David Hoecker

Comments:

• Here in Ohio our public universities allow senior citizens to audit courses for free on a "space available" basis. You register and attend classes. Tests are optional, but I take them to make sure that I am listening in class and reading any textbooks or other material. Some private colleges also offer this perk -- probably hoping to turn us into contributors! You might check to see if Georgia offers this perk.

  Post: Still Learning

  Link to comment from August 24, 2024

• I had my one and only jury duty call some 20 years ago, and was seated on that jury. Thinking about Jeff's comment on jury duty compensation, the only thing we got was free parking in the county garage. We were on our own for any of the downtown eateries at lunch during the 3-day trial, although they did buy us pizza and soda for lunch on our final day when we were deliberating. The worst part of jury duty was waiting in the jury room before going into the courtroom where they only thing we were allowed to watch on the TV was HGTV.

  Post: Duty Calls

  Link to comment from July 6, 2024

• Among all the comments so far, Martymac's is closest to my recurring dream. I graduated from college 55 years ago and now volunteer with a group of retirees at Habitat for Humanity. While we were on a break last summer, I mentioned my recurring dream that it was finals week in college and when the test schedule was posted there was an exam for a required class that I had totally forgotten about, never attended a lecture or bought the text. I then wake up in a minor panic. When I told this story, 3 of my co-volunteers said that they have had the same dream!!

  Post: Retirement Dreams

  Link to comment from February 21, 2024

• Add me to the list of commentors who wash their ZipLoc bags. But rather than kitchen use, mine go to the garage. You know how you might need 3 or 4 of a certain screw so you buy a package of 10 at a big-box store? Those little packages never seal back up right so some of the remaining screws fall out. Solution? Reuse one of my second-use ZipLocs to keep them all separated.

  Post: Frugality Has a Cost

  Link to comment from November 8, 2023

• At the end of 2023 I will celebrate 20 years of retirement! I still recall advice given at my retirement party by a former colleague. He said there are 3 phases to retirement:

  1. Go-Go
  2. Slow-Go
  3. No-Go
  My own assessment is that my wife and I are on the cusp between phase 1 and phase 2. So we are now planning and hoping for an equally long Slow-Go phase, as we can both remember our parents' decline into phase 3.

  Post: Retirement Takes Work

  Link to comment from October 25, 2023

• Jonathan, You mentioned never doing 6 minute miles again. First of all, congratulations for EVER having done that. I think that my wife and I have about 10 to 15 years of age on you, and one thing we are now realizing is that performance wise, we cannot keep up with ourselves from 1, 2 or 3 decades ago. We should be happy with this phrase from our Doctors, but we both hate hearing "For your age you're doing pretty well!". In fact, medically we are doing pretty well, but not as well as we used to be doing!

  Post: Absolutely Fine

  Link to comment from September 23, 2023

• A few years ago my wife and I were having an annual in-person investment review with our advisor. I told him that I had $100,000 coming in the next few weeks from the estate of a long-lost Nigerian relative, and asked him for advice to invest that sum. He got an alarmed look on his face, but I could not contain my laughter at his reaction. Then we went back to serious discussion.

  Post: Woolf at the Door

  Link to comment from August 2, 2023

• This is a great article, and is actually a big "duh" for me. In the past I have been on the endowment committee of 2 different non-profit organizations. One of our tasks was monitoring withdrawal rate with the objective of not depleting the endowment. Current law allows a "total return" distribution, but it is up to the organization as to what base period to use. One of the charities used a rolling 8 quarter-end average, and one used a rolling 12 quarter-end average. That's not too much harder to calculate than Mr Saylor suggests using year-end results. Looking backwards, investment totals peaked at the end of 2021 and were lower at the end of 2022. No surprise there. But the big gains in 2021 got averaged in with the previous quarters, and the big reductions in 2022 got averaged in with their previous quarters as well. This prevented taking an unusual windfall in the unusually good year, and prevents taking a big hit on the distribution in an unusually bad year, thereby somewhat stabilizing the income to the charity. So my big "duh" is, why didn't I think of this for my own account???

  Post: Our Exit Strategy

  Link to comment from July 19, 2023

• Here in Ohio we senior citizens can take courses at the public colleges for free on a space-available, non-credit basis. As long as the classroom is not physically full, we are able to audit the course. Plus we get a discount in the college bookstore -- if they still use a book!

  Post: College in Retirement

  Link to comment from July 2, 2023

• In discussion with a friend, I was complaining about how EVs don't pay gas tax, thus they are not supporting our road funds in Ohio. He corrected me, and I confirmed on the Ohio BMV website, Ohio charges $100 additional for a hybrid and $200 additional for a pure EV when buying your annual license plate sticker. I did some back of the envelope math and figure this works out to the equivalent of 15,000 miles worth of Ohio's gas tax driving an average MPG vehicle, so that seems pretty fair. Do other states have this same surcharge?

  Post: Car Trouble

  Link to comment from May 13, 2023