The 50-Year Home

My parents were born and raised in the south hills of Pittsburgh. They attended the same high school but didn’t start dating until five years after graduation when they were in a wedding party together.  Dad was a high school teacher on the ...

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The Noise We Don’t Ignore

Inflation is destroying wealth and making food so expensive. The Fed keeps raising interest rates — how can the housing market survive it? The 16th largest U.S. bank failed a few months back. Then the 14th largest bank failed! The COVID-19 pandemic hap...

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How to Leave a Career You Don’t Genuinely Love

Common advice from life coaches and career gurus is to build a career you love so much you don’t want to retire.  I appreciate this advice and wish I’d followed it more in my 20s and early 30s. But genuinely loving what you do is a rar...

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8 Reasons to Pursue Early Retirement

Early retirement is a loaded phrase that ignites internet skepticism.  We can partly blame the mainstream financial media for picking up stories about “early retirees” that run six and seven-figure businesses.  Inconsistent messag...

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Create Multiple Income Streams for Security and Wealth

When I lost my job in 2017, my former employer didn’t have the means to pay me a severance. Our family had emergency savings, but our multiple income streams kept us afloat. Five years earlier, a job loss would have been much worse. But since I s...

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The Fortysomething Guide to Creative Self-Employment

I spent the summer of 1996 tending the 13th street beach stand just off the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD.  Beachgoers came to me for rentable beach chairs, umbrellas, and bodyboards. On a good day, I’d sell about $500 and receive 20% as pay. ...

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Autobiography is not Financial Advice

The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson wrote an article about the best career advice he’s come across that “might be marginally useful.” Your Career Is Just One-Eighth of Your Life was applicable to my situation back in September 2022 whe...

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6 Takeaways from a Rather Unremarkable IT Career

I recently left my 20-year information technology (IT) career to be a full-time blogger.  Most of my career involved partnering with a large government customer to modernize its massively-complex and outdated IT systems. My teammates trusted me. M...

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More Powerful than Financial Advice

Financial advice can be free (google it) or expensive (hire an advisor). But financial advice tends to be tactical — buy this investment, optimize that tax advantage — instead of behavioral — think this way, stick to the plan, and be patient Success in...

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12 Ways to Improve Your Finances in 2023

Happy New Year! The turning of the new year brings two things to mind for a lot of us: Whoa, I spent too much money last month/year How can I improve my finances this year? I’m not a big fan of new years resolutions (most don’t stick). But ...

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4 High-Yield Alternatives to Savings Accounts

Inflation is eating away at our wealth quarter-by-quarter. It appears to have peaked in May 2022, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate increases. But the chart below shows how the products we consume have recently become more expensive...

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12 Ways to Build Confidence to Change Careers

After 20 years in information technology (IT), I decided to change careers to be a full-time blogger in early December. It’s an exciting milestone I’ve been planning for about five years.  Monday morning, after my last day at work, I s...

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It’s Not About Retirement Anymore

Traditional retirement is a suboptimal goal. Building a career you genuinely do not want to retire from is better. Writing those words here or in a 240-character tweet takes little effort. But it’s an enormously complex concept for most middle-ag...

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12 Diabetes Stocks for Diabetes Awareness Month

November is American Diabetes Month. Parents of kids with Type 1 Diabetes laugh that it starts the day after Halloween.  My 10-year-old son was diagnosed in September 2021.  Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disorder that typically presents be...

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Outside the Parameters of a Normal, Safe Life

The 2022 HBO documentary Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off is a fascinating biography of the skateboarding icon. As told through interviews with his Bones Brigade peers — all trailblazers themselves — Tony’s life is a story of risk-taking, fai...

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Time and Money

Our perception of the value of time and money shifts as we age.  In early adulthood, time is abundant, while money is scarcer. We want more money and are willing to sacrifice our time to get it. By middle age, a thriving career helps us earn more,...

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