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This is a preview of Sound Money, Forbes’ free weekly newsletter about pressing issues that matter to your financial well-being: Personal finance, investing, taxes and retirement. Subscribe to get it delivered to your inbox.

Are we rich yet? Depends whom you ask. Americans are emerging from the pandemic mildly optimistic about the future of the economy, but they’ve downgraded (at least temporarily) their estimates of what it takes to be “wealthy” from $2.6 million in 2020 to $1.9 million now. Women and minorities are skeptical about their individual opportunities. Then there’s the more existential question facing tax geeks and lawmakers: What is income, really?

Wealth may be nothing more than a construct, but its consequences are very real. (That’s why Forbes exists, after all.) Read on for the latest in tax policy, meme stocks, retirement relocations and more.

Meme stocks are back in vogue this week, as Redditors rally around AMC and GameStop
GME
–sending shares up roughly 78% and 38%, respectively. On the other end of the investor spectrum is Michael Milken, a billionaire famous for pioneering the issuance of high yield bonds to finance leveraged takeovers in the 1980s. Now, Forbes‘ Antoine Gara reports that Milken owns at least 125 SPACs after a boom year for the trendy blank-check companies.

Americans are feeling sort of fine about the economy. New jobless claims in the U.S. fell to a pandemic low of 406,000 last week, and the number of people receiving unemployment benefits also dropped off for the second week in a row. Dozens of red states have already nixed their $300 per week federal unemployment enhancement, and some blue states are feeling the pressure to follow suit.

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Novel graphic: Meme Stocks On The Move Again

Source: Ycharts.com

You might enjoy daydreaming about retiring in the south of France, but in practice, many Americans opt to stay put when the time comes. Here’s how to successfully plan a retirement move. Speaking of planning, here are 7 (often overlooked) steps to consider when hammering out your estate plan. Lastly, learn how to determine your own definition of wealth as you approach your golden years.

Good news for parents: On July 15, the IRS plans to start delivering monthly child tax credit payments to at least 39 million families–which translates to nearly 90% of families with kids in the U.S. (However, the agency’s new online portal to help families claim the correct amount needs some work.) Unfortunately, a new analysis found that court fines and fees are perpetuating systematic racism to some degree in all 50 states. And as Congress prepares to debate Biden’s tax plan, lawmakers must first grapple with the age-old question of how exactly to define income. Here are some possible answers.

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