Six years ago, Jonathan Clements published an article in HumbleDollar recounting some of the  anecdotal influences on his financial thinking. Rather than research and facts, he explained, it’s often the exploits we experience, the tales we’re told or the comments that come our way that shape how we view money matters. I know that holds true for me. Years later, I can still hear the voices and see the faces attached to these events: 1. In the summer of 1973, the gasoline shortage had our nation waiting in line at the pumps. I was age 11, and excited about spending the first of several summers with my grandfather. Meanwhile, he was unhappy about President Nixon asking gasoline sellers to restrict sales, and remembering wage and price controls from two years earlier. He was also intent on giving me an economics lecture.  “Supply and demand” was his incessant mantra, meaning the markets should be allowed to freely operate. At the time, I was too young to grasp the significance of his words, but they apparently sunk into my psyche. Today, even public policy decisions that appear sound or necessary make me wonder what possible unintended consequences time will reveal. 2. During most of the last two decades, with savings account interest rates bumping along the bottom, I often thought wistfully of a conversation I had in the early 1980s with my great-uncle Jake. He was elated with the 9% interest he was collecting on his certificates of deposit. What would it take to return to those heydays, I mused, with cash actually paying its keep? During the last couple of years, I found out. It’s true that everything comes with a price. 3. In my early 20s, at one of my sales jobs, I worked for Gene, who owned a small automotive parts rebuilding business. In the late afternoons, after I returned to the shop, I often saw him manning the counter, tending to walk-in business. At times, discussion of price for a part led to haggling. When Gene had his fill of the conversation, he’d politely show the would-be patron the exit door. After the customer left, he’d turn to me and say, “I want all the good business I can get, but that’s not good business.” Later, when I owned my own marine construction business, I’d recall his words when it became apparent that a prospective client was asking for charity, rather than service. 4. Some years ago, I would occasionally tune-in to Dave Ramsey's radio program as pitiful callers related their financial predicaments to Dave, then listen to his response. Ramsey created his niche among listeners woefully in debt, often from overspending. As he quickly worked through their problems, he had his ear tuned to hear of spending he considered unnecessary. “Would you borrow money to buy that?” he’d ask. That logic probably doesn’t resonate with everyone, but it did with me. As my wife and I were paying down our debt, I came to view every dollar that wasn’t buying a necessity or paying off a loan as borrowed money. That thinking may have cut down our fun, but it quickly shrunk our debt, as well. 5. Sometime in early 2009, with the stock market down over 50% from its peak in October 2007, a young co-worker asked me if I was still buying stocks. I told her I was “buying all I can.” At the time, my talk was more bravado than bravery. I knew stocks were on sale, but I was still shaky from seeing my savings cut in half. Looking back, I’m glad I followed my head, instead of my gut.

After years of retirement planning, the day has indeed arrived—almost. I’ve recently become a part-timer, working just three days each week in the outpatient physical therapy clinic, plus one Saturday per month at the acute-care hospital. Though I may be just semi-retired, the load already feels a whole lot lighter. How so? For starters, I’m focusing less on gaining more from my job. Oh, I’m still keen to treat patients. That’s what drew me to physical therapy in the first place. But I’m stepping back from the sundry other jobs that have attached themselves to me. Instead, I’ll nudge the younger folks toward new responsibilities as I concentrate on giving my best to a shorter schedule. How short? I’ve trimmed my three workdays to eight hours each, with afternoons free for other pursuits. My brief week of short days feels like a perpetual weekend, with its mix of work and play. There are trade-offs, of course. Shorter hours leave me with less earned income. In exchange, I get more disposable time. How to spend it?  Home provides plenty of projects. My list is long, from a bedroom and bath renovation inside to demolishing and resurrecting storage buildings outside. Though I enjoy both the planning and the labor, I’ll probably employ a hybrid of do-it-yourself and hired help. Other tasks–like breaking up the concrete footing and floor of the old chicken house I tore down two years ago–I’ll have to tackle myself. There is little room for equipment, and manual laborers are scarce. My garden beckons as well, especially the vegetables. From the peas I plant in January to the tomatoes of summer, I have vegetables in the garden and on the table every month of the year. That’s not a boast, just the product of my passion for nurturing plants to grow and yield fruit, and my family’s appetite for their taste.  My wife reminds me, however, that work shouldn’t consume all our retirement time. She’s ready for some leisure, especially travel. Alas, there’s a hitch to her plans. Our mothers are closing in on the century mark. Each continues to live in her home, which we fully endorse, but require help from us. As a result, our wandering is tethered by familial responsibility. Between family pulling one hand and the lure of play the other, where’s the balance as my wife and I seek to find fun together? We’ve found part of the answer close to home. For the last couple of decades, my wife and I have sacrificed our shared time to donate to busy, separate schedules. We are ready to reclaim that time, beginning with sunrise walks on my days off work. The exercise is moderate, but the conversation supplies substantial emotional nourishment. I’m reminded of the “windshield time” of a long drive together.  For real food, we’re venturing farther afield. We both love a good barbeque joint, but our standard meal is heavy on lighter fare. Since quality restaurants are scarce in small-town Georgia, especially those that serve the kind of fresh ingredients we prefer, we’re prepared to drive. After polling friends, we compiled a list of restaurants to check out in the surrounding communities. We’ve heard of married couples scheduling “date nights” to get a break from home life, but we have never indulged–until now. If our local plans sound unambitious, then so will our travel itinerary. Yes, we’re now just partly-employed, with a lot more free time to devote to one of my wife’s loves. But as I indicated above, we feel bound to stay near home. We figure a five to six hour drive is the limit of our leash. Rather than sit home and sulk, we’re determined to ferret-out enough fun within this perimeter to keep us busy until our circumstances change. Our first area of focus is the locale where our daughter attends college. Her school sits atop a mountain overlooking the small city where my wife found her first physical therapy job. We’ve moved a few hours away, but make annual return trips. We've sampled nearly every attraction on offer there, but our current plan puts us on the hunt for different game.  Our new strategy calls for frequent, short trips to create an extended, intermittent vacation. Our main base is a cozy Airbnb with enough amenities to feel like a second home. It lies in a quiet neighborhood, 15 walking minutes from an ice cream shop and a few restaurants, and a short drive from dozens of others.  But its best feature is proximity to miles of hiking trails. A five-minute stroll puts us on a trail up the mountain. From there, we can choose to loop back to our start in an hour or two, or make a day of it. We can even wander over to the college campus for a chat with our daughter.  For my daughter’s Easter break from classes, we traveled to our new spot to keep her on site to prepare for final exams. We did most of the hiking while she did all of the studying, but one morning the three of us drove across town for a few hours’ scrambling over boulders beside a cascading stream. I won’t say the walk was on par with the wilder trails we’ve trod, but on the trip back to our lodging we stopped to dig into a decent Mediterranean lunch. This style of hiking has its appeal. Our new lifestyle may be termed “retirement-lite” by folks who have permanently replaced their work schedules with weekday tee times and travel plans, but it fits us well. It affords me a measure of the work that soothes my psyche, while providing my wife with temporary relief from her travel itch. And it gives us both more of the element that has been missing from our lives for too long–time with each other.

I KNOW I'M NOT WISE. Still, I’ve picked up enough wisdom to realize I didn’t have much of it when I was younger. At the very least, 60 years of stubbed toes, slips and falls have shown me that some paths shouldn’t be trod, while a few are worth traveling. I try to refrain from offering unsolicited advice. But I’ve lately had a growing desire to steer young adults toward choices that escaped my notice when I was their age—with a focus on three areas: Think about who came before us. As young adults, we frequently encounter situations that are new to us, but perhaps not to old timers. For instance, on the first day at a new job, or maybe as a new member at a place of worship, notice that you’re stepping into a structure that’s already in place. The old guys and gals may be doing a lot wrong, but they must also be doing something right. Asking for advice before offering it can ease acceptance of a brilliant idea, and may even help refine and improve it. I still cringe at the memory of situations when I failed to recognize my cluelessness. In the investment world, a plunging 401(k) can be unnerving for a first-timer. At such a moment, encouraging words from someone who’s seen a downturn or two can ease a young investor’s jitters. Meanwhile, in a buoyant market, young investors may be blind to risks that often go unnoticed by the uninitiated. It’s also good to remember that we can be a newbie, even when we’re old. Every year, I sail into unfamiliar waters, but that doesn’t mean they’re uncharted. Chances are, someone has tackled the task before or faced the same financial decision. If I’m smart enough to recognize my ignorance, the advice I need may be there for the asking. Think about who comes after us. During my middle years, I often focused only on meeting my own goals and responsibilities, with little thought beyond myself. I strove to keep up with the demands placed on my brain and my time by work, family and others. I must admit, it often seemed easier and more efficient to do a job myself, rather than teach another how it’s done. I may have also lacked the ability, and perhaps the humility, to relinquish control to someone else. In recent years, I’ve realized such thinking is short-sighted. I’ve begun to reflect on the responsibility I had to the brand new members of my circle, and how in the past I might have failed them. To make amends, I’ve begun reaching back not only to those just starting out, but also to colleagues just a few steps farther from the finish line than I am. Part of my exit plan is to help these busy people in their own middle years avoid my mistake—and recognize the value of training those who are younger. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] For example, at work, there are myriad ways that seasoned physical therapists can nurture younger ones. One important way is through clinical education, which is essential to turning out new rehab professionals. Each licensed therapist learned the ropes from an experienced therapist. I willingly devote extra time organizing our clinical education and encouraging our physical, occupational and speech therapists to give back to their profession. In my own life, the experience of caring for older relatives has taught my wife and me that eventually we’ll probably need to rely on someone who has intimate knowledge of nearly every aspect of our lives. That person is most likely our daughter. With that in mind, in addition to the training and parental support appropriate for a teen on the cusp of young adulthood, we sneak in topics that cover the broad continuum of her life and ours. We have begun sharing details of our finances and our plans for the future. I also encourage strangers to foster newcomers. Last year, when a friendly, young phlebotomist gave me much appreciated painless service, I called her supervisor to suggest she recognize the worker for her superior performance. About the same time, before a medical procedure, a timid, young nurse failed in her attempts to start my IV. An older nurse took over and quickly found the vein, but also found time to needle the novice about her inexperience. Before she left, I complimented the expert, but also suggested she give the young nurse some pointers. Think about what lies ahead. When I was young, time seemed such a cheap commodity. I thought I had years before I needed to start on the nitty-gritty of a financial plan. I also wondered who could possibly know what to plan for. I now realize I was wrong on both counts. Back then, even though I didn’t know it, I was in desperate need of good advice. If I live long enough, I’ll outlive my ability to earn money, but not the need or desire to buy the necessities and niceties of life. To accumulate enough funds, decades of diligent saving and investing are required. Even unknown events, like an early death or disabling injury, should be prepared for with life and disability insurance. Ed Marsh is a physical therapist who lives and works in a small community near Atlanta. He likes to spend time with his church, with his family and in his garden thinking about retirement. His favorite question to ask a young person is, "Are you saving for retirement?" Check out Ed's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

WHEN I STARTED investing, I never thought much about risk, partly because I didn’t recognize that there were any. The investor questionnaires always placed me in the aggressive category. Even though I never ventured much beyond mutual funds, all were pure stock funds, except for a small position in a balanced fund that I briefly owned. I didn’t know much, but I had learned that stocks most likely meant growth over the long haul, and that’s what I wanted. Around age 50, I added some bond funds, but they were less than 10% of my total holdings. A few years later, on the advice of a fee-only financial planner, I moved more money into bonds, but my heart wasn’t in it. My allocation to bonds remained at less than 20%. Still, I thought I should take the advice I’d paid for. I had read about risk tolerance, and of the danger that investors find out too late that they weren’t as brave as they imagined. I understood that panic selling after a large market drop would be devastating to retirement savings, but I couldn’t relate. I had experienced a few declines since I started investing in 1998 and, while not fun, I never considered selling. Even so, I mentally filed the information away, knowing I had been humbled by hubris before. Sure enough, the early 2020 pandemic crash brought a new attitude. My head and my hands executed what I had learned were the right moves. I bought stocks, but I was also stung by my losses. This may have been compounded by the turmoil in my health care job. The seed of a new emotion was planted, but it barely had a chance to germinate because the market came roaring back. The rapid recovery and upward march of stocks after the 2020 crash was exciting. Checking my account balance was fun. But it also got me to look more closely at my retirement plan. I was five or six years from retirement. As my last year of work approached, I had planned to move gradually from stocks to short-term bonds and cash. I wanted to wind up with about five years of spending money that was protected from a stock market drop. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] But then that unfamiliar emotion, which had cropped up in early 2020, began growing again. It felt like my time horizon had suddenly shortened. After years of being a distant goal, it seemed like retirement was upon me. As the market rose through 2020 and into 2021, so did my uneasiness. There were other considerations, too. I liked my work, but I had begun yearning to spend at least some time on other pursuits. Also, my wife and I both had mothers over age 90 living semi-independently at home. I could envision a need to commit more time to them. On top of that, my wife had a brother in assisted living who already required more time than we could really afford to give. The upshot of all this rumination: My wife and I decided to move some of our future retirement spending money out of stocks immediately, rather than doing it gradually as my planned retirement age approached. Even so, 70% of our portfolio is still invested in stocks. We aren’t ready to fully retire. As long as things remain calm on the home front, our plan is to keep working and buying more stocks. But we wanted enough flexibility to handle an unexpected change in income over the next few years. I can’t claim that our decision was purely logical. But taking some risk out of our portfolio took some tension out of our lives. Did we make the right move at the right time? Looking back through the sunshine, I can see that stocks continued to grow after we sold—even after factoring in this year’s decline—and we missed out on some of that growth. We couldn’t have predicted that at the time, as we peered through the fog into the future. But I can tell you that today I’m glad we took some money off the table. Ed Marsh is a physical therapist who lives and works in a small community near Atlanta. He likes to spend time with his church, with his family and in his garden thinking about retirement. His favorite question to ask a young person is, "Are you saving for retirement?" Check out Ed's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

When my wife asked for a hint for the Father’s Day present I was hankering to get, I was stumped for a day or so. I don’t need a new tie or wallet, or the new garden tool that I sometimes suggest. My eventual answer didn’t surprise her, but she was amused. I’ve asked my daughter to answer two questions: What’s the origin of Father’s Day in our country, and does she think it’s worth observing? I already know the answer to the first question. The idea was born in the mind of a young woman who admired her father, but didn’t gain traction until championed by men’s wear retailers hoping to profit from the gift-giving. I figure the story will entertain my daughter, since she’s savvy to the commercial aspect of holidays, and loves to pick out the logical fallacies in an advertiser’s argument. But I’m curious to know how these feelings influence her answer to my second question. For me, the answer is yes, and I’m certain I’ll always honor the memory of my own father on Father’s Day. My father liked to work. As a young man, he poured many hours into his automotive service business, and later his jobs as a school administrator and county school superintendent. Never content with the limits of a regular business day, he also enlisted early morning, evening and Saturday hours to work out a new bus route, write a grant proposal or even build a new set of shelves for an office or classroom. I was usually recruited to help with the handy-man projects, even at a young age. The skills I learned during our labor have served me for a lifetime, though I was hardly a cheerful apprentice at the time. For him, on the other hand, work was a pleasure. But he worked at having fun, as well. He liked to hunt, and he was good at it, because he studied the game and practiced until he mastered it. As a boy, I benefited from his love of his hobby. We spent hours together during the season, and forged memories shared only by us. Decades later, I was shocked the day he told me a brain tumor was the cause of his recent headaches. He was about the age I am now. In typical fashion, the morning after a surgery to remove the tumor, he was out of bed and ready to go home and back to work. He returned to his job to complete his last four-year term as county school superintendent at age 66. In the early years of his retirement, he embarked on a flurry of building projects. First up was remodeling his own house, then my brother’s. And there were community jobs as well, such as constructing an outdoor pavilion attached to the old railroad depot for the local historical society and charitable handy-man work through his church. At age 71, he agreed to devote his time to a multi-year project to help me rebuild the house I now live in. His age gave him an edge, for he was schooled in the construction of old houses. In the beginning, it was a chore to keep pace with him. I worked full-time as a physical therapist, with off hours spent on the house, but he worked even when I was away. He was driven by the ticking clock and wanted to help me while he still could. His mind was tireless and he pushed his body beyond the point of exhaustion. A vivid memory illustrates his restless devotion: One weekend, as we sat in his truck gazing at the sagging joists and half-rotted decking of the dilapidated dock on my pond, he slyly asked what business I once plied. I sheepishly admitted I used to be a dock builder, and agreed my present dock was shameful. The following weekend, I was surprised to discover the dock had been repaired. My father had used his sleepless time in the wee hours to do the work by the headlights of his truck. My father’s brain cancer returned a dozen years after he was first diagnosed. That time, he received computer-guided radiation that killed the tumor, but also some of the surrounding brain tissue. Initially, his cognition was noticeably affected, but he improved, to slowly decline in the ensuing years. My father lived more than a decade after his second treatment, but he was not the same man. My overriding memories, however, are of the man who gave the last part of his best self doing all he could to help his family, until he could do no more. I hope my daughter will cherish a similar memory of me.

I'M THINKING ABOUT retirement—again. But this time, it isn’t my retirement, but rather my wife’s. I earn our family’s primary paycheck, so I’m usually the focus of our discussions when we sit down to scrutinize the numbers and comb through the calendar, looking for a date when we should each hang up our physical therapist’s goniometer. Even though I earn the bigger income, my wife has diligently worked just as long as I have, albeit in a changing capacity. In our 30s, we each began second careers as physical therapists at more or less the same time. I talked her into a blind date the week I started my first physical therapy job. She graduated PT school a couple of months later, and began work shortly thereafter. For five of the first seven years of our marriage, we spent most of our work days side-by-side in the same outpatient clinic. After our daughter was born, my wife’s hours on the job dwindled, while her responsibilities at home increased. On weekdays, she now applies her experience as a former high school biology teacher to instructing our daughter at home. On top of that, she acts as caregiver to family members, including round-the-clock on-call assistance for any needs that arise. And then, of course, there’s the usual tasks involved in keeping up a home. I help, but the brunt of the burden falls on my wife. Despite her hectic schedule, my wife continues to make a small but significant contribution at our workplace. She gives a few hours each month, plus some holidays, at our acute care hospital. Every few months, I ask if she’s ready to retire from her work away from home. My question brings a thoughtful expression, then the same reply of “not yet.” Our ongoing conversation about our respective retirement dates would have been rare a couple of generations ago. Planning for a joint retirement is a fairly recent phenomenon. Retirement planning was once a mostly solo endeavor, even for married couples. In most families, the husband was the sole breadwinner. The income side of the family’s economic life revolved around his career, with the wife playing a supporting role. The latter part of the 20th century witnessed a huge demographic shift. Women started pouring into the workforce. The percentage of women working doubled from 34% in 1950 to 60% in 2000. Last year, the figure stood at about 57%, and was even higher, at 60%, for women in the pre-retirement ages of 55 to 64. With dual incomes came a new challenge for couples—how to coordinate two retirements. Researchers note that retirement is increasingly complex, with variables that include when to call it quits, whether to move or not, how to use our time in retirement, and the implications of declining health. Doubling those factors with the addition of another person compounds the planning intricacies. Not all couples are adept at this financial dance, though they may not readily admit it. Seven out of 10 respondents to Fidelity Investments' 2021 couples and money study say they communicate at least very well about financial issues. But a deeper look at specific retirement topics reveals 48% disagree on the retirement date. Also, 51% are out of sync on the size of the nest egg necessary to retire, and a significant number lose sleep thinking about it. Additional worries are retirement health care expenses, outliving savings and being derailed by economic conditions beyond their control. The Fidelity survey also found gender continues to influence the planning partnership, with men more frequently taking the lead on longer-term retirement and investment planning. But in our case, the situation is more nuanced, because my wife has more of the planner personality. Against this backdrop, my wife and I dance to our own beat. Still, we’re not far out of step with other couples as we ponder if we’re retirement ready. We share the familiar financial concerns about income and insurance during retirement, along with the subjective query: Will retirement make me happier? I’m not yet ready for a permanent vacation, but how does my wife answer those questions? Income. When we launched our life together, my wife and I earned essentially the same amount. We also both started saving and investing for retirement with our first paychecks, kicking it off with 401(k)s and then soon adding IRAs. In the beginning, though, we followed different paths in choosing our funds. We even compared performance in a friendly competition. Eventually, however, we came to view our individual accounts as part of the same portfolio, a perspective that aids optimal planning. While I tend to take the lead in longer-term planning, my wife is thoroughly versed on our overall money plan and intimately involved in every decision. She also handles the daily money chores, and knows how much money flows in and out of our household accounts. For these reasons, she’s aware that the loss of her income wouldn’t create financial headaches. Insurance. My employer currently provides health insurance for my family and me. Even if I go part-time, we’re still covered. If I decide to retire fulltime at age 65—a little over three years’ away—Medicare will insure me. But at that juncture, my wife will be 62 and not yet eligible for Medicare. We’ll need to buy a private policy for her and our daughter, which we may pay for with my wife’s Social Security. According to Mike Piper’s Open Social Security calculator, 62 is the best age for her to claim, with me waiting until age 70. Emotion. When our young lives are weighed down with work, and retirement is a distant dream, it’s hard to imagine postponing the day we call it quits. Yet, when the moment arrives, the choice can bring indecision and even trepidation. The path ahead may appear greener, but who knows how much we’ll miss what we leave behind? My wife and I have a good bit of the interdependence—a “melding of the minds” in a relationship—that’s shown to be helpful during the shift to retirement. Still, I’m giving her room to decide when to give up her paycheck. Initially, she held onto her few hours of work as a caution and a comfort, just in case my income disappeared. Keeping a foot in the door would have allowed her to jump back in more easily. That concern should have faded as our savings grew, but old habits often die slowly. Maybe there’s still a sliver of uncertainty lurking in her mind. Her real hang up may be her feelings of guilt about leaving me to carry the weight by myself. But the weight isn’t solely on my shoulders. How does she retire from being a daughter, wife and mother? Even when she finally leaves her job behind, she’ll still only be half-retired. Ed Marsh is a physical therapist who lives and works in a small community near Atlanta. He likes to spend time with his church, with his family and in his garden thinking about retirement. His favorite question to ask a young person is, "Are you saving for retirement?" Check out Ed's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]