Edmund Marsh

I LOVE TO PLAN. My wife, Sharon, often catches me nestled in my chair, gazing out a window at a distant object as my mind wanders even farther afield. My musings become scribbles on a scrap of paper, destined for discussion with Sharon at length over coffee and long walks. Eventually, we hammer out the settled strategies we think will best bring us happiness in adventures ranging from our next hike to the next few decades of life.

MILESTONES MARK the growth of a child as she moves from infancy through school age. In similar fashion, we adults tend to measure our life’s progress with “firsts” or other significant events. Perhaps we remember the feeling of maturity that came with our first kiss or our first job. Milestones help us attach meaning to the course of a life that sometimes seems beyond our control.
Financial milestones often command special significance, like my first “real” job at age 15.

WHO OWNS TIME? WE speak of “my time” and “your time” as if it were a possession we hold in our hands. But we can’t stash it away for future use, nor can we trade or transfer our allotment to another person. Is it truly ours? For the moment, let’s say that it is.
Appraising time. How much do we value our time? Some days, we treat it as a precious commodity. On those days,

WE SUFFER LOSSES throughout our life. During our youth, we might leave old chums behind when our family starts fresh in a new town or when we go away to college. Later, a job loss or a divorce could leave us drained both financially and emotionally. But for most of us, our senior years are when loss hits hardest.
Our body is often the first casualty, especially the face we see in the mirror each morning.

BASIC ECONOMICS teaches us that scarce commodities are more precious. This holds true for metals, rocks, food—and time. Which brings me to today’s topic: Time spent with my daughter and only child has reached the rare and precious stage.
In summer 2023, scarcity was far from my mind. My daughter and I traveled to visit Grandmama—my mother—five hours’ drive south of our home. The visit itself was short and mundane, with just the usual catching up with my mother and tending to her business.

SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN clumsy. Tools never seem to fit their hands. Their hammer finds a thumb more often than a nail. For them, running looks and feels like an ungainly, uphill battle—even on level ground.
I don’t claim to be physically gifted. But my clumsiness shows up in a different way. I have a notable social deficiency: I’m naturally clumsy with people. Why is this important? It defined the first quarter-century of my life,

A FEW MONTHS AGO, my wife and I were searching for an exciting diversion on a Saturday evening. It didn’t take long to agree on the perfect experience—logging onto SSA.gov to check out our estimated Social Security benefits.
What’s so thrilling about that? Like many people, Social Security will comprise a key component of our retirement income. Even now, those future funds exert a strong influence on our plans.
Background. I’ll turn age 62 this month and still work full-time.

I WRAPPED UP MY first HumbleDollar article by declaring that I’m no investment expert. I still stand by that statement.
But I also maintain that this insight is a strength, not a weakness. Recognizing my limitations allows me to settle on an investment strategy that gives me a better shot of arriving at my retirement goal, with less likelihood of a detour along the way.
My wife Sharon and I hold most of our retirement savings at Vanguard Group.

MY FIRST PET WAS a timid pup called Precious, a moniker inspired by the cartoon character of the same name. My four-year-old self felt an affinity for the runt of the litter, so I quickly picked him out. That sweet, little dog had a nature true to his name. I don’t remember his fate but, in those days, pets ranged free in our little town, and I fear he may have met with some mishap.

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,

TWO YEARS AGO, at age 59½, I thought I was on the verge of taking a major step toward retirement. At the time, my usual zest for my work as a physical therapist was waning. Though I don’t think the quality of my patient care suffered, I found it took more effort to maintain the energy needed to complete a day at the clinic, and concentrating on work became tougher.
In addition to the tension building on the inside,

I WROTE RECENTLY about my wife’s lifelong love of traveling, and of my resolve to get in step with her as she resumes her rambles. To that end, earlier this summer, I drove our family to Charleston, South Carolina, to attend the retirement ceremony for my cousin Chris, and to see a bit of the city, to boot.
As our departure time approached, we learned that the original schedule for retirement day had been altered.

MY WIFE HAS PLANS for retirement. Travel plans. For too many years, she’s lived a mostly travel-free life. We’ve logged just a few short excursions to hither and yon.
Yes, there have been reasons for this dearth of travel that were largely beyond our control. But her biggest obstacle has been—and continues to be—me. I’m mostly a homebody, and I’ve been reluctant to change my ways.
My wife didn’t choose to love traveling. Rather,

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.

I COULD BE KIND TO my home and say it has rustic charm, but that would be pretentious. The truth is, it’s an old house, built in 1930 by my maternal grandparents. It sits on a remnant of the farm my family once owned. It’s a place I love, and where I’d like to grow old, and therein lies the challenge.
More than 20 years ago, my father and I extensively renovated the house inside and out.

GETTING TO RETIREMENT is lazy work for an indexing aficionado. What could be easier than stuffing money every paycheck into an all-in-one target-date index fund? Even building a two- or three-index-fund portfolio takes minimal effort.
Actually retiring, on the other hand, feels like a fulltime job. Who knew that spending money takes more thought than earning, saving and investing it? At age 61, I’m faced with important decisions that I want to get right,

MY DAUGHTER IS MORE than halfway through her junior year of high school. College and career choices are hot topics in our household. My wife and I have a dilemma: Should we encourage our daughter to pursue a college degree that matches her passions—or nudge her toward one that has a better chance of paying the bills?
My daughter is no slouch in math and science, but her true love turns in another direction.

OVER EIGHT MILLION Americans have said “so long” to the U.S., heading overseas to work or retire. These expats—short for expatriates—most likely have eight million different reasons to leave our shores for life in another country. My wife’s cousin Chuck and her brother John are among them.
John had his eye on living abroad when he took his first engineering job with Litton Aero Products, where he helped support aviation customers in the Middle East.

“DOES MONEY BUY happiness?” That’s one of the questions in HumbleDollar’s Forum section. I hesitate to say that happiness is a commodity we can buy. But studies—and many people’s personal experiences—suggest a lack of money can bring on unhappiness.
A recent paper, “Financial Stress and Depression in Adults” by researchers at the University of Birmingham in England, supports this conclusion. The researchers reviewed 40 studies examining the relationship between depression and financial stress,

MY FAMILY IS FRUGAL all year long, even during the Christmas season. We’re modest with our gifts and sparing with our decorations. Each year, our sprucing up consists of one cut-your-own Christmas tree trimmed with the same ornaments we used the year before. I can’t say the same for our neighbors. They pull out all the stops to create a seasonal spectacle.
There’s no need to take a long, cold sleigh ride to the North Pole to scope out Santa and his companions frolicking in snowy splendor.

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE save more for retirement than others, even when their income is the same? It turns out that a difference in spending behavior, rather than a larger salary, may separate better savers from those who struggle to set aside funds for their future.
The Employee Benefit Research Institute and J.P. Morgan Asset Management joined forces to examine the spending and saving behavior of 10,000 households. The households, which were analyzed by age cohort,

THE NATIONAL Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has good reason to boast. Its programs serve as a catalyst to generate billions of dollars of economic activity that’s spread across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Also, the transfer of NASA spinoff technologies and products to private businesses improves the lives of each of us in myriad ways.
Along the way, it’s even put men on the moon—and plans to do so again,

I’M TOO EMBARRASSED to reveal how long it took my wife and me to prepare our wills. We knew this important task was near the top of almost every financial “to do” list—a list that, it seems, we’ve spent our adult lives slowly working our way through.
We’d discussed the details of our wills, including the crucial decision of who would care for our minor child in the event both of us died. Despite this,

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,

IN THE SOUTH, it’s common for a restaurant server or store clerk to refer to me as “sweetie” or “honey.” I’ll often respond by asking, “How did you know my name is Sweetie?”
This will usually bring a smile to the face of even a harried worker. Our friendly banter is the worker practicing some of the charm and hospitality that the South is famous for, and me returning the courtesy with “reverse hospitality.”
A commercial transaction doesn’t involve just money.

I HAVE READ THAT spending on experiences brings more happiness than spending on things. But what about the experience of buying? Can that make us happy?
I’ve lived in my small community for 21 years. Over that time, my regular buying habits have led me to discover people who provide me with excellent service. They also supply me with a generous measure of genuine satisfaction.
Every third Friday, I sit and listen to a great raconteur as he cuts my hair.

WE ALL HAVE GOOD habits and bad habits. One of my best habits: bringing my lunch to work.
I save both money and calories by brown-bagging it rather than buying lunch at a restaurant. My lunch of leftovers, along with a few pieces of fruit and a bottle of water, cost less than even a fast-food meal deal, and it’s healthier. What about the long-term savings from avoiding those additional calories? Researchers have found that excess body weight adds thousands of dollars to our annual health care expenses.

PHYSICAL THERAPY IS a teaching profession. I am the teacher and my patients are the students. They come to me with a problem in need of a solution. I help them find the answer.
Most of my patients have never faced the daunting challenge of overcoming a physical disability caused by injury or disease. They don’t know where to begin. Many have also never put in the sustained effort needed to achieve a tough goal.