About a week ago, I got this provocative fortune in a cookie at a Chinese restaurant. It’s not often that you get interesting admonitions from Panda Express, but this one got us talking. My wife and I couldn’t think of many things that we had done that were “scary” over the last 5-10 years (a blue moon is once every 30 months, on average). … Continue reading Scary Fortune
The website, Ooma, recently published this interesting infographic comparing the states for the cost of living for retirees. They used 9 different dimensions for their ranking It’s a looooong infographic, so I broke it into key components so you can see the comparisons more easily. How does your state compare? I wasn’t surprised to see that our primary home state of Minnesota ranked in … Continue reading Retirement Cost of Living
My brother and I used to joke at frequency of news articles declaring something to be “America’s Fastest Growing Sport”. Every new sport seemed to claim the title, including disc golf, ultimate, handball, roller hockey, ‘slam ball’, and arm wrestling. I’ve played a lot of those sports, but Pickleball might be the current fastest-growing sport – and the one that breaks through with lasting, mass … Continue reading Fastest Growing Sport?
Just a quick post this morning. I wanted to share this data I just came across in the Wall Street Journal. If you want to feel good about how your retirement savings are going, just compare your savings with these mean & median figures from across the USA. I’m guessing if you found your way to this site, you are running well ahead of the … Continue reading Mean & Median Net Worth
We’re kicking off a kitchen makeover on Monday – the first real update we’ve done to our house in years. We’ve been here 16 years now, and while it’s been a great home for our family, the style has definitely slipped into that “a bit dated” category. What looked sharp and timeless in the mid-2000s now feels dark and heavy compared to what buyers (and … Continue reading Kitchen Makeover Project
Northwestern Mutual does a nice annual study on the ‘state of retirement’ in the USA. It’s a pretty exhaustive analysis that looks at all aspects of life and our involvement and satisfaction with each dimension. Link: Northwestern Mutual 2025 ‘Planning & Progress’ Study I was surprised by a few of the numbers from this year’s study and thought I’d share them. First, Americans are pretty … Continue reading Retirement Confidence
Have you heard about the “U” shaped happiness curve? It’s the output of psychology research across ages. It suggests that people are happiest when they are younger, lose some of that happiness in middle-age, and then get it back as they get older. Here’s a plot of the curve, with the colors representing 7 different studies of happiness by age. There has been a lot … Continue reading Happiness “U”-Curve
About once a year, some dusty old post from this site will “pop” and go viral. My post on private label grocery products from May of 2017 is the latest. Link: National vs Store Brands For some reason, it’s the top read post of 2025, after sitting mostly ignored for the last 8 years. After its 2017 debut (with a few hundred views), it fell … Continue reading Store Brands Revisited
These two bags of groceries (plus a couple gallons of skim milk) were a whopping $107 at Target today. I’m old enough to remember when our grocery bags averaged $15 each. That rule of thumb was from 35 years ago (in 1990) when we first got married and watched every $ closely. Related: Cut Those Prices In Half! I know prices have been rising, but … Continue reading Sticker Shock
Audiobooks are apparently having a big surge in popularity. Ten years ago, only 15% of Americans had listened to an audiobook, but now it’s over 50%. Revenue for audiobooks has exploded over +300% over the same period, driven by new streaming options. I’m a bit late to the trend. I’ve written before about my (mostly failed) strategies to overcome my ADHD and read more books … Continue reading Dropping Into Audiobooks
MrFireStation 