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What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

William Perry | Sep 14, 2026

"I can confirm Bill P.'s experience. I have the IRS Direct Pay link "bookmarked" on my computer and just posted my 3/4 estimated payment today via EFT from my bank account without needing a login credential. I have been doing so for at least the past 8 years. Bill M."

- Bill Minter

I will still take the dividends

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"Dunn, You may want to edit your reply when it’s longer than article you are replying to."

- Michael Flack

The Silent Committee

John Goodell | Sep 14, 2026

"Thanks, John, very informative."

- DAN SMITH

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

WHEN A HUSBAND dies, his widow inherits his IRA. Somewhere in the paperwork of the months that follow there is a decision to make, and nobody presents it to her as one. She can take the account as her own, or she can leave it titled as inherited. Taking it as her own means filling something in. Leaving it means doing nothing, and the IRS tells custodians they may assume that is what she wants. So the account sits where it is, at the same firm, holding money the household always treated as joint, and the decision gets made by nobody. It is the more expensive of the two. Not by a little. Two Tables Every year, a required minimum distribution, or RMD, has to come out of the account. The amount is the balance divided by a number from an IRS table, and there are two tables in play here. Beneficiaries use the Single Life Expectancy table. Owners use the Uniform Lifetime table, which spreads the money over a longer period and therefore asks for less each year. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth about a third of the annual bill. Take a widow of 76 with $480,000. Left titled as an inherited account, she must take $34,043 that year. Had she taken the same account into her own name, she would have to take $20,253. Same money, same woman, same birthday. The difference is which box got ticked in the months after the funeral. It Does Not Happen Once That gap is not a one-year event. Run both versions forward 10 years, same account, same growth, taking exactly what is required and nothing more. The inherited schedule forces out $374,306 over the decade. As owner, $246,281. She pays about $30,600 more in federal income tax getting there, and reaches 85 with roughly $171,000 less still inside the IRA. She has not lost that money. She has been made to take it out early, pay tax on it sooner, and hold it somewhere less sheltered for the rest of her life. That is a slower kind of damage than a penalty, and a larger one, because it renews every January for as long as she lives. A Floor, Not a Ceiling The usual objection to taking the account as your own is that it locks the money up. It does the opposite. A required distribution is a floor, not a ceiling. She can take more in any year she wants it, for any reason, and nobody asks why. What she leaves alone stays sheltered and keeps compounding. The lower figure buys her the choice. The higher one makes it for her, every year, whether the money is needed or not. One Case Runs the Other Way There is a real exception, and it matters enough to state plainly. Money paid out of an inherited IRA escapes the 10% early-withdrawal penalty at any age, because the IRS exempts what is paid to a beneficiary on account of the owner's death. Take the account as your own and you are back under the ordinary rules. So a survivor who is young enough that an early withdrawal would be penalized, and who expects to need the money, has a genuine reason to leave the account exactly where it is. That threshold is 59 and a half. For most couples already retired this will not apply, and the rest of the article governs. Where it does apply, it outranks everything above. Nobody Will Prompt You I wrote recently about the letter that never comes. A custodian has to tell an IRA owner what must be withdrawn each year, and owes an inherited account nothing at all. So the choice decides more than the size of the bill. Take the account as your own and the letter starts arriving, every January, for the rest of your life. Leave it as inherited and you are on your own to remember the RMD. The branch that requires no paperwork is therefore both the more expensive one and the quiet one, and those two facts feed each other. The option that costs more is also the one that removes the annual nudge that might have made you reconsider it. Decide It Before You Have To None of this is hard to work out. It is hard to work out in the eight weeks after a funeral, which is exactly when it gets decided, usually by default. If you are married and you both hold IRAs, settle it now, while it is hypothetical for both of you. Talk through which of you would be likely to need the money soon after the other died. That is what the 59-and-a-half question really asks, and it is a conversation about your circumstances rather than about tax tables. Then decide which way the survivor should go, write it down, and put it with your trust, your will and the beneficiary designations, where a survivor or an executor will actually come across it. Tell whoever else needs to know that it exists. Look at it again as either of you nears the age your own distributions must begin. That is 70 and a half if you were born before July 1949, 72 if you were born between then and the end of 1950, 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. It is the birthday that makes the whole question live. The paperwork will not choose for you. It will simply do nothing, which is a choice, and on these numbers it is the wrong one for most people who make it by accident. ________________________________________________________________________________ John Urban is the founder of RetireSmartIRA, a retirement tax-planning app. Earlier, he founded GT Nexus, a supply-chain software company acquired by Infor in 2015. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Kathy, and enjoys time with family, travel, reading, Bay Area sports, and the occasional deep dive into the fine print of the tax code.

Financial Choices

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Sep 12, 2026

FOR MUCH OF THE seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European monarchs used a financial instrument known as a tontine to help finance their governments. Tontines were first developed in the 1650s by an Italian government worker named Lorenzo Tonti and were similar to annuities: In exchange for a single, lump-sum purchase, tontines offered guaranteed payments for life. But tontines also offered some unique features. Unlike an annuity, where payments end with the death of the owner, tontine holders had the option of tying the payments to another person. A parent, for example, could name their son or daughter on a tontine, thus extending the payments over a much longer period. In the 1750s, however, a Swiss banker named Jacob Beaumont had a realization: While the owners of tontines typically named their children, a quirk in the rules permitted a tontine owner to name any individual. To Beaumont, this presented an opportunity: Why not name the youngest possible person, thus extending the stream of payments even further? In his home town of Geneva, Beaumont identified ideal candidates for this role: young children who came from well-heeled backgrounds and were thus likely to have access to good healthcare. He then began loading up on tontines tied to the very long life expectancies of these children. The strategy worked exactly as expected and delivered Beaumont enormous profits. Other investors then piled in, mimicking Beaumont’s strategy, which, for a time, offered a virtually no-lose opportunity for profit. This went on until the French government, in frustration, discontinued its tontine program. When it comes to financial decisions, it’s the rare situation that’s as obvious as the one that Beaumont identified. Instead, most financial decisions entail some amount of uncertainty and are subject to judgment. Some choices, though, are closer than others to being obvious decisions. Here are six that I see frequently.

Certain Social Security claiming decisions are without question. For example, if you’re married and plan to claim the spousal benefit, it’s important to know that this benefit hits a maximum at full retirement age (FRA), which is now age 67 for most people. Unlike workers’ own benefits, which can continue to increase all the way to age 70, spousal benefits are subject to a different rule, so there’s no benefit for anyone to wait beyond FRA.
You may be familiar with umbrella insurance. This provides additional liability coverage on top of auto and homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance. Because it covers low-likelihood situations, such as someone slipping and falling on your front walk, umbrella coverage is extremely cost effective—sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars per year. I see it as an obvious benefit because the situations it covers, however unlikely, are also the ones that could be the most expensive. And because it would be the insurance company that would face exposure, insurers provide legal defense, at their expense, if there is ever a claim. How much coverage should you have? I generally recommend between $1 million and $5 million, but the key point is that almost any coverage is better than none.
In choosing an asset allocation for your portfolio, I think it’s best to avoid rules of thumb, because everyone is different. At the same time, a recommendation that I see as universal is to avoid extremes. I wouldn’t get too close to 100% bonds because of the corrosive impact of inflation. And I don’t like getting too close to 100% stocks because of the volatility and risk of loss. That’s always been my view, but recent research can help investors narrow the range further. William Bengen, creator of the “4% rule,” published a book last year in which, for the first time, he looked at the question of portfolio longevity through the lens of asset allocation. What he found was that portfolios with stock allocations between 45% and 75% offered the highest sustainable withdrawal rates over multiple decades.

If you’ve recently retired, you may be considering a Roth conversion, whereby you’d move dollars from your pre-tax IRA to a Roth IRA. This is a popular strategy, but the catch is that a tax must be paid when a conversion is completed, and your tax bracket can increase as you convert more. Convert too much, and you can negate the benefit of a conversion. For that reason, it isn’t always obvious whether a conversion is advisable. There is one situation, though, where a conversion offers an almost obvious benefit: If your income, even with a conversion, would be in one of the two lowest tax brackets (10% or 12%), then it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself in a lower bracket than that in the future. In that case, especially because of special deductions provided by the new tax rules, I’d view it as an almost obvious choice to proceed with a conversion up to the top of the 12% bracket.

Looking to make charitable gifts? Because the standard deduction is now so high, fewer taxpayers are able to itemize deductions, and that can limit the tax benefit of donations. But there’s still a way to gain a tax benefit: If you have appreciated stocks in a taxable account, you can donate them to a donor-advised fund. That would allow you to sidestep the capital gains tax that would otherwise be due if you sold those stocks. Many donor-advised funds have no minimums, making this an easy choice, in my view.
If you believe your estate will top the estate tax threshold (about $15 million per person at the federal level, but much lower in certain states), then I would be sure to use the annual exclusion (currently $19,000 per donor and per recipient) to make incremental gifts to your heirs. That's because this annual exclusion is in addition to the lifetime exclusion and doesn’t carry over from year to year.

Note that these gifts don't have to be made in cash if the recipients aren't yet in a position to receive them. As alternatives, you could make contributions to a 529 account or to a trust for their benefit, and these contributions would count toward the annual exclusion. 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.

Total portfolio approach?

baldscreen | Sep 14, 2026

"Thank you, Bill. I read Dr Dahle, but a lot of his writings don’t fit our situation I will check this one out. Chris"

- baldscreen

Locking it in

greg_j_tomamichel | Sep 5, 2026

"I think you have pretty much nailed the setup in Australia. I know people that keep a very low balance on their mortgage to term, such that they have a line of credit available to them, secured against their house."

- greg_j_tomamichel

Being terminated…

gnussen623 | Sep 12, 2026

"I agree. A mindset change about retirement might very well be in order."

- gnussen623

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Mark Gardner | Sep 13, 2026

"Great Mark G with your suggestions. Any Government regulation is better than nothing. USG definitely needs to play a leadership role. Other countries may not even know where to start since all the major AI companies are operating from our land here. As a simple software engineer continuing in the Tech Industry for four decades, I wrote my view on this topic a week ago in three pages which can be read or downloaded as PDF from the following URL. https://lnkd.in/p/eyhTxmbs Cheers."

- Senthil Nathan

Growing Up In A Big House

DAN SMITH | Sep 9, 2026

".... and that's what it's all about!"

- DAN SMITH

Americans are rushing to collect Social Security. The reason is disturbing

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"My wife and I started taking social security the month we first became eligible at 62. Our break-even point is age 79. Regardless, the reason we didn't wait is that we have plenty of retirement income already...social security is simply travel money. Our goal wasn't to maximize the net present value of the draw of funds, which is only a guess anyway since you don't know how long you will live, but to maximize the enjoyment of the healthiest portion of retirement years."

- Joe D'Alessandro

A Wedding Too Far

Mark Crothers | Sep 7, 2026

"William, we were in the same boat — paying for our own wedding. That's probably why we kept costs down. We'd also just bought our first house six months earlier, so money was really tight."

- Mark Crothers

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

William Perry | Sep 14, 2026

- Bill Minter

I will still take the dividends

R Quinn | Sep 12, 2026

"Dunn, You may want to edit your reply when it’s longer than article you are replying to."

- Michael Flack

The Silent Committee

John Goodell | Sep 14, 2026

"Thanks, John, very informative."

- DAN SMITH

Widow’s IRA Choice

ArticleJohn Urban | Sep 12, 2026

Financial Choices

ArticleAdam M. Grossman | Sep 12, 2026

Certain Social Security claiming decisions are without question. For example, if you’re married and plan to claim the spousal benefit, it’s important to know that this benefit hits a maximum at full retirement age (FRA), which is now age 67 for most people. Unlike workers’ own benefits, which can continue to increase all the way to age 70, spousal benefits are subject to a different rule, so there’s no benefit for anyone to wait beyond FRA.
You may be familiar with umbrella insurance. This provides additional liability coverage on top of auto and homeowner’s (or renter’s) insurance. Because it covers low-likelihood situations, such as someone slipping and falling on your front walk, umbrella coverage is extremely cost effective—sometimes as low as a few hundred dollars per year. I see it as an obvious benefit because the situations it covers, however unlikely, are also the ones that could be the most expensive. And because it would be the insurance company that would face exposure, insurers provide legal defense, at their expense, if there is ever a claim. How much coverage should you have? I generally recommend between $1 million and $5 million, but the key point is that almost any coverage is better than none.
In choosing an asset allocation for your portfolio, I think it’s best to avoid rules of thumb, because everyone is different. At the same time, a recommendation that I see as universal is to avoid extremes. I wouldn’t get too close to 100% bonds because of the corrosive impact of inflation. And I don’t like getting too close to 100% stocks because of the volatility and risk of loss. That’s always been my view, but recent research can help investors narrow the range further. William Bengen, creator of the “4% rule,” published a book last year in which, for the first time, he looked at the question of portfolio longevity through the lens of asset allocation. What he found was that portfolios with stock allocations between 45% and 75% offered the highest sustainable withdrawal rates over multiple decades.

If you’ve recently retired, you may be considering a Roth conversion, whereby you’d move dollars from your pre-tax IRA to a Roth IRA. This is a popular strategy, but the catch is that a tax must be paid when a conversion is completed, and your tax bracket can increase as you convert more. Convert too much, and you can negate the benefit of a conversion. For that reason, it isn’t always obvious whether a conversion is advisable. There is one situation, though, where a conversion offers an almost obvious benefit: If your income, even with a conversion, would be in one of the two lowest tax brackets (10% or 12%), then it’s unlikely you’d ever find yourself in a lower bracket than that in the future. In that case, especially because of special deductions provided by the new tax rules, I’d view it as an almost obvious choice to proceed with a conversion up to the top of the 12% bracket.

Looking to make charitable gifts? Because the standard deduction is now so high, fewer taxpayers are able to itemize deductions, and that can limit the tax benefit of donations. But there’s still a way to gain a tax benefit: If you have appreciated stocks in a taxable account, you can donate them to a donor-advised fund. That would allow you to sidestep the capital gains tax that would otherwise be due if you sold those stocks. Many donor-advised funds have no minimums, making this an easy choice, in my view.
If you believe your estate will top the estate tax threshold (about $15 million per person at the federal level, but much lower in certain states), then I would be sure to use the annual exclusion (currently $19,000 per donor and per recipient) to make incremental gifts to your heirs. That's because this annual exclusion is in addition to the lifetime exclusion and doesn’t carry over from year to year.

Total portfolio approach?

baldscreen | Sep 14, 2026

"Thank you, Bill. I read Dr Dahle, but a lot of his writings don’t fit our situation I will check this one out. Chris"

- baldscreen

Locking it in

greg_j_tomamichel | Sep 5, 2026

- greg_j_tomamichel

Being terminated…

gnussen623 | Sep 12, 2026

"I agree. A mindset change about retirement might very well be in order."

- gnussen623

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Mark Gardner | Sep 13, 2026

- Senthil Nathan

Manifesto

Sep 13, 2026

NO. 32: WE SHOULD start with the global market portfolio—the investments we collectively own—and decide what we don’t want in our portfolio. Often, foreign bonds are the biggest subtraction.

Truths

Sep 15, 2026

NO. 118: OWNING both U.S. and foreign stocks will smooth out a portfolio’s long-run performance, as those two sectors take turns posting strong results. But when shares turn lower, global stock markets become highly correlated—and salvaging your portfolio’s short-run results will hinge on owning other asset classes, notably high-quality bonds.

think

Sep 14, 2026

BE AN OWNER. Home buyers typically fare better than renters, provided they stay put for at least five years. Becoming a part owner of corporations, by investing in stocks for the long haul, should be more lucrative than lending money by buying bonds. Owning a car is typically cheaper than leasing, provided you keep the vehicle for more than three years.

Truths

Sep 13, 2026

NO. 91: A MORTGAGE leverages your home’s price appreciation—and costs you a bundle in interest. If you buy a $300,000 home with $30,000 down and the price climbs 30% to $390,000, your home equity would leap 300% to $120,000. But how much did you pay in mortgage interest to get this gain? Often, the cost of leverage offsets the benefit.

Money Guide

Manifesto

Sep 13, 2026

Spotlight: Borrowing

A Contrarian View of a Mortgage

Mark Crothers | Aug 19, 2025

Suzie and I are visiting family and enjoying the Victorian grandeur of the coastal towns of southern England, in particular near Brighton where my brother-in-law recently purchased his first home. He’s been expressing nervousness about the new experience of having a mortgage. While chatting during the evening I’ve tried to soothe his mind with a version of this, I admit, slightly left-field argument. It seemed to help him and I thought I’d share my thoughts.
When my wife Suzie retired in June last year,

Refi or Not?

Richard Connor | Aug 10, 2020

MY WIFE AND I BOUGHT our first home in the mid-1980s. We were thrilled to get an 8% mortgage, though we had to pay three points—an upfront fee equal to 3% of the loan amount—to get that rate. Many of our friends had bought a few years earlier and were paying 14%, a common occurrence back then, according to Freddie Mac data.
We kept our eyes open for opportunities to refinance our high rate.

So Rewarding

Kristine Hayes | Oct 26, 2017

A FRIEND RECENTLY asked me the interest rate on my credit card. I admitted I had no idea. I pay off the balance in full every month and therefore don’t know, or care about, the interest rate.
I’m a minority in this regard. Only 35% of us pay off our credit card balance each month. We’re dismissed as “deadbeats” by profit-hungry credit card companies, perhaps with some justification: We reap the benefits of credit card rewards programs designed to lure the other 65% of the population into using their cards on a regular basis—and then foolishly carrying a balance.

Smarter But Homeless

Jonathan Clements | Dec 5, 2015

SOARING STUDENT DEBT is putting the kibosh on another major financial goal: buying a home. According to a study by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 40% of those age 18 to 30 have student debt, up from 27% in 2005. For these borrowers, the debt burden is staggering, with student loan payments estimated to devour more than 20% of their income in 2015.
With so much of their income devoted to servicing student loans,

A Perfect Score

Donnie Mattox | Jun 8, 2022

THE HIGHEST CREDIT score possible is 850, and I’ve hit that mark in eight of the past 12 months. In the other four months, I had a score of either 844 or 846 under the credit rating formula created by FICO, formerly called Fair Isaac Corp.
A FICO score between 800 and 850 is considered exceptional and gets you the best rates on loans. A score of 670 or more is considered “good,” but more doors and opportunities are available when your score hits 740,

Double Trouble

Jonathan Clements | Oct 14, 2017

PEOPLE OFTEN ACT foolishly and then desperately try to justify their financial sins. A case in point: Those who take on too much debt, can’t get it paid off by retirement—and end up servicing huge mortgages and other loans long after their paychecks have come to an end.
Cue the tap dancing. The indebted start waxing eloquent about the virtues of the mortgage-interest tax deduction and how it’s smart to pay the bank 4% while they invest the borrowed money at 10%.

Needing to Know

William Ehart | Jul 31, 2020

YEARS AGO, WHEN THE kids were teenagers, single Dad here was cooking dinner. You guessed it, hot dogs. I skillfully picked one up from the hot pan with my fingers and tossed it in a bun. When my daughter began to imitate me, I nearly shrieked. She lacked my years of experience in gauging exactly how hot the sides of the dog would be, how far from the splattering grease I needed to position my fingers, how many milliseconds I had to release the dog into the waiting bun. But something else was behind my horror and sense of guilt. It wasn’t just that my hands already had been cut and smashed and scalded many a time and that I wanted better for my little girl’s precious fingers. Rather, it’s that we make decisions differently when loved ones are involved. By ourselves, we may jaywalk, drive aggressively and invest with borrowed money. I’m guilty on all counts. We are willing to take greater risks for ourselves than for our children. The hot dog incident came to mind as I helped my daughter with her Roth IRA. I was recommending a 2060 target-date fund comprised of index funds, but thought about mixing it up a bit. How about a modest small-cap value stake, like Daddy has? That would reduce her exposure to the foreign stocks I’m skeptical of and to the runaway mega-cap tech stocks that scare me, both heavily represented in the target-date fund. But in my effort to guide her financial future, I fell into old, bad habits of thought. I was tempted to act like a know-it-all. Since I wanted to protect her, I had to know what small caps would do next, didn’t I? I wanted to trot out the charts, look at the moving averages, gauge…

Durn Furriners

William Ehart | Dec 12, 2019

A BURNING QUESTION has only gotten hotter as foreign stocks have lagged disastrously over the past dozen years: Should any of your stock market money be overseas? Most experts say “yes.” Vanguard Group, for one, recommends investors allocate 40% of their stock investments to foreign markets. In fact, some pundits have smugly derided what they call the “home bias” of those U.S. investors who avoid or underweight foreign stocks. Those stocks currently make up about 45% of world market capitalization. That smugness has waned considerably since 2007, as the S&P 500 Index has delivered a compound annual growth rate of 8%, versus 2% for MSCI’s Europe, Australasia and Far East (EAFE) index of developed country stocks. That’s a lot of opportunity cost. If emerging markets were included, the picture would look even worse. Vanguard Emerging Markets Index Fund is up a cumulative 10% over the past 12 years, compared with 29% for EAFE and 163% for the S&P 500. For this article and in the accompanying chart, I compare the S&P 500 and EAFE. The latter index goes back to 1970. By contrast, emerging markets indexes are relatively new, so it’s hard to do long-term comparisons. The data in the chart suggests investors can’t expect a “free lunch” by diversifying into foreign stocks. That phrase was used by Harry Markowitz, who introduced Modern Portfolio Theory in 1952. According to MPT, combining assets with similar long-term return potential but low correlations can boost portfolio returns while reducing volatility. Trouble is, foreign stocks have offered neither low correlations nor comparable returns for 12 years—and they didn’t in the 1990s, either. The only sustained period of foreign outperformance since 1989 was in 2002-07. Since the EAFE index’s inception in 1970, the S&P 500’s cumulative return has been double that of EAFE. But don’t…

Different This Time

William Ehart | Mar 25, 2020

I’M DETERMINED NOT to repeat my mistakes of 2008-09. I was ruined by that financial crisis or, more accurately, I let it ruin me. I led into it with my chin. I’ll spare you the details of my personal situation in the years leading up to the crash, but the upshot is I was egotistical, financially reckless and looking for a big score. As the crisis unfolded, I piled risk upon risk, mistake upon mistake. I bought 2008 all the way down, loading up on many of the beaten-down financial names: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and even Lehman Brothers. Unfortunately, I purchased Goldman and Morgan Stanley with borrowed money, using my margin account. I had been using such leverage for years—within prudent limits, I thought. I calculated potential downsides but, of course, it was the potential gains that seized my imagination. The hard lesson for me? It wasn’t that margin investors can be forced to sell stocks in bear markets, particularly the worst and most sudden ones, leaving them no means to buy back in. I knew that. What I didn’t know is that brokerage firms can decide overnight that some securities are no longer marginable and hence they don’t count as collateral. E*Trade said I couldn’t borrow against my Goldman and Morgan Stanley shares anymore. I was forced to sell. Probably less than two months before the low. Then I was laid off at the end of 2009 and missed about a year of potential 401(k) contributions as the market recovered. I entered 2020 much poorer for my folly. But I have no debt today. The car is paid off and has many miles left on it. My big risk is getting laid off again—unfortunately, a real possibility, as it is for so many. But unlike 2008, I’m not picking…

Don’t Sweat It

William Ehart | Aug 11, 2022

BEING MECHANICAL and unemotional is a poor way to live life. But when investing, it just might make you richer. Through this year’s stock market turbulence, I’ve been even keeled. My reaction to the plunging bond market has been more agitated, as I wrote about here and here. The fact is, while I’m convinced the stock market will rebound, I don’t have the same belief in bonds. Armed with my faith in stocks, I’ve adopted a mechanical approach to investing, primarily using stock index funds. No more trying to outsmart the next guy. I don’t have to time everything exactly right or worry about where shares will bottom. I have an allocation target for stocks as a percent of my total portfolio, along with preset trigger points at which I intend to buy more during substantial market dips. Pretty much all I need to know during a downdraft is, how far is the market from its peak? Sure, I subscribe to The New York Times, Morningstar and even Barron’s. I take advantage of the office subscription to The Wall Street Journal. I’ve got a wicked FinTwit feed of great financial journalists and pundits. And, of course, I read HumbleDollar. Still, as I make stock market decisions, it’s amazing all the things I don’t have to read. By avoiding overconsumption of financial news and advice, I keep my emotions in check and insulate myself from the temptation to put too much stock in predictions that seem persuasive in the moment. I don’t need to know how long bear markets have lasted historically, or their average decline, though I’m grateful to those who produce such information. I also don’t need to know what the market expects from future Federal Reserve interest rate moves. I don’t even need to know whether inflation has…

Wasted Journey?

William Ehart | Jan 14, 2022

WE OFTEN WRITE at HumbleDollar that saving and investing aren’t everything. Spending money on the right things—such as fulfilling experiences—can also be a great investment, especially if the dollars bring ample happiness. Nearly seven years ago, I thought I’d wasted $4,000 on a foreign trip. But the law of unintended consequences has since worked in my favor. The 2015 trip was supposed to be an investment in my career. I thought I could make a difference in the world and become a freelance foreign correspondent. I failed. I couldn’t interest any major publication in a story. At least The Christian Science Monitor gave me the courtesy of a polite response. What was meant to be an investment became an expenditure that I never would have made at that time in my life, just for the sake of traveling. Yet I now properly view the money “spent” as an investment that will pay dividends to my son and me for the rest of our lives. We didn’t travel to a touristy locale. We went to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, a post-Soviet republic where reformed-minded citizens had risen up successfully against an extravagantly corrupt pro-Russia leader in 2014. Our hotel overlooked the main site of the uprising. Ukraine was then—and still is—under siege by a jealous neighbor. All the talk now is of a potential large-scale Russian invasion. But the fact is, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine immediately after the uprising, seizing Crimea and slipping troops and heavy equipment into parts of eastern Ukraine, ostensibly to support pro-Russia separatists. I have no family ties to that part of the world. But I was grandiose enough to think I could help rally public support for a free and independent Ukraine. I didn’t pretend to be a war correspondent, and have never been a…

Seeking Shelter

William Ehart | Jun 6, 2024

YOU'VE HEARD OF asset allocation. But how good are you at asset location? On that one, I’d have to give myself a failing grade, but I hope to pass the test someday. I’ve realized I could save myself hundreds of dollars a year in taxes by relocating much of my safe money to tax-advantaged accounts, while being more aggressive with stocks in my taxable account. Those moves would leave me with the same overall stock allocation, so my risk profile wouldn’t be much different. In some ways, I’m a cautious investor, especially when it comes to my emergency fund. I’ve got a hefty allocation to stocks—currently about 70%—but I’ve also got a year and a half of living expenses in individual Treasurys, a certificate of deposit (CD) and money market funds. I figure my fixed expenses are $5,000 a month, so that’s $90,000 in safe money sitting in my taxable account. With current short-term interest rates over 5%, my conservative stance is raking in some good bucks, but it’s too much safety and too much taxable income. One reason it’s so much: I’m trying to save up five years’ worth of portfolio withdrawals in bonds and cash by the time I retire. At that point, with Social Security benefits of more than $2,000 a month, I reckon I’ll need just $3,000 monthly from savings to maintain something like my current lifestyle. The cash cushion I’m accumulating will protect me from a prolonged bear market. Intuitively, you might think emergency funds don’t belong in retirement accounts, which experts say should be invested for long-term growth. After all, who wants to raid an IRA to pay bills before they retire? But the truth is, not all good investment advice is good for all people all the time. I’m over age 59½, so…

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

I will still take the dividends

The Silent Committee

Widow’s IRA Choice

Financial Choices

Total portfolio approach?

Locking it in

Being terminated…

The Ultimate Tail Risk

Growing Up In A Big House

Americans are rushing to collect Social Security. The reason is disturbing

A Wedding Too Far

What to do about the new ID.me login requirement at TreasuryDirect

I will still take the dividends

The Silent Committee

Widow’s IRA Choice

Financial Choices

Total portfolio approach?

Locking it in

Being terminated…

The Ultimate Tail Risk

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Manifesto

Truths

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Truths

Money Guide

Manifesto

Spotlight: Borrowing

A Contrarian View of a Mortgage

Refi or Not?

So Rewarding

Smarter But Homeless

A Perfect Score

Double Trouble

Spotlight: Ehart

Needing to Know

Durn Furriners

Different This Time

Don’t Sweat It

Wasted Journey?

Seeking Shelter