Financial Tension

Hidden Surcharge

Driving a Bargain

The condo, HOA, senior citizen conundrum

Staying Rational

A Life You Build

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Carrying Humble Dollar Forward

Scent of a Cheapskate: Frugality Gone Wrong

Lonely Island

Tax Free Income Trap, Dealing With MAGI

The IRA Decision That Affects Your Kids

Financial Tension

Hidden Surcharge

Driving a Bargain

The condo, HOA, senior citizen conundrum

Staying Rational

A Life You Build

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Get Educated

Manifesto

act

Truths

act

Money Guide

Manifesto

Spotlight: Cars

No Help

Ode to a Civic

Mercedes and Me

They’ve Gone Soft

I Need Car Advice

Ride of a Lifetime

Spotlight: Yeigh

All Stocks

Helping Ourselves

Losing My Balance

Securing Lower Taxes

Take a Break

Give Early and Often