Blog
Weekly articles about how to live a secure, fulfilling retirement.
What do you have to show for it?
Money I did an interesting exercise this week. If you’ve ever looked at a copy of your Social Security statement, you know that page 3 shows how much you’ve earned each year throughout your life. As I looked at mine, I was suddenly curious about something, so I...
How to make yourself financially resilient
Every year the flu kills about 36,000 people in the United States. Those who die typically have an immune system that is already compromised in some way, such as by age or illness. In other words, it’s not necessarily the strength of the flu that is so dangerous,...
Genuine life vs Counterfeit life
I’ve heard it said that the best way to spot a counterfeit is to be an expert in what is genuine. The Secret Service knows this well. When training their agents, they don’t start by giving them samples of fake bills. Instead they provide them with genuine bills and...
The declining cost of distance
My wife went to visit her sister a few weeks ago in New York. While she was gone, my daughter and I felt like doing something fun, so the two of us went to Washington D.C. to see the cherry trees in bloom. A hundred years ago, either one of those trips would have...
3 simple rules for a remarkable retirement
A blogger I follow recently shared the following paragraph from the book The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance: “Scientists who study human motivation have lately learned that after basic survival needs have been met, the combination...
Should you prepare for a deeper downturn?
The current bull market is 9 years old. That’s the second longest on record and it has people wondering how much further it can go. That question has taken on added urgency given the recent volatility, rising interest rates and political uncertainty. Markets lost...
Pain + Reflection = Progress
Retirement often involves making important decisions with incomplete information when the stakes are high. You won’t have everything figured out on Day 1. More likely, you’ll arrive at your ideal retirement through a process of trial and error. You’ll make...
Memento Mori
Memento Mori. In English it means: “Remember that you will die.” This has been a tough couple of weeks for me. My mom died very unexpectedly after a brief illness. On January 29th, I met her for dinner to celebrate her 67th birthday. We had a wonderful time. On...
My number one takeaway from travel roulette
I recently played a game of travel roulette with my friends. We showed up at the airport at 5 am with no tickets and no plans and told the ticket agent we’d go anywhere warm. The only conditions were that the flight had to leave that morning and cost less than...
Travel Roulette
For a while I’ve wanted to show up at the airport with no plans, no luggage and no ticket and ask the agent to book me a flight somewhere. I think it would be a fun experiment. Travel roulette. So a few days ago, I sent this text to four of my friends: To my...
Every book I’ve read for the last 5 years
Happy New Year! December is crazy busy in my line of work so I didn’t have much time to write, but the calendar has flipped, I’ve come up for air and I’m excited about 2018. In past years I’ve written about my annual review process and how I set goals. You can read...
Metrics that matter
I just finished watching the new Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam. During the war, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had commanders and soldiers in the field collecting vast amounts of data each day that was then put onto punch cards and fed into a mainframe...