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The old superstition raises its head again. Rosalynn Carter, Henry Kissinger, and now Sandra Day O'Conner. They all lived long and interesting lives, may they rest in peace.

The 2023 Trustees Report was issued today. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TR/2023/index.html Bottom line is reserves are depleted a year earlier, still forecasting a 23% shortfall:

Every year I like to print a year-end report of my Vanguard account. I would simply open Balances and Holdings and hit print (to printer or pdf). Out came a professional-looking, nicely formatted 4-page report showing each account and each holding within the account. Now, with the "improved"...

Michael Kitces has done another interesting article. He goes through the typical retiree income sources (SS, pension, IRA/401(k), taxable investments) and analyzes how each state treats them for state income tax purposes. Then he gives some examples and heat maps for retirees with different...

The 2022 report was issued today - bottom line is the forecasted depletion of the Trust fund moved out a year from 2033 to 2034. I believe they have also adjusted the projected ongoing deficit to 20% from 23%. See https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TR/2022/tr2022.pdf and...

I realized I accidentally did a small wash sale between taxable (sale) and IRA (purchase). I sold some ultra-short bonds (VUSFX) in taxable to finance iBond purchases, and totally unrelated* but within 30 days, exchanged my intermediate bonds for VUSFX in an IRA. The loss was only a few hundred...

>2 hours hold time, AYFKM? We have a trip at the end of October to Turks and Caicos on Delta. Over the last couple of months they have twice changed our return flight itinerary. So our booked 2:45 layover is now 5 hours, and we ultimately get home at about 2 in the morning after a 5 hour...

I'm finally over my breakthrough Covid-19 infection and thought I would see if anyone else was so unlucky? I was vaccinated in April with J&J, just a week or so before the ill thought-out suspension of that vaccine. A couple of weeks ago I went to a small two-day business conference with, I...

A newsletter pointed me to this. The new 2020 IRS Pub 590-B still requires non-spouse IRA beneficiaries to take RMDs, they've interpreted the SECURE Act 10-year rule as an "and". As in you must take RMDs and fully distribute the account in 10 years. From the pub: and I also looked at the...

Is the data update for 2020 data coming soon? It was updated on April 11 last year.

There is a bipartisan effort in the Senate to begin to address the coming Social Security, Medicare, and Highway trust fund busts. The TRUST Act seems to be a plan for a plan, commissioning a "Rescue Committee" to come up with a plan for each fund. Romney and Manchin are leading the charge...

Now that the $1.9T package is destined to become law, Michael Kitces has published one of his usual excellent summaries. This has a good discussion of aspects that are currently scattered among various threads here...

The COVID Tracking Project is stopping data collection on March 7, and shutting down completely in May. This is unfortunate, I liked using their site and I believe it is the data source for many other sites. https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/covid-tracking-project-end-march-7

So I was listening to the generic Pandora Christmas music channel. I started flipping through songs/artists and doing thumbs up/down to customize the channel. I like both classic and modern stuff, so thumbs up to various Perry Como and TSO tunes. I think I "thumbs up'ed" one Buble tune, and I...

Per this article: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/21/banks-have-grown-by-2-trillion-in-deposits-since-coronavirus-first-hit.html $2 trillion has been deposited in banks since January. "The personal savings rate hit a record 33% in April..." and "Personal income actually climbed 10.5% that...

In the vein of auto insurance price reductions, what is the prognosis on getting a break on ACA insurance. Clearly Medicare will get slammed by COVID-19 due to the demographics of the hospitalizations (not to mention the evaporation of payroll tax income). But cancellation of elective...

I just stumbled upon a quirk in HSAs that didn't know. While they are one of the most tax-advantaged accounts in life, they are one of the worst in death. HSA accounts are fully taxable to the non-spouse beneficiary in the year of death. So as you age, blow that HSA dough...

So what will we be telling new members who stumble across this fine forum 5 years from now? I honestly think it will be something like "Junior, I survived the DotCom Bubble, the Great Recession, and the Corona Calamity" :flowers: If you run FIRECalc, understand your spending, and know where...

So who else is experiencing COVID-19 overload? I saw a headline on my web home page that said "Rep Mark DeSauliner in critical condition with pneumonia after..." and immediately thought "now we have a Congressman with COVID". But clicking on the article I see he broke a rib and contracted...

It struck me today that these Governors and Mayors that are shutting down their restaurants and other businesses have a real conundrum on their hands. By what criteria will they allow them to re-open? COVID-19 is not going away and will likely become a seasonal flu. Honestly, in the current...

OK, so I've been getting COVID-19 emails from stores, restaurants, my gym, etc. Some of these I get. My gym detailing the sanitization steps they are taking, or Open Table revealing their reservation stats (down 20%) and suggesting ways to support your local restaurant. But others are pure...

The IRS has officially proposed the next update to the life expectancy tables used to calculate RMDs. The last update was 2002. It won't make a huge difference, ~$2,100 lower RMD per million, but helps. Kitces discusses here...

Advisor Perspectives provides a statistical outline of UHNW peeps worldwide, based on a study by Wealth-X. https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2019/09/30/a-statistical-profile-of-the-ultra-wealthy?utm_source=articles_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=item_link Interesting tidbits...

So this list seems about right to me, especially considering I live in the #1 worst according to them! Though I can't imagine that it is worse than numbers 9, 7, 6, and 2 for taxes and COL. Their score is an average of Bankrate, Wallethub, and Kiplinger - so heavily weighted to taxes/COL...

Michael Kitces has an interesting post where he dives deeper into flexible spending versus FIRE. In the past he has advocated for ratcheting rules, where you start with a safe withdrawal rate and in (the majority of) cases where your portfolio grows notwithstanding withdrawals, you may ratchet...