Easy investing on the fly

And more of the week's best financial advice

A phone.
(Image credit: Jane_Kelly/iStock)

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial advice, gathered from around the web:

Easy investing on the fly

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The truth about the 'death tax'

President Trump and his family allegedly used suspect schemes to dodge millions in taxes on his father Fred's estate, according to a recent New York Times report. "So how many people actually pay America's federal estate tax?" asked Jacob Passy at Market Watch. Not many. Only 5,219 households in 2016 paid the 40 percent tax, which is levied on transfers of property after death. They gave the IRS $18.3 billion in taxes on estates valued at $107.8 billion. Even fewer will pay in the future. The 2017 tax reform package doubled the level at which the tax kicks in: Estates worth less than $11.2 million for individuals now escape the levy. But watch out for state estate taxes. Those kick in at lower levels, starting at $1 million in Oregon and Massachusetts.

Goodbye, planned obsolescence

There may be plenty of life left in your old iPhone, said Jeff Sommer at The New York Times. Apple made two recent decisions that could dramatically extend the life of your phone. One was introducing a battery replacement service, charging $79 to put a new battery in the old phone. The other was making sure the new operating system, iOS 12, would work on old phones as well as it does on new ones. This is the opposite of what we've come to expect: With previous updates, older phones would get slower. Not so now. With iOS 12, an older phone such as an iPhone 6 can open the camera app 70 percent faster and will run twice as fast under a heavy workload. "My old phone, which cost $649 new, seems like a much better deal now, considering all the use I'm getting out of it."