Good morning. Fans of the famously frugal $1.50 hot dog at Costco might be tempted by a new competitor: a gargantuan 20-inch hot dog from Ikea. It’s priced at $5.17, which is a notable step up — but the real cost comes from the plane ticket to the United Arab Emirates, since that’s the only place you can buy one.
■ Insurance
For many retirees, selling their home is one of the biggest financial windfalls they’ll see outside of work — especially if they’ve owned it for decades, given the rapid rise in home prices.
According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University — which used data from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances — median home equity for homeowners age 65 and over was about $250,000 that year. As a result, selling the family home could feel like cashing in a lottery ticket.
However, the transaction could also trigger a hidden Medicare trap that increases your premiums. Without proper planning, you could pay thousands of dollars in unnecessary health care costs.
Here’s what older American homeowners need to know before pulling the trigger.
■ Trivia
What would all the gold ever mined in human history fill?
A The Empire State Building
B Three to four Olympic swimming pools
C Two football stadiums
D The Grand Canyon
Scroll for the answer
■ Sponsored by Priority Gold
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■ Retirement
Ensuring a comfortable retirement requires making a lot of decisions: How much should you save? How should you invest? When should you take Social Security? How much should you withdraw each month in retirement and from which accounts?
The answers to these questions can all have a material effect on your retirement. But one important question — one that not everyone considers — is where you’ll live during your golden years. More specifically, which state will give you the biggest bang for your retirement bucks?
While you need $2.2 million to retire in Hawaii, you don’t have to be a millionaire to lead a comfortable life in retirement in every state: For instance, to retire at age 65 in Oklahoma, you’ll need a minimum of $735,284 in savings — a more than $1.25 million difference, according to recent findings.
The study, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2024 Consumer Expenditure Survey, calculates how much a person would need to save in each state to live comfortably in retirement (when combined with Social Security and assuming retirees follow the 4% rule for withdrawals from savings).
■ News
In the wake of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalio, is ringing a global fire alarm.
The short version? The old economic world order is gone.
“Let’s not be naive, OK, and say: Oh, we’re breaking the rule-based system,” Dalio told Fortune at the WEF. “It’s gone. It’s going.”
Dalio was referring to the current balance of power between nations, which has hinged on predictable U.S. foreign policy.
This isn’t the first time he’s warned about such risks. In an interview on Leaders with Francine Lacqua, Dalio said a “civil war of some sort” is developing in the United States and elsewhere “where there are irreconcilable differences.”
Here’s how things break down on the home front.
■ More Moneywise
Investing: Kevin O’Leary says do this every time you get paid. You can make 10x your income without more work. How many millions are you leaving on the table?
Crime: Arizona woman loses $1.5M to an online scam after simply trying to fix her TV’s closed captioning. How to spot the signs of a scam
Retirement: First 2027 Social Security COLA forecasts a small bump at 2.5%. But early predictions are often incorrect. Here’s what retirees should watch instead
Employment: He once worked as a janitor. Now, he’s the CEO of Lowe’s. Here are 4 career lessons he credits for his rise, and why they matter for workers today
■ Trivia Answer
What would all the gold ever mined in human history fill?
E) Three to four Olympic swimming pools
The World Gold Council estimates that around 220,000 metric tons of gold have been mined throughout history. If melted into a cube, it would measure just 22 meters per side. Here's the math on the pools: an Olympic pool (50m × 25m × 2m) holds 2,500 cubic meters. Gold is 19.3 times denser than water, so one pool could hold about 48,000 metric tons of gold. That means all the gold ever mined would fill roughly 3.5 to 4.5 Olympic pools.