Running Out of Money Bloomberg News today posted an article titled, Retirees Might Run Out of Money 10 Years Before They Die. It’s a title intended to shock people into action or at least awareness. I have a strong interest in this topic. In 2013 I published the book Global Pension Crisis: Unfunded Liabilities and How We Can Fill the Gap, published by Wiley & Sons. The book was based on ten years of…
Heat Wave I am starting to read that we should expect a very hot summer. They are already posting record-breaking temperatures in some unusual places like northern Norway (Mr. Trump’s favorite go-to country of white, pale people), reaching up into the arctic circle in unprecedented manner. When I hear about temperatures that are in the 120oF+ I think about how uncomfortable I get at 80oF if the humidity gets over 40% I think…
Rhode Scholarship I grew up in awe of Rhode Scholarships. There was something about its student/athlete mix of excellence that made me think that these thirty-two annual selectees were uber-special. The scholarship has sought to “instill a sense of civic-minded leadership and moral fortitude in future leaders.” I thought it was noteworthy when I heard that Bill Clinton was a Rhode Scholar. Then I met my friend Frank in 1991. Frank is a good…
The Retirement Survey I got a reminder today from Cornell University to participate in their Retirement Activity Survey. I decided to fill it out more for interest about what they were asking and trying to sort out rather than to be a good retiree. To begin with, I feel a little funny being considered a Cornell faculty retiree. Yes, I taught at Cornell for ten years and yes, as a 50% employee I qualified…
The Art of Leisure I’m learning. Today is just another May Saturday. There is nothing special about it. I’ve done my May motorcycle ride. Memorial Day is a week away. I have a business trip to a conference in Rotterdam in two weeks, and then three weeks after that (six weeks from now) we have our annual family trip (this year to Ireland). That leaves seven more weeks of summer and the month of September…
Hot Tub Time Machine It’s Day 1 of my May trip to California. I’ve already had two meals with relatives, catching up on life as we know it in California. I’ve woken up at the butt-crack of dawn to get on a conference call with our London investment bankers (Always Something – the name I will one day call my yacht). And now I have spent a half hour in my luxurious spa, set amongst…
The Blue Horizon Life is about setting stakes out ahead of yourself and then fooling yourself into thinking that it’s a fun game to strive towards that stake. I chose those words quite carefully because all of those elements are at play. The operative words are Setting, Ahead, Yourself, Fooling, Thinking, Fun, Game, Strive, and Towards. When I was eight-years-old I got sent west by my mother with my childless aunt and uncle in their…
Urban Nocturne Youngtown, Arizona started the retirement community concept in 1954, the year of my birth. Sun City didn’t open until 1960, but by then, age-restricted communities meant for those who wanted to be with other retirees, were well-rooted in the sun states. That is not an official starting gun or anything, it’s just my simple handle on when thinking about how to retire came into vogue. It’s like saying pensions began after WWII when…
Division of Labor As I approach retirement age I am forced to wonder what my days will be like. Everyone I speak to says they have no problem whatsoever filling up their days. What this tells me is that as people move into retirement, their comfort with lying about how they spend their time goes up. I will conjecture that what was allocated for lying about the length of their commute and their take-home…
Le Weekend When I was in high school I learned that in France they had adopted the English word weekend into their language and culture, which had not previously existed (and therefore had not single word to represent). This became Le Weekend. It seems the concept has more going on with it than I had realized. The designation of years, months and days connect to cyclicality of the heavens. Solar orbits, lunar cycles and terrestrial…