A quick search on Zillow or Redfin at famous mountain towns like Aspen or Breckenridge is enough to scare off all but the wealthiest retirees. But if you love hiking and skiing, love lakes and rivers and historical downtowns, where can you find mountain life on a retiree’s budget? Ogden, Utah Average rent: $1,317 Average home price: $403,946 Less than an hour’s drive from Salt Lake City, Ogden has everything you’d want in a mountain town. Ogden offers easy access to Powder Mountain and...

Commitment to Our Readers Home prices have appreciated by 45.3% in the last five years — more than double the typical appreciation rate according to Zillow. As a result, many buyers have overextended themselves in an effort to become homeowners. Watch out for these signs that you bought too much house. Total Housing Costs Eat Up Too Much Income Budgeting is a zero-sum game. If you spend more on housing, it leaves you less for entertainment, travel, healthcare, saving, investing, and...

Thapana Onphalai / Getty Images/iStockphoto Commitment to Our Readers At over 1,000 pages long, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act certainly qualifies as “big.” It includes dozens of provisions that affect upper-middle-class taxpayers, from preserving the child tax credit to eliminating income taxes on tips and overtime to most workers and more. But many of those provisions don’t actually require any planning or preparation. So which tax changes should upper-middle-class Americans pay attention...

Commitment to Our Readers As much as housing skyrocketed in cost during and after the pandemic, food prices rose even faster. From 2020-2024, the USDA reports that food prices rose by 23.6%, compared to 23.0% for housing. But food inflation slowed dramatically in 2024, from a rate of 11.4% in 2022 to 5.0% in 2023 to just 1.2% in 2024. So how do U.S. grocery prices and affordability compare to our neighbors in Canada and Mexico, and to the second largest economy in the world, China? United...

Commitment to Our Readers Artificial intelligence services keep getting smarter — and more flexible in taking over tasks for you. But can you entrust AI with your financial future? With your retirement nest egg? While AI can’t do everything for you, it can certainly help. Try these ways to use AI to save an extra $100,000 for retirement. Budgeting Help Budgeting comes in two parts: planning how to spend and then actually doing that day in and day out. Artificial intelligence can help you with...