Like dandelions in a spring lawn, credit card offers pop up everywhere—stuffing your mailbox, flashing on the Internet, even falling from the magazines in your doctor’s waiting room. And they all sound so attractive. “0% APR until next year!” “No fee if you transfer a balance now!” “Low fixed rate!” You’re thinking of applying for a card, but how do you decide which offer is best for you?

Your credit report contains information about your past and present credit transactions. It’s used primarily by potential lenders to evaluate your creditworthiness. So if you’re about to apply for credit, especially for something significant like a mortgage, you’ll want to get and review a copy of your credit report.

Over time, the value of your home has grown and your mortgage balance has been reduced (or even eliminated). The equity (the property’s value minus any liens against it) you now have in your home is a reservoir of funding potential. You may decide to tap into it for various purposes, such as remodeling your home, paying off high-interest loans or credit card debt, buying a car, or sending your child to college.

When you refinance your mortgage, you take out a new home loan and use some or all of the proceeds to pay off the existing one.

For millions of Americans, group health insurance offers affordable quality health care. To get the most from this valuable benefit, you need to understand what you have, how lifestyle changes can affect your coverage, and what to do if your coverage doesn’t meet your expectations.

The habits that we’ve formed over our lifetimes help define us. We have physical habits, mental habits, habits of character, personal hygiene habits, and productivity habits. We have good habits, and we have bad habits.

Today’s healthy retirees may live 25 years or more beyond their primary working years. That’s a lot of years. But more importantly, that’s a lot of days—more than 9,000 days to wake up, greet the dawn, and then . . . What?

In this issue, VESTED explores what opportunities a holiday from required minimum distributions presents to retirees in 2020, a few planning ideas to consider during market declines, and what readers should know about their chances of getting audited by the Internal Revenue Service.