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The HDHPs I have been enrolled in through various employers all came with an HSA attached; it wasn't an option that I had to proactively pursue. Can't you call the plan administrator and simply ask if it qualifies?

Do you accept the offers of a year of identity theft monitoring protection? Although I, too, seemingly receive these notices every few months from various holders of my personal information, I have not taken any up on the offers. For a long time I paid for that service from Experian. Then...

Someone educate me on all the love for HSAs I see. As far as spending on healthcare is concerned, all an HSA saves me is the tax, right? So I put some pre-tax money into my HSA and use it to pay my out-of-pocket healthcare costs instead of using my after-tax money. For that to feel...

Thanks. Some complicated spreadsheets there. I'll look into it.

I have not done much in the way of making changes since introducing myself in this thread, but the one thing I have done so far is ditch my financial advisor. Now, I'm reading everything I can on this site and trying to absorb it all.

How does one go about estimating how much Roth conversion is large enough? Is there a rule of thumb? I think I'm in a similar situation as the OP, and the same question the OP asked has been on my mind.

Yeah. I posted a thread a few weeks ago to ask that very question--diversification across brokerage firms. One of my first questions after joining this site :). I have long held accounts at Schwab, but in view of the replies in that thread I decided that when I roll over my 401k it's going to...

I think traffic circles work best in places where there is a general culture of cooperation and the understanding of mutual benefit. Like some other traffic rules, traffic circles work well when every driver understands it is a give and take situation, where if we all obey the rules and take...

What is your baseline for "not safe"? I do not have recent firsthand experience, but the topic of whether the war in Gaza is affecting security as far away as Egypt has come up with some frequency in another forum I'm active on. Every report I have read by someone who has been there recently...

If a restaurant or other business wants to do this, they had better post a notice prominently, or I won't be able to pay them. I never carry cash anymore, since essentially every place takes electronic payment, and that is usually based on a credit card. I would be happy to use a debit card...

The only instances I have seen where someone received a "severance" package apart from a RIF situation was where the employee and employer had some sort of disagreement, in which the employer feared the employee would make the subject of the disagreement public (not so much a fear of a lawsuit...

Living in Delta's hub, I have long been beholden to them. They flew everywhere imaginable, and for many years I was able to earn decent status with them. This year, big changes in their FF program means I am no longer going to be able to earn any useful level of status. Even one or two...

As others have touched on, what is "fitness" as opposed to a physical recreational activity? I know gym memberships are usually considered fitness, because unless one is really into some particular aspect of it, we join gyms to maintain general fitness. But beyond that, I have long been...

You have mentioned university and graduate school several times. I get the impression you enjoyed that kind of experience. I can empathize. As a student, you have a schedule to follow, a place to go at a certain time, deadlines imposed on you, etc. I believe we humans desire that kind of...

This. Employees who choose to work for a startup are taking more of a risk than if they were to work for an established company. A startup that does not offer stock options and such sweet inducements may simply offer a higher salary. Whether higher salary or stock options, etc., there is...

Fun thread ... though not at the moment the booking error is discovered. My worst was calculating the date wrong when returning to the US across the Date Line and finding out my domestic flight home was not until the next day. The funniest error I have heard was from a fellow traveler on a...

Craft beer. Oh yeah. I started brewing as a hobby when I received a kit as a gift in the early '90s, and then the craft breweries started popping up everywhere. Brewing and sampling beer are a part of my life, and my wife shares that passion. We've visited breweries and beer festivals around...

I'm not envious of the people who worked a traditional job their entire working lives and then just one day stopped cold-turkey. Due to some circumstances beyond my control and some within my control, I have been slowly ramping down my work for years, spending more and more time on hobbies and...

I paid cash for a 1 year-old Toyota that's now 21 years old. Repairs are finally starting to get serious. Watching this thread. I have no idea how to buy a new car without getting fleeced.

My new bride and I were visiting my 93 year-old aunt at her retirement community in Florida. She was a very proper lady, always well dressed, lived almost her whole life in NYC, and her husband had left her in good financial shape. As we sat down at the coffee table, she asked my wife and me...

OP here. For us broad-market index investors, talking about investments in individual countries or in sectors heavily weighted toward some countries is of no interest. For you active investors, it's another matter. Have at it. For 30+ years, in my various 401ks and rollover IRAs I have...

I have a US bond fund, too. The diversification logic that bonds generally move in the opposite direction from stocks (even if in a period like there was in 2022 they didn't) makes more sense to me. But international?

Playing devil's advocate here, but that was one 10-year period, with a financial crisis starting in the US in 2007 before spreading globally. How often is that going to happen (I ask rhetorically)? Maybe some international exposure is a good idea for an investor with a 35-year horizon, but for...

I have been reading the forum every day since joining a couple of weeks ago, and I started noticing that few of the portfolio AAs people posted included international. I was curious why international was apparently out of favor, and a search turned up this thread. For 30+ years my various...

"Age 73 tax planning." So is this about RMDs?