Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb

Every November, Americans pause to honor the courage and sacrifice of our service members and their families. Veterans Day is more than a date on the calendar; it’s a reminder that freedom and security come at a cost, and that those who served our nation are entitled to the same sense of safety and peace they fought to protect.

One of the most powerful ways to show appreciation is by helping our veterans make the most of the benefits they’ve earned. Today’s array of federal programs covering health care, housing, education, insurance, and retirement savings can provide a strong foundation for lifelong financial stability. But these benefits are complex and often underused. Knowing where to start can make all the difference.

Mapping your benefits to a real plan

Veterans’ finances are different because military service connects to nearly every part of a financial plan. Health care, disability compensation, GI Bill education benefits, TRICARE, and tax-free payments all interact in ways that can either strengthen or complicate a family’s long-term goals.

Begin by taking inventory. Gather your service record and note any exposure history, since the PACT Act has expanded eligibility for health care and disability compensation to many veterans who were previously excluded. Verify your disability rating and dependent status and review your education benefits under the Post-9/11 or Montgomery GI Bill programs.

Even if you are healthy, enrolling in VA health care is an important step. It keeps your record active, builds a relationship with a primary care provider, and makes future claims easier to process. Think of it as a continuation of the self-care that keeps you and your family strong.

For those receiving disability benefits, note that payments increased by 2.5% for 2025, reflecting the latest cost-of-living adjustment.

Housing: turning service into stability

Few benefits have transformed more lives than the VA home loan. For veterans with full entitlement, there are no loan limits. This presents an enormous advantage for buyers in higher-cost housing markets. The program’s funding fee can often be waived for a service-connected disability, and closing timelines today can rival conventional loans when paperwork is in order.

For veterans considering a move, understanding entitlement restoration rules can help preserve eligibility for future purchases. Home ownership remains one of the most enduring ways to build wealth, and the VA loan continues to make that dream attainable for those who served.

Education and career transitions

Education has long been part of America’s promise to its veterans. The GI Bill still offers some of the most generous tuition and housing benefits available anywhere. As of Aug. 1, 2025, new academic-year rates are in effect through July 2026, with the monthly housing allowance tied to the rate for an E-5 with dependents in the school’s ZIP code.

A major change this year comes from the Supreme Court’s Rudisill v. McDonough decision, which allows many veterans who earned both the Montgomery and Post-9/11 GI Bills to use both programs for up to 48 months of combined education benefits. That is a significant win for those pursuing new careers or credentials after service.

Veterans who have completed their education have the option to transfer their education benefits to a spouse or child, creating a meaningful legacy. Before enrolling, use the VA’s GI Bill Comparison Tool to evaluate programs and ensure the school is fully accredited and transparent about costs.

Preserving income, insurance and retirement

Financial security also depends on preserving income and protecting loved ones. The VA’s VALife program, introduced in 2023, offers guaranteed-acceptance whole-life insurance coverage up to $40,000 for veterans age 80 or younger. Those currently insured under the older S-DVI program have until Dec. 31, 2025, to apply for VALife while maintaining existing coverage during the two-year transition period.

As of this fall, more than $2 billion in VALife coverage has been issued, proof that many veterans are taking advantage of this new option. Meanwhile, TRICARE premiums and dental fees for 2025 have been updated; small adjustments can add-up over time, so be sure to account for those in your budget.

Service members under the Blended Retirement System should continue contributing enough to capture the 5% Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) match. This effectively is free money, and one of the simplest ways to strengthen long-term security. And remember that VA disability payments are tax-free, which can affect whether a Roth or traditional account makes more sense for your retirement savings.

Five fast moves every veteran should consider

Document any toxic exposure: The PACT Act expansions mean more veterans now qualify for early care and compensation

Time your education start: GI Bill housing allowances reset each Aug. 1, so plan enrollment around that date.

Check your Certificate of Eligibility (COE): Full entitlement can remove loan limits under the VA program.

Review your life insurance coverage: Compare private-term policies with the new VALife program, especially before the 2025 S-DVI deadline.

Revisit your TRICARE budget: Premium and dental costs changed this year, adjust accordingly.

A message of gratitude

This Veterans Day, our gratitude extends beyond words. We thank every service member and family who has shouldered the burden of duty and wish to remind them that financial well-being is part of the peace they’ve earned.

Take this Veterans Day as a moment to review your benefits, update your plan, and ensure the security you defended continues here at home.

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The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb are financial advisers at Wealth Enhancement Group and co-hosts of “Your Money” on WCCO 830 AM on Sunday mornings. Email Bruce and Peg at yourmoney@wealthenhancement.com. Advisory services offered through Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services LLC, a registered investment adviser and affiliate of Wealth Enhancement Group.

I was just outside of San Jose when my iPhone began buzzing inside the cup holder of my rental car, notifications lighting up the screen like a slot machine jackpot. My hand twitched toward the phone, muscle memory stronger than willpower.

“Mom.” My 10-year-old son Everest in the backseat barely looked up from his Nintendo Switch. “You’re doing the grabby thing again.”

He was right. For all my lectures about his screen time, I had my own digital addiction. I often found myself longing for a time before the constant hum of connectivity, when being offline didn’t feel like falling behind.

That’s when I made an impulsive decision. Once we hit San Francisco, we’d time-travel the only way modern families could — by going analog. No screens, no feeds, no Switch. Just one day in the past, lived fully in the present.

7 p.m.: Checking in and opting out 

Our first stop was the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco, a 1909 neoclassical jewel perched atop Nob Hill, rising like a monument to a more elegant age. White-gloved bellmen greeted us with quiet precision, their crisp uniforms and practiced ease making the handoff of our bags feel like choreography.

Crossing the threshold felt like stepping through a portal. Marble floors gleamed beneath towering columns, and the chandeliers cast a warm, golden light. The urgency of the outside world faded. The air changed. Time, it seemed, had different rules here.

Once inside our room, I solemnly powered off my phone, a small ceremony for the digital life I was leaving behind. The quiet that followed felt almost eerie.

“This feels weird,” Everest said, breaking the stillness.

A moment later, there was a knock at the door. A tray arrived: warm cookies and cold milk for Everest, delivered without fanfare, without expectation of photos or hashtags. Just a simple hospitality — the kind that lingers in lifelong memories, not on a feed.

I reached for a cookie and paused, surprised by what I wasn’t doing. No reflexive grab for the phone. No instinct to capture. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all.

7 a.m.: Mechanical poetry

We began our day at the Powell Street cable car turnaround, where San Francisco’s most iconic mode of transportation still rumbles to life. Invented here in 1873 by Andrew S. Hallidie, these are the last manually operated cable cars in the world.

“It’s like sitting in a grandfather clock,” Everest said as the car lurched, the bell clanging warnings.

Since cable cars can’t reverse, operators must physically turn each car on a revolving wooden turntable at the terminus. As we swayed up the steep inclines, the city spread below us like a rumpled map, the bay glittering like scattered coins.

9 a.m.: Lost in translation

It took some effort to find the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory without Google Maps to guide us. “We could ask someone,” Everest suggested.

An elderly woman noticed my tourist distress. “You looking for something?”

She directed us down Ross Alley, a slender artery I hadn’t even noticed, then offered a dim sum recommendation for good measure. People, it turned out, worked better than GPS.

Inside the fortune cookie factory, the room was dim, fragrant with warm vanilla, and packed with antique machinery. Since 1962, this pocket-sized workshop has produced 10,000 cookies a day with batter dripping onto rotating iron griddles. The warm cookies, pliable for only a few seconds, are hand-folded with a hypnotic rhythm.

Before we left, an employee pressed cookies — flat, unfolded and fresh from the griddle — into our open hands. “Still warm,” she murmured. We ate them as the crisp edges began to set, the sweetness lingering just long enough to register before it was gone.

12 p.m.: Elegant improvisation

Afternoon tea at the Palace Hotel’s Garden Court felt like slipping into a living Fabergé egg. Though the original 1875 hotel had been lost to the 1906 earthquake, what rose from its ashes was even more spectacular. The rebuilt Garden Court, crowned by its magnificent 1909 glass dome and cascade of chandeliers, pulsed with an opulence that surpassed even its legendary predecessor.

The tea service unspooled like a fairy tale: silver teapots catching the light, tiered trays stacked with miniature sandwiches, jewel-box pastries, and warm scones with clotted cream.

With no screens to distract us, we noticed everything: the curl of steam rising from teacups, the clink of china, the hushed tones of nearby conversations. We made up backstories for strangers and imagined the secrets this room had overheard across a century of sophisticated afternoons.

2 p.m.: Hands-on wonder

The Exploratorium — San Francisco’s temple to hands-on discovery since 1969 — was the perfect counterpoint to the vintage elegance of tea time. While the rest of the city preserved its past, this interactive science museum has always been about touching, testing and thinking differently.

I watched Everest vanish into the darkness of the Tactile Dome, a pitch-black labyrinth navigated by touch alone, swallowed by an experience that couldn’t be screen-grabbed. His voice echoed from the darkness: “Mom, you have to try this!”

For an hour, we lost ourselves in exhibits demanding participation. Mirrors bent reality into pretzels, sound waves became visible, pendulums drew elegant patterns in sand.

4 p.m.: Temptation

Musée Mécanique at Pier 45 is part museum, part arcade and entirely a love letter to the mechanical amusements of the last century. More than 300 vintage machines, from hand-cranked dioramas to 1980s-era games, line the space, all still operational and powered by pocket change.

Then we hit a snag. A group of kids around his age huddled around their phones, excitedly showing each other something. Their animated chatter about a new game update made Everest’s face fall.

“Can I use your phone?” he asked. “I want to search up that game.”

But before I could answer, he’d already spotted something else — the brightly lit, Road Race pinball machine — and the phone was forgotten. For the next hour, Everest moved from fortune tellers to boxing matches to player pianos, laughing as mechanical wonders came alive.

6 p.m.: Island of isolation

Our cruise, part of the San Francisco CityPASS, pulled out from Pier 33, engines growling, slicing through waters once crossed by gold-seekers and prison ferries. We were headed for Alcatraz, the bay’s most infamous rock.

As we approached the island, my phantom phone anxiety peaked. I imagined emails piling up, calls multiplying, the digital world spinning without me.

“The prisoners probably felt like this,” I said suddenly. “Cut off, wondering what was happening in the world.”

“Except they were actual prisoners,” Everest pointed out. “You’re still in the world.”

The return ferry revealed San Francisco in all its impossible glory: hills defying gravity, bridges slicing through mist, neighborhoods cascading down slopes in waves of color. Here, self-driving cars navigated around cable cars, and start-ups were based in Victorian houses. The city existed in multiple timelines at once.

7 p.m.: Sweet surrender

As golden hour bathed the city, we made our final stop: Ghirardelli Square, where the iconic chocolate sign flickered like a beacon from another era. Inside the original 1966 ice cream shop, the past didn’t feel preserved, it pulsed. Checkered floors, vintage chocolate-making tools, and the massive “G,” salvaged from the historic rooftop sign, gave the place the charm of a working museum.

Everest went straight for the World Famous Hot Fudge Sundae, a towering glass of vanilla ice cream drowned in molten chocolate, crowned with whipped cream and a cherry. He took a bite and closed his eyes, reverent and happy.

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I asked Everest what he thought of our analog day.

“It was harder than I thought,” he said. “My brain kept reaching for my Switch even when I didn’t want to play. But everything felt more … real, I guess? Like, bigger. And it was nice to have you without your phone.”

As we walked through the square, under a sky smudged with the last light of the day, I realized our experiment had revealed something unexpected for me: stepping away from screens didn’t mean stepping out of the world. It meant stepping deeper into it.

Anthony Edwards really, truly tried to play along.

All of the Timberwolves were building up the importance and intrigue of the NBA Cup — the league’s in-season tournament — after Minnesota blew out Utah on Friday in its group play opener.

Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards, rear, goes to the basket against Utah Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen (23) in the first quarter of an NBA Cup basketball game Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)

Minnesota coach Chris Finch senses a growing interest in the tournament for players across the league, noting guys talk openly about it.

“I think it’s a perfect shot in the arm at this point in the early start of the season,” Finch said. “I think it’s been a great product since it’s been put in. I think players understand it, especially our guys. They talked about it last week, and we weren’t even playing.”

Jaden McDaniels cited the money as incentive. Each player on the winning team nets $530,933 this season, while players on the second-place team receive $212,373. Semifinalists get $106,187 and quarterfinalists earn $53,093.

“When I see the (colorful) court, I’m like, ‘It’s just time to win the money,’ ” McDaniels said.

Julius Randle’s intentions sounded a bit more pure. He noted his goal is for Minnesota to win it because it’s a competition and the Wolves have the talent to do it. Edwards reiterated that message in his first comment about the event on Friday.

Then he was asked if players better understand the tournament in Year 3 of the event. Edwards noted players “didn’t really understand the rules” in 2023.

The truth quickly came pouring out, as it always does with Minnesota’s star guard.

“I still don’t understand the rules,” the affable Edwards admitted. “I really don’t care.”

But he knows the games still count toward Minnesota’s overall record, so there’s that. It’s not as if Edwards, who scored 29 points in the first half Friday, didn’t put his all into the Cup opener, even if the tournament added zero motivation.

“I think just winning the games mean more than anything,” he said.

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By JESSICA DAMIANO

If you’re like most well-intentioned gardeners, you might give a lot of thought to planting the “right” plants to nourish pollinators and other wildlife, with nectar, pollen, seeds and fruit. But have you given much thought to those animals’ habitat?

In addition to sustenance, beneficial insects and critters need a safe home in which to rest, hide, breed and pupate.

One area crucial to their lifecycles is around the base of trees.

“We talk about the importance of (native) trees in creating the caterpillars that drive the food web,” Doug Tallamy, entomologist and bestselling author of “Nature’s Best Hope” and “Bringing Nature Home,” told me the last time we spoke.

“But those caterpillars drop from the tree and they pupate in the ground. And how we landscape under those trees determines whether or not those caterpillars will survive,” he said.

Giving caterpillars a ‘soft landing’

So, how are we landscaping under our trees? Raise your hand if your grass goes right up to their trunks.

Instead, Tallamy says, “we want uncompacted areas where we’re not walking, which means (planting) beds around our trees. If you’re mowing or walking under them, you’re squishing all those caterpillars.”

Caterpillars feed birds, which provide pest-control services in our gardens by feeding thousands of insects each to their young every year. Caterpillars are also a crucial food source for reptiles and spiders. And they themselves eat up garden pests like aphids.

Later in life, they morph into moths and butterflies, becoming important pollinators for flowers, fruits and vegetables. Creating a so-called “soft landing” for them, while at the same providing habitat for native bees, fireflies, beetles and other beneficial insects, is essential for a healthy ecosystem. And it’s easy to do in two simple steps.

How to do it

For starters, allow leaves to rest directly under trees, where they fall. Those pupating caterpillars will get cozy in their natural blanket, and you’ll get a break from raking.

Next, plant groundcovers and other plants under the tree’s canopy, which is the overhead area that extends along the width of the tree from branch tip to branch tip. “Choose plants that are going to support the food web, the ones that will share the most energy with other living things,” Tallamy advises.

That means opting for ferns, woodland phlox, sedges and other native groundcovers, shrubs and perennials.

Plug your ZIP code into the National Wildlife Federation’s native plant finder to learn which plants are best suited for your region, according to Tallamy’s research.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.