Investing

More than half of investors (57%) surveyed by investment company Betterment said they are feeling anxious about the upcoming election.
Keeping a diversified portfolio and putting more in savings can be smart strategies, experts say, rather than moving investments in response to political news.

US President Joe Biden and former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump participate in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections at CNN’s studios in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images

Presidential election outcomes don’t significantly affect market performance, but many investors still feel nervous about what this year’s presidential matchup between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump could mean for their money.
More than half of investors (57%) surveyed by investment company Betterment said they are feeling anxious about the upcoming election and 40% expect to move or pull investments based on the election outcome.

Betterment polled 1,200 individual investors this spring across four demographic cohorts: Generation Z, millennials, Generation X and baby boomers.
Financial experts, however, don’t encourage making investment decisions for political reasons as markets tend to react to economic factors that politicians have no control over. Even in a contentious election year, they advise keeping a diversified portfolio and saving more instead of making money decisions based on politics.
“The economy keeps chugging along whether we have a Democrat or Republican in office, so to place big bets against one candidate winning over another is not a good investment strategy,” said Cathy Curtis, a certified financial planner and founder of Curtis Financial Planning in Oakland, California.

Blending political opinions and portfolios

Curtis, who is a member of the CNBC Financial Advisor Council, said she has seen her clients express more confidence in the market overall this year. The Nasdaq Composite, S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average have continuously broken records in 2024.
“We’ve got a very stable market,” Curtis said. “People realize that. I get no anxious emails or even questions [from clients] about the market. In really volatile years, people really pay attention to when things go down.”

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Still, clients visiting Curtis have expressed concerns about the idea of Trump winning the election. 
She attributes the anxiety she’s seen more of in recent years to a rise in polarization. Still, Curtis encourages her clients not to move their money in response to these feelings.
“Most of my clients are scared to death of another Trump presidency,” Curtis said. “So that creates a lot of anxiety around investing, but most of my clients are educated people. Once you show them the facts, they tend to calm down.”
Nevertheless, it is becoming more common for investors to blend their political opinions with their portfolios, according to Dan Egan, vice president of behavioral finance and investing at Betterment. Egan said he is seeing investors altering their portfolios because they believe the winning candidate will influence the economy or stock market more now than those in the recent past.
Despite this change in investor behavior, he said the outcome of presidential elections hasn’t historically affected the stock market in a significant way.
Dating back to 1928, the S&P 500 has returned an average 7.5% in presidential election years, compared to an average 8% in nonelection years, according to an analysis in March from J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
“Regardless of who you look at, be it Democrat or Republican or whoever, the stock market goes up on average,” Egan said. “There’s not a big impact to, especially the president, in terms of what they can do to the economy, to things like inflation. This is why we have checks and balances and separations in terms of the Federal Reserve, and so on.”

When considering the potential impact of the election on their portfolios, 29% of investors surveyed by Betterment said they planned to increase holdings in savings accounts.
Experts say that having a cash reserve can be smart given current high rates on savings accounts and other low-risk investments, but caution investors from keeping too much on the sidelines and out of the market.
“Right now you can get really good rates on your money, so I encourage people to hold bigger cash reserves,” Curtis said. “If they don’t want to put everything into the market, it’s OK.”

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President Joe Biden could forgive the debt of millions of student loan borrowers weeks before voters decide between him and former President Donald Trump at the ballot box.
“The conflict between Democrats and Republicans over forgiving student debt will be in effect during the election,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

Two federal judges in Kansas and Missouri on Monday at the urging of several Republican-led states blocked President Joe Biden’s administration from further implementing a new student debt relief plan that lowers payments.
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President Joe Biden could try to forgive the debt of millions of federal student loan borrowers just weeks before voters decide between him and former President Donald Trump at the ballot box in November.
In the Biden administration’s Spring 2024 Unified Agenda, the U.S. Department of Education disclosed that it will publish its final rule on student loan relief sometime in October.

Due to the timeline of regulatory changes, that would normally mean the administration wouldn’t be able to carry out its program until July 2025, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. However, the department could act sooner simply by publishing a notice in the Federal Register, he noted.
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“I expect publication [of the rule] to occur in early October, so that the conflict between Democrats and Republicans over forgiving student debt will be in effect during the election,” Kantrowitz said.
A spokesperson for the Education Department said the Biden administration has already made historic changes to “a broken student loan system.”
“This administration is committed to providing relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible, and these regulatory efforts would help provide tens of millions more borrowers with financial breathing room,” they said.

Loan forgiveness a sharp partisan issue

Conservatives typically question the fairness of forgiving the debt of those who’ve benefited from a higher education, and saddling taxpayers with the costs of doing so. Just over a third of Americans aged 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree, according to an estimate by Kantrowitz.
“We are proud to stand with taxpayers in demanding the Biden administration abandon plans to force all Americans to take on the debt of a select few, something the Supreme Court has already deemed unconstitutional,” said Ryan Walker, executive vice president of Heritage Action for America.
“Biden’s latest debt transfer gimmick is an illegal, unfair election year stunt that is backfiring — and should cost him at the ballot box,” Walker said.

Almost half of all voters — 48% — say canceling student debt is an important issue to them in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections, according to a recent survey from SocialSphere, a research and consulting firm. It polled 3,812 registered voters, including 2,601 Gen Z and millennial respondents, between March 15-19.
Additionally, 70% of Gen Z respondents said the action was “very” or “somewhat” important in the election, while 72% of Black voters surveyed and 68% of Hispanic voters believe the same.
Many young conservatives also support student loan cancellation, with 49% of Gen Z and millennial Republicans surveyed saying some or all outstanding education debt should be erased.
As president, Trump called for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education’s existing loan relief programs, including the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness initiative. He also wanted to slash the department’s budget, and his administration halted a regulation aimed at providing loan forgiveness to those defrauded by their schools.
Now, as he runs for president again, Trump seems poised to make even deeper cuts to financial aid programs for students. He has repeatedly attacked Biden’s loan relief policies, and he said in a campaign video in late 2023 that he wants to close the Education Department altogether.

Republicans may try again to stop relief plan

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Biden’s first attempt at wide-scale loan cancellation last summer, his administration has been working on its do-over plan. While the Education Department attempted to make the relief more targeted this time in an effort to increase its chances of survival, up to 20 million people still stand to benefit.
For critics of broad student loan forgiveness, Biden’s new plan looks a lot like his first.
After Biden touted his revised relief program, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, wrote on X that the president “is trying to unabashedly eclipse the Constitution.”
“See you in court,” Bailey wrote.
Missouri was one of the six Republican-led states — along with Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Carolina — to bring a lawsuit against Biden’s first sweeping debt relief effort.

The red states argued that the president overstepped his authority, and that debt cancellation would hurt the bottom lines of lenders. The conservative Supreme Court justices agreed with them.
Once the Biden administration publishes its new student loan forgiveness plan in October, more legal challenges are inevitable, Kantrowitz said.
“Lawsuits seeking to block the final rule will follow soon after it is published,” he said.
A recent Supreme Court ruling could also make it harder for Biden’s revised plan to survive those broadsides.
The high court in late June overruled the so-called Chevron doctrine, a 40-year-old precedent that required judges to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of disputed laws. The 6-3 ruling, which split the conservative-majority court along ideological lines, is expected to undermine the federal government’s regulatory power.

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Today, 46% of Gen Zers rely on financial assistance from their family, according to a new report from Bank of America.
Inflation’s recent runup and specific challenges related to housing costs and college affordability are largely to blame.

To keep up with the high cost of living, many young adults turn to a likely safety net: their parents.
Nearly half, or 46%, of Gen Zers between the ages of 18 and 27 rely on financial assistance from their family, according to a new report from Bank of America.

Even more — 52% — said they don’t make enough money to live the life they want and cite day-to-day expenses as a top barrier to their financial success.
“The high cost of living is certainly impacting Gen Z,” said Holly O’Neill, president of retail banking at Bank of America.
The financial institution polled more than 1,000 Gen Z adults in April and May.

Why times are so tough for Generation Z

Many consumers feel strained by higher prices — most notably for food, gas and housing. However, those just starting out face additional financial challenges.
Not only are their wages lower than their parents’ earnings when they were in their 20s and 30s, after adjusting for inflation, but they are also carrying larger student loan balances.

Even compared with millennials, Gen Zers are spending significantly more on necessities than young adults did a decade ago, other reports show.
They also have the debt to prove it. Roughly 15% of Gen Zers have maxed out their credit cards and are at risk of falling behind on payments, more so than any other generation, the New York Fed reported in May. 
“What delinquency rates are showing is that there is increased stress among some segments of the population,” the New York Fed researchers said at the time.

‘The high cost of housing definitely is a barrier’

In the years since the Covid pandemic, homeownership has been one of the greatest tools of wealth creation — and those who have been priced out of the housing market have disproportionately struggled to achieve the same level of financial security, according to Brett House, economics professor at Columbia Business School.
“That is a massive challenge for wealth accumulation among Gen Z,” he said.
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Second only to food and groceries, housing is the expense most young adults today need help with, Bank of America also found.
“The high cost of housing definitely is a barrier for them,” O’Neill said. “We also found that the majority of Gen Z don’t pay for their own housing.”
Experts recommend spending no more than 30% of your take-home pay on shelter, but many young adults covering their own expenses are shelling out far more. Two-thirds of those Bank of America surveyed said they put more than 30% of their paycheck toward housing, and nearly a quarter spend upwards of 50%.
O’Neill said she advises her own Gen Z children to adhere to the 50-30-20 rule, which recommends putting 50% of a paycheck toward necessities, including food, housing and transportation, 30% to discretionary spending and the remaining 20% into savings.

Fewer Americans feel financially comfortable overall

But it’s not just Gen Z struggling. Most Americans believe they don’t earn enough to live the life they want these days, according to a separate survey, by Bankrate.
Just 25% of all adults in the survey said they are completely financially secure, down from 28% in 2023, the report said.

The survey respondents said they would need to earn $186,000 on average to live comfortably, Bankrate found. But to feel rich, they would need to earn a bit more than half a million a year, or $520,000, on average, the survey found.
Similarly, inflation’s recent runup and specific challenges related to housing costs and college affordability were significant obstacles to achieving financial security, according to Bankrate.
“Many Americans are stuck somewhere between continued sticker shock from elevated prices, a lack of income gains and a feeling that their hopes and dreams are out of touch with their financial capabilities,” said Mark Hamrick, Bankrate’s senior economic analyst.
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Inflation is slowing down, but prices are still high — and that has put many Americans under financial stress.
As consumers lean on their credit cards, more borrowers are also falling behind on their payments, recent reports show.

Inflation is slowing down, but prices are still high — and likely to stay that way.
That’s generally considered good news. The economy is expanding amid a lower rate of price growth and a strong job market.

However, even a broad pullback in price increases underscores another bitter reality: We’re still paying more for many goods and services with little relief in sight.
“Cooling inflation is not the same as a substantial reduction in prices,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate. “Elevated prices have largely persisted, which means that Americans continue to face affordability challenges on a range of things both necessary and discretionary, including homes, vehicles, car insurance, food, electricity and travel.”
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Indeed, the rate of price increases for food has subsided.
Monthly “food at home” inflation has been near 0% for the past four months, according to the latest government inflation data. U.S. gasoline prices fell 3.6% in the month from April to May and even housing inflation is down from its peak over one year ago.

And yet, because in most cases price increases are only slowing — not falling outright — consumers are still seeing their monthly costs rise, especially when it comes to essentials like food, utilities and rent.
On average, 61% of Americans report spending more on groceries and dining out compared to a year ago, according to a recent Wealth Watch survey by New York Life. Costs in those categories rose $209.45 a month on average. Further, 56% of adults said they now spend an average $161.45 more a month on utilities and 48% said rent costs an average $302.94 more a month, New York Life found.
The insurance company polled 2,002 adults in late May.

‘The toll inflation is taking on Americans’ finances’

“We can see the toll inflation is taking on Americans’ finances, as they report higher costs of living on everyday expenses and report lower levels of financial confidence,” said Donn Froshiesar, New York Life’s head of consumer insights.
As more households stretch to cover the increased prices and higher interest rates, there are new indications of financial strain.
“From filling up a tank of gas to making a rental payment to buying groceries, most consumers are paying more today for everyday expenses than they ever have,” Charlie Wise, senior vice president and head of global research and consulting at TransUnion, recently told CNBC.
“And if they’re using a credit card to make these purchases, their interest rates are at much higher levels, so costs also are rising for those consumers carrying a balance,” Wise said.

As a result, more consumers are falling behind on their payments. Over the last year, roughly 8.9% of credit card balances transitioned into delinquency, the New York Fed reported in May. And more middle-income households anticipate struggling with debt payments in the coming months.  
“We’ve gone from an environment where inflation was the focus, and the impact of rising prices has resulted in an affordability crisis, which is now front and center,” Bankrate’s Hamrick said.
However, “if prices continue to normalize and the job market remains stable, further progress can be clawed back on the affordability front,” he added.

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A Roth conversion ladder is a multiyear strategy to transfer pretax funds to a Roth IRA to kickstart future tax-free growth.
You’ll owe upfront levies on the converted balance, but there is no 10% early withdrawal penalty after five years.
However, tapping the conversions after only five years could forgo future tax-free growth.

Svetikd | E+ | Getty Images

Roth individual retirement account conversions are a popular way to reduce future levies on pretax 401(k) or IRA withdrawals — and you can smooth out the upfront tax hit with a “Roth conversion ladder,” experts say.
Roth conversions transfer pretax or nondeductible IRA money to a Roth IRA, which offers future tax-free growth. The trade-off is regular income taxes incurred that year on the converted balance.

By comparison, a Roth conversion ladder is a series of conversions over multiple years, meaning “you’re paying taxes in smaller increments,” said certified financial planner Preston Cherry, founder and president of Concurrent Financial Planning in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
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Roth conversion ladders are a “strategic and tactical approach” involving years of tax projections, including future withdrawals, said Ashton Lawrence, CFP and director at Mariner Wealth Advisors in Greenville, South Carolina.
For example, rather than converting $200,000 from pretax to Roth in a single year, you may break that into chunks over several years, depending on your income. Of course, boosting your adjusted gross income any year can trigger other tax consequences, such as phaseouts for certain tax breaks.
“It’s not a one-time planning engagement” because you need to revisit the planned conversions every year and adjust as needed, Lawrence said.

‘Unlock’ your retirement funds early

Similar to regular Roth conversions, one of the key benefits of the conversion ladder is tax-free “compounded growth on future gains,” said Cherry, who is a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.
But the strategy is also popular for early retirees who want to tap retirement funds before age 59½ without penalty, he said.
Although you can access Roth IRA contributions anytime, there’s generally a 10% early withdrawal penalty on earnings before age 59½, with some exceptions.
However, you can tap Roth conversions without the 10% penalty or taxes after five years to “unlock some of your money early,” Cherry said. But a separate five-year period applies to each conversion.
There’s also a five-year aging rule for Roth IRA accounts, which requires the account to be open for at least that long to avoid taxes or penalties, even after age 59½.

While tapping your converted IRA balance after five years could be appealing for early retirees under age 59½, you will forgo future tax-free growth, Lawrence said.
Typically, more time for compound growth makes Roth conversions more beneficial, and you’ll want to make sure you break even on the upfront taxes before tapping the account, he said.

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Guaranteed income programs, which provide monthly income to help people with financial needs, have become more popular since the Covid pandemic.
Even as research shows the efforts have been effective in helping improve economic mobility, the backlash against them is growing.
One program in Texas’ Harris County was recently halted before payments could begin.

Urbazon | E+ | Getty Images

About 1,900 residents in Texas’ Harris County were set to start receiving $500 monthly payments starting this spring.
The money — provided through a new 18-month guaranteed income pilot, Uplift Harris, a Harris County Public Health initiative — was aimed at county residents of 10 ZIP codes who are living 200% below the federal poverty line.

The program would provide money with “no strings attached,” so families could decide how to use the resources to meet their needs.
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But before the first checks were sent, state Attorney General Ken Paxton obtained a stay from the Supreme Court of Texas forcing the program to stop the payments.
In a statement at the time of the stay, Paxton called the program an “abuse of power and unlawful use of taxpayer money.”
Paxton did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

The decision — which follows the successful execution of other guaranteed income programs in Texas and other states — was “shocking and unfortunate,” according to Christian Menefee, county attorney of Harris County.
“It’s highly unlikely the county continues with the program as it’s currently constituted,” Menefee said.

As guaranteed income grows, so does the backlash

Guaranteed income programs provide cash payments intended to establish an income floor for specific members of a community, according to the Economic Security Project, an advocacy organization. While universal basic income provides money to everyone, guaranteed income may provide either targeted or universal support.
The programs flourished in recent years, helped in part by the Covid-19 pandemic that raised awareness of how direct cash could fill targeted needs.
While the federal government deployed billions of dollars in stimulus checks and child tax credit payments, state and local governments also started to experiment with ways to provide money to residents in need, often with the help of extra federal money provided through the American Rescue Plan Act. 
Today, the Economic Security Project is tracking 150 guaranteed income pilots in 35 states. Around 52,000 people have participated in a pilot at some point in the past couple of years, according to Harish Patel, vice president at the Economic Security Project.
Yet backlashes against the programs have also gained momentum.

Individual demonstrator holds sign asking for universal basic income and universal healthcare in Columbus, Ohio on Jan. 20, 2021. 
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota passed anti-guaranteed income legislation this year, while Arkansas did the same in 2023. Those efforts happened “very quickly,” and similar proposals are expected in an additional 25 states, according to Patel.
The conservative think tank Foundation for Government Accountability, and its lobbying arm the Opportunity Solutions Project, has led those efforts. The organization did not provide comment, but the foundation’s research lays out the reasons for its opposition. It argues guaranteed income programs discourage work, “trap people in dependency” and cost taxpayers millions.
The bills are written in “copycat fashion,” which make it easier to replicate them among states, according to Patel. Yet that structure also leaves less room for rigorous analysis of their reach; the proposals are so general that they may end up limiting all cash assistance, not necessarily just guaranteed income programs, he said.
“Let’s say you have a natural disaster and you want to give out cash,” Patel said. “In some states, they may not be able to if these sorts of very general policies that are written become law.”

One-year Austin experiment helped residents

Others who have researched the effects of the programs say they see evidence guaranteed income works.
In a one-year experiment launched in Austin, Texas, in 2022, 135 households received $1,000 per month. The program, which was focused on high poverty and rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, helped improve housing and food security, early research from the Urban Institute shows.
The city of Austin enlisted the Urban Institute to study the effects of the cash infusions.
“We’re awash in evidence in this country that giving people cash infusions works,” said Mary Bogle, principal investigator for the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot evaluation and principal research associate at the Urban Institute.
Typically, participant workers are in very low-wage jobs, Bogle explained. Once they have access to guaranteed income, that often allows them to figure out ways to increase what they earn, she said.
“Folks who press arguments about guaranteed income creating dependency aren’t looking at the fact that what guaranteed income is actually allowing participants to do is make good choices,” Bogle said. “They have freedom of choice.”

For Austin resident Taniquewa Brewster, 38, being selected for the city’s guaranteed income program helped her break free from a pattern of sporadic, unstable employment.
She found out about the program when she was still struggling to recover from winter storm Uri in 2021, which left her apartment building without gas for months.
At the time, Brewster’s ability to work was also limited because she found juggling a full-time work schedule and child care for her five children to be next to impossible.
The extra money had immediate benefits. Brewster said she was able to pay for the sports, camp and after-school programs her children wanted to participate in. She also helped her sister with costs for the car they shared.

Though Austin’s guaranteed income has concluded, Brewster said it has a lasting impact on her life, particularly because it helped jump start her career. The program’s money helped her go to school and get more education.
She got a certificate to be a leasing agent and now works for her apartment complex. She also became a notary and is currently training to become a doula.
“That gave me time and a cushion to say, OK …  you don’t have to put things off so that you can be sure that you can take care of your family,” Brewster said.

‘The status quo isn’t working’

Many other guaranteed income program participants have seen life-changing improvements, particularly when it comes to their earnings capability. That is why the programs’ supporters are puzzled by the growing opposition.
“There’s no real cogent vision for what they want to see, other than the status quo,” said Michael Tubbs, founder of Mayors for Guaranteed Income. “And the reason why guaranteed income is so popular is because the status quo isn’t working for most people, Democrats and Republicans.”
Harris County’s program may have been targeted for political reasons, according to Menefee, the county attorney.

Harris County Commissioner Precinct 1 Rodney Ellis answers a question from the press during a press conference responding to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit challenging the Uplift Harris program on April 10 in Houston. 
Houston Chronicle/hearst Newspapers Via Getty Images | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images

“If Democrats increased the margin of victory in Harris County, because we’re such a populous county, we have the potential to flip the entire state,” Menefee said.
Harris County’s funds have to be committed by December, according to Commissioner Rodney Ellis, and the federal money may instead be used for existing programs.
But Ellis is hopeful the guaranteed income program can be revamped to address the state’s concerns, such as placing more controls on how the money is used and changing the random selection process used to choose participants.
Previously selected participants would likely have to apply again, Ellis said.
The efforts to quash the Harris County program may be replicated to push back against other guaranteed income efforts elsewhere, he said. “I assume other conservative attorney[s] general around the country are looking at this and may resort to doing the same thing.”
Brewster, the Austin program participant, suggests that opponents of guaranteed income might change their tune if they were to switch income and resources with low-income individuals for just one month.
 “Sometimes you just need a boost, and most of those families just needed that boost,” Brewster said.

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Experts say to notify your bank that your cards were lost or stolen so they can be canceled and the bank can send you replacements via mail.
Keeping an extra card and cash at home can come in handy if you lose your wallet.
Freezing your credit immediately can prohibit someone from opening up a line of credit in your name if they’ve obtained your identifying documents.

Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images

I was packing up to head home from work last week when I noticed something that made my stomach sick.
The space in my backpack normally occupied by my wallet was empty.

I searched every nook and cranny of my bag and even crawled under my desk to search for the small pouch that was home to my driver’s license, credit and debit cards and a New York City MetroCard. I checked with security to see if someone turned it in. No one had.
Eventually, tired from my frantic searching, I accepted defeat and contacted the bank to lock my cards. 
As a CNBC intern who recently joined the personal finance desk, I spend most days speaking with finance experts to inform the stories I write. After losing my wallet, I decided to ask a few sources what course of action I should take to protect my money and identity.
The experts I spoke to validated some of the things I had already done and provided extra security steps I hadn’t considered. 

‘Everyone should freeze their credit’

One thing I didn’t do immediately that each financial planner I spoke with recommended is freezing my credit.

Freezing your credit can prohibit someone from opening a line of credit in your name, according to Ivory Johnson, certified financial planner and founder of Washington, D.C.-based Delancey Wealth Management.
“Everyone should freeze their credit unless they’re going to use it,” said Johnson, who is a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council. “Everyone. Because you can unfreeze it with the click of a mouse.”
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This can be smart if you lose your wallet to reduce the risk that a thief uses the contents of your wallet to commit ID theft, experts say. That’s especially true if you carry your Social Security card, which isn’t recommended.
To freeze your credit, you must contact the three major credit reporting agencies: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. This was easy to do on each agency’s website — I just made a free account and clicked a button to place a security freeze.

Replacing cards and ID

I filed a lost and found report with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in hopes that my wallet was found in the subway and turned in by a good Samaritan.
I then made a list of everything that was in my wallet … and that was the easy part.
The hard part was getting replacements for everything on my list. I first needed to call each issuer to report the card as lost to ensure I wasn’t responsible for any charges incurred if someone found the wallet and went on a spending spree.
I live in New York City as I attend graduate school and intern at CNBC for the summer. However, my permanent address is in North Carolina.
This made it tricky in requesting a replacement driver’s license. After initially contacting the DMV, I was directed to the state transportation department to change my mailing address so they could send it across state lines. A week later, I’m still without a license.
The North Carolina DMV did email me a temporary driving certificate, but it doesn’t have photo identification on it. A DMV employee told me over the phone that the third-party contractor that prints the state IDs is experiencing delays and that it could take up to 30 days to receive the permanent replacement. I have been relying on my passport for identification in the meantime, but it feels risky carrying that essential document around the city. 

The apps for both Bank of America and Capital One made it easy to cancel my cards and order replacements, but I was left with few options in the interim. 
Luckily, I had a virtual Apple credit card in my phone’s wallet that I applied for last year to purchase a laptop in interest-free installments. I recently paid off the laptop, but had not used the card for anything else, so it came in handy to pay for the subway and dinner on the day I lost my wallet. 
Soon after requesting a replacement debit card, Bank of America sent me a virtual one that I was able to add to my Apple wallet and use immediately. The new physical cards I requested arrived about five days later. 
In the age of online banking, actually walking into a bank to get cash seems “antiquated” to Lee Baker, certified financial planner and owner and president of Atlanta-based Apex Financial, but it’s still an option.
“As long as you’ve got some kind of ID, because they’re going to ask for it, you should be able to go into the bank and say, ‘Hey, I just simply want to withdraw X amount of dollars,'” said Baker, who is also a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council.

Other tips and tricks to manage a lost wallet

Here are a few other key points Johnson and Baker made to protect your identity and money:

Keep cash and a credit card or two tucked away somewhere safe at home for backup.
Rely on a few credit cards, rather than a debit card to make most purchases. There are higher stakes with debit card fraud when it’s your money at risk, experts say, compared to credit card fraud when it’s the credit issuer’s funds at risk.
File a police report for the stolen or lost wallet, especially if the loss will impact scheduled payments and you need documentation proof for a landlord or utility company. This is also important in case someone tries to pass themselves off as you with the driver’s license.
Give copies of identifying documents and cards to someone you trust for safekeeping to serve as a backup if the originals are lost.
Update any accounts or subscriptions you have auto-pay set up for with new card information if you had to request a replacement card.
Change your passwords and add multifactor authentication to credit card and bank accounts.

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Whether you’re mid-career or nearing retirement, it’s important to know where you’re investing — and how those accounts could impact future taxes, experts say.
A mix of pretax, after-tax Roth and taxable brokerage accounts can lower levies in retirement by providing flexibility.
However, the right tax balance depends on your goals, risk tolerance and timeline.

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Whether you’re mid-career or nearing retirement, it’s important to know where you’re investing — and how those accounts could impact future taxes, experts say.
Many workers are heavily concentrated in tax-deferred savings via a pretax 401(k) plan or traditional individual retirement accounts, which incur regular income taxes on future withdrawals, based on federal tax brackets.

However, many advisors recommend using a mix of pretax, after-tax Roth and taxable brokerage accounts for more flexibility in retirement.
The right mix can provide “a lot of different levers to pull to manage your adjusted gross income,” explained certified financial planner Judy Brown at SC&H Group in the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore area.
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Pretax distributions could bump you into a higher tax bracket or trigger higher Medicare Part B and Part D premiums, explained Brown, who is also a certified public accountant.
Medicare Part B and Part D premiums are based on so-called modified adjusted gross income, which is your adjusted gross income plus tax-exempt interest, from two years prior.

By comparison, after-tax account distributions, such as Roth 401(k) plans or Roth IRAs, generally don’t incur levies and won’t boost your earnings.
Another bucket is taxable brokerage investments. If you hold these assets for more than one year, you’ll pay 0%, 15% or 20% on capital gains, depending on your taxable income.
While higher earners could incur an extra 3.8% levy on brokerage assets, the combined rate is still considerably lower than the 37% top marginal tax rate on pretax account distributions.
A mix of pretax, after-tax Roth and taxable assets can help you “adapt to changing tax laws and personal financial circumstances” to better manage withdrawals and taxes, said CFP Alyson Basso, managing principal of Hayden Wealth Management in Middleton, Massachusetts. 

The perks of a brokerage account

Your brokerage assets can be especially useful if you’re eyeing an early retirement before age 59½, according to Houston-based CFP Abrin Berkemeyer with Goodman Financial. 
Workplace retirement plans and pretax IRAs typically incur a 10% penalty for withdrawals before age 59½, with some exceptions. However, you can tap your brokerage account at any age without penalty.
The brokerage account can also help you achieve other goals before age 59½, such as covering a down payment on a second home or funding a child’s wedding, Berkemeyer said.

Of course, you’ll sacrifice certain tax benefits to build your brokerage account, such as tax-free growth or upfront deductions for contributions, he said.
But ultimately, the right mix of pretax, Roth and taxable investments depends on your goals, risk tolerance and timeline.

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