I’m flying out to Michigan this morning for a board meeting at ‘SmallCorp’. It’s a trip I’ve made many times over the last 9 years. ‘SmallCorp’ is an automotive industry supplier with thousands of employees and operations in 11 countries. They are only small in comparison to some of the giant MegaCorps I worked directly for over the course of my career. Related (2015) – … Continue reading Congratulations (& Farewell) SmallCorp!
This chart pops up on the internet now and then – and just got updated. It shows how much prices have changed since the ‘turn of the century’ for a number of categories. No surprise, Healthcare and College Tuition have grown much more expensive. They far out pace every other category on the chart, including wages, housing and food. Other things have dropped in price. … Continue reading Retiree Inflation Exposure
We are almost 2 weeks into 2024 already. My goal to get financially organized to start the New Year 2024 has already failed miserably. We did our annual ‘Round-Up Day’ a couple weeks ago, rebalanced our portfolio for last year’s gains, but otherwise haven’t done too much, financially speaking. Instead. I’ve goofed off and been playing with public domain Mickey Mouse memes. Reader Bob, a … Continue reading Starting 2024 Strategies …
When I was a corporate officer at MegaCorp, you were expected to maintain a certain % of your annual salary in company stock. I forget the exact amount, but I think it was 2-3x your annual total compensation. It wasn’t too hard, given the company had been doing well and we all had stock grants and stock options. Still, as personal finance matriarch, Jane Bryant … Continue reading Looking At Returns Over Time
The pandemic seems to have changed a lot about the workplace & retirement, but one thing it hasn’t changed is the average age of retirement. The Gallup organization tracks the age at which people retire annually and for 2022, it remained constant at 61 years old. It’s been 61 every year but one (62 in 2020) since 2016. If you look farther back in history, … Continue reading Later & Later Now?
Do I stick to a budget? No, I don’t even have a budget anymore. I’ve become completely un-analytical in retirement. I used to be good at it. When I was working, I built complex spreadsheets to track our annual budget, our net worth, and projections of what we needed in retirement. Since retiring, much of that has gone by the wayside. I stopped tracking our … Continue reading (I Guess) We Are On Budget …
I’m turning 57 this year, which certainly means I’m on the downhill side of the mountain. Not just in age / likely lifespan, but also in annual spending. This JP Morgan chart shows ‘the other side of the mountain’ in spending. The average American household slows spending quite a bit as they age … more than I would have guessed. I’m seeing a pretty steady … Continue reading Heading Down The Hill …
When I first started working in the late 1980s/early 1990s, we would keep our meager savings at the MegaCorp Employee Credit Union. I would walk down to the lobby of our 40-story tower almost weekly to make a deposit, transfer some money, or buy a CD. Buying & cashing Certificates of Deposit is something it seemed like we did all of the time back then. … Continue reading The Savings Rate Game
I just read an interesting study on the risks & worries of retirement. That is, what do people worry about happening in retirement compared with what are the real risks? The news is good. Even though the volatility of the markets going up & down make the headlines each week, the actual biggest risk is living longer than you expect: Living longer than you expected … Continue reading The Risks of Retirement
It’s hard to believe that we are well into Year 3 of the CV19 pandemic. While cases & fatalities are about the same as this time last year, the lead headlines have moved onto the economy – particularly inflation and unemployment. The jobs situation is a bit of a question mark to me. The unemployment rate is very low, mostly as a function of less … Continue reading Pandemic Impact on Early Retirement
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