I will miss you today. I know, no one misses teachers’ meetings. I can hear you teasing about it. “Oh, I just love teachers’ meetings,” said no teacher EVER. I’ll miss your jokes. And I’ll miss the contagious enthusiasm in your voices. A new semester brings it out. Despite the complaints and denials, you have […]
Hiked in Palo Duro again today. It’s one of my retirement perks—to experience regularly pleasures once available only sporadically. Anyway, looking northeast where Highway 207 crosses the canyon at its widest, I was reminded how much I love wide open spaces (no, this blog is not about the Dixie Chicks). Not sure why. Maybe it’s […]
Kinder’s questions (I hope you did the exercise yourself) are designed to find out the core values and dreams of his clients, which he sees as the first step in helping them come up with a financial plan. My responses told me two things. First, if had unlimited money (question #1), I would still do […]
Financial planner George Kinder (“Life Planning for You: How to Design & Deliver the Life of Your Dreams”) has his clients answer the following three questions (I’ve paraphrased for brevity): 1. If you had all the money you wanted—for now and in the future—how would you live your life? 2. If you had only 5-10 […]
In “The Evolution of Retirement, 1880-1990,” Dora Costa argues that increased income and poor health are no longer the reasons why American men retire. They used to be. Costa traces the beginning of large-scale retirement in the U.S. to Union Army veterans, who were given pensions by a nation grateful for their sacrifices in the […]
Hiking the canyon road at Hidden Falls Ranch today, I thought of old friends. Not the two-legged kind. I’ve been a program director and executive director at my favorite camp, but my best job there was the first one—wrangler. HFR doesn’t allow trail rides in the Palo Duro anymore. Hasn’t for years. There’s a reason. […]
In February, 1962 Marine Colonel John Glenn circled the Earth three times in a NASA craft dubbed Friendship 7. In October, 1998, now a U.S. senator, Glenn returned to space as a payload specialist aboard the shuttle Discovery. At 77, he was the oldest human to venture outside the atmosphere. It’s a trend I’ve noticed […]
Just finished reading a Washington Post article on creativity and aging. Seems there is a controversy on whether the latter affects the former. Yes, say the scientists. Brain function declines with age and creativity is one such function. No, say the artists, pointing to Michelangelo who did some of his best work in his 70s, […]
Did two things yesterday that aren’t normal for me. First, I got up at 7:30 a.m., which is over an hour later than normal—because I’ve been waking with the sun and this morning was overcast. And, two, last night, we went to dinner with friends, then lingered for an hour or two, just visiting. What’s […]
Retirement Myth #7: Retired people are a drain on the economy. I suppose this myth gets perpetuated because of all the reporting on Medicare costs: 618 billion in 2015, 17% of GNP. And while today’s seniors profit from the expenditure, they, alone, certainly didn’t create it. But what about income and wealth, both of which […]