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It’s Not ‘What You Know…’
And, no, it’s not necessarily who you know either. Don’t get me wrong, both are important! If you don’t have the requisite ideas, skills, and experience – what you know – you probably won’t get too far. You also must have a strong network – who you know – that you can contact for a…
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Phased Retirement: Simple Questions?
The whole notion of retirement should be simple. You work for many years, you live your life and hopefully save some money along the way. Then you choose a time to step away from full-time work using your savings and retirement benefits (like Social Security) for living expenses. It seems like there could be a…
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Phased Retirement: A Failure to Communicate
The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw famously said, “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” We tend to think we’re pretty good communicators, definitely above average. But most of us have had someone tell us, “You weren’t clear about that…” Or perhaps, “I can’t read your mind!” So,…
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Phased Retirement: Withdrawal Symptoms
Withdrawal symptoms are more often associated with the aftereffects of quitting smoking or after a long period of substance abuse. But more generally withdrawal symptoms can occur after any period of prolonged dependence. And if you’ve been depending on your career for many decades – for your financial support, your social outlet, and providing you…
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Best Ever Mid-Year Resolutions
This summer I’m reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder. One endorsement touts the book as “…a towering achievement in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world!” So, I figured I can self-label my blog post the “best ever.” If you’ve traditionally made resolutions and set goals on January 1st, then the…
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Phased Retirement: A Bad Time to Retire?
With the recent steep market downturns I’ve been reading more articles about whether this is a bad time to retire? If your nest egg has suffered, will you have enough to live on comfortably? Will the markets go even lower? Will inflation continue to diminish your purchasing power? Well, as they say, it sells papers.…
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Phased Retirement: Gap Year
My past posts have focused on a typical approach to phased retirement. It seems funny to even write “typical” since the phased approach is certainly less practiced than retirement-as-we-know-it. But a lunch conversation with a friend this week made me think about alternative approaches and how they have value and deserve to be considered as…
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Phased Retirement: The Hype Cycle
There’s a lot of hype about retirement. Some of the buildup is external via advertising, articles, well-intentioned friends and marketing spin about the wonderful opportunities that await us. But some of it comes from our own internal voices. We go back-and-forth between thinking about how wonderful it will be to ditch all those things about…
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Phased Retirement: Tapering
This week’s post was originally published on the HumbleDollar blog yesterday:
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Phased Retirement: Uncertain Times
Today’s times are uncertain. Pick up the paper, or glance at the news online on your laptop or phone. Inflation, war in Ukraine, falling stock market, and Covid cases rising again. It’s mostly scary news with unknown outcomes. But here’s the thing. The times are always uncertain for the people living through them (that’s us).…
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Retire by Degrees 