She’s Gone

I’m an old guy. At 67 I expect to lose friends. In fact when I scan the obituaries in the local (digital) newspaper half the people listed are younger than me. That’s sobering, and when you get to my age you’ll understand what that feels like. But what I cannot come to terms with is …

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What is Financial Freedom

We often hear financial independence described as financial freedom. But freedom from what? You might think that’s too obvious to bother addressing, but I think it is much more complex than it sounds. Take the last week of my life, for instance. Last Wednesday my wife and I got up early and trailered our fishing …

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How Much Money?

I was listening to Wes Moss on his podcast yesterday. He was reviewing a survey of retirees who claim to be the happiest and he made a statement that I found surprising. According to the survey results the happiest retirees had at least $500,000 in liquid assets. Meaning stocks, bonds, CD’s, savings accounts, REIT’s and/or …

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Saying Goodbye

Have you ever been part of a group where you did not know anyone? Maybe a tour group in another country or a project team at work or in a volunteer organization? One of the ways facilitators try to form some cohesion in situations like that is to ask everyone to introduce themselves and to …

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Under the Knife

If you’re an occasional reader of my blog you may remember I had some fairly dicey surgery about a year ago. Fortunately I found a world class surgeon who was able to make some internal repairs that my local doctors said were impossible, and a life threatening situation was completely, and hopefully permanently, corrected. At …

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Why Not Plan?

I have always maintained that the success I’ve had in my career, my retirement, my marriage and family has been largely the result of good fortune and not due to any hard work on my part. Because I’m not really good at hard work. In other words, I’m lazy. Yet I’ve done fairly well at …

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One Hundred Years

The company I spent nearly 40 years working for is having their 100th anniversary party this month. Five different entities have owned the corporation over the years, alternating between private ownership and Fortune 500 companies, and I was privileged to work for three of those during my tenure. I started as a summer intern and …

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The Thing About Grandkids

This is a risky post. Risky because I’m going to violate one of my own rules of blogging. Don’t write about something you haven’t experienced because if you haven’t lived it, you probably don’t understand it. Grandkids fit into that category for me. While my wife and I have three great grown kids, two married …

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The Four Seasons of Life After Work

When I was a full time worker my life was constrained by what was happening with the company.  Whether it was winter or summer my biggest concerns were the same.  How was the billion dollar manufacturing facility I managed performing?  What were our profit margins?  Were we on budget? Were we keeping all seven hundred of our people safe …

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Millionaire Characteristics

I’m a mentor on the Millionaire Money Mentor's forum and we were discussing a post by adimesaved that had some very interesting takes on millionaires. In fact there were 16 of them and four in particular caught my eye.  These are all characteristics that Chris Hogan, formerly of the Ramsey clan, and Tom Corely, the uber …

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