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Dana Ferris, known here as DrLefty, retired in July 2025 after 35 years as a university professor (applied linguistics and writing). She is the author of many academic articles, chapters, and books and is also a weekly columnist for a San Francisco Giants fan site. When not working or writing, she enjoys exercising, cooking, and traveling. She is the mother of two adult daughters, and she and her husband live in Davis, California, where they first met as undergraduates at UC Davis. You can read her Giants content here, and her Amazon author page is here.
Ten Frugal Habits
9 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 9/16/2025
FIRST: baldscreen on 9/16 | RECENT: Mark Crothers on 9/16/2025 at 10:31 AM
Am I Really Married?
34 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 5/6/2025
FIRST: stelea99 on 5/6 | RECENT: DrLefty on 8/21
The Half-Completed Retirement Transition
30 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 8/13/2025
FIRST: 1PF on 8/13 | RECENT: DrLefty on 8/20
Today’s the Day!
72 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 7/1/2025
FIRST: Ben Rodriguez on 7/1 | RECENT: mytimetotravel on 8/18
Family Dynamics, Part 3: What Do Adult Children Owe Their Aging Parents?
40 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 7/29/2025
FIRST: DAN SMITH on 7/29 | RECENT: Richard Hayman on 8/18
Family Dynamics, Part 2: Supporting Adult Children
48 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 7/22/2025
FIRST: David Powell on 7/22 | RECENT: John Doe on 7/30
Estrangement & Estates
59 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 7/10/2025
FIRST: David Lancaster on 7/10 | RECENT: Brett Howser on 7/26
In Short-Term Limbo
34 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 7/23/2025
FIRST: David Powell on 7/23 | RECENT: DrLefty on 7/24
2025 Retirement Countdown
40 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 1/1/2025
FIRST: Rick Connor on 1/1 | RECENT: MikeinLA on 5/31
Stay or Go, and How Do We Know?
41 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 5/2/2025
FIRST: mytimetotravel on 5/2 | RECENT: Rob Jennings on 5/14
Today's the Day!--Well, Sort Of (by Dana/DrLefty)
29 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 4/1/2025
FIRST: Ken Cutler on 4/1 | RECENT: luvtoride44afe9eb1e on 4/5
A Rental House? By the Numbers
3 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 9/11/2024
FIRST: William Perry on 9/11/2024 | RECENT: DrLefty on 9/15/2024
A Rental House? Questions to Consider
16 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 9/9/2024
FIRST: Michael1 on 9/10/2024 | RECENT: Mark Eckman on 9/12/2024
Final Arrangements: A Learning Curve
28 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 8/18/2024
FIRST: Jonathan Clements on 8/18/2024 | RECENT: parkslope on 8/22/2024
Aging in Place: Count the Cost(s)
3 replies
AUTHOR: DrLefty on 6/22/2024
FIRST: baldscreen on 6/22/2024 | RECENT: DrLefty on 6/23/2024
WHEN I WAS A YOUNG adult, my parents sat me down and explained that I might at some point inherit money from my grandfather’s trust, which had also helped put me through college. My grandfather passed away in 1984, and his wife—my father’s stepmother—became the trust’s beneficiary.
My father was an only child. The trust stipulated that, if his stepmother died before him, he would receive two-thirds of the trust, while my two siblings and I would share the other third.
I’VE DECIDED UPON MY retirement date: July 1, 2025. We just passed the one-year countdown point, so I thought I’d share some of my ideas and plans for my final year in the workforce.
This countdown idea, of course, isn’t original with me. Indeed, there are apps that you can put on your phone to count down the time until retirement. I was primarily inspired by a retirement blogger named Fritz Gilbert. He’s way more decisive than I am.
MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE movie is the Coen brothers’ 2000 classic, O Brother, Where Art Thou? At one point, Holly Hunter’s character, Penelope, declares, “I’ve said my piece and I’ve counted to three.” Her estranged husband, played by George Clooney, understood from long experience that once she had “counted to three,” her mind couldn’t be changed.
Last summer, I wrote an article that explored the decisions my husband and I are working through about our retirement date and location.
MY LATE FATHER SPENT his entire career, from the time he dropped out of college to marry my mother until the day he died at age 61, in the insurance business. My father was also a huge fan of the San Francisco 49ers, our hometown NFL team.
Last year, the 49ers cruised through the playoffs, led by the team’s dynamic young quarterback, Brock Purdy. But then, in the NFC Championship game against the Philadelphia Eagles,
A LOT HAS BEEN written, here at HumbleDollar and elsewhere, about the “when” of retirement. Not surprisingly, there are strong opinions.
For example, I’m a member of a Facebook group where the overwhelming consensus is, “Don’t work one single day longer than you absolutely have to.” Of course, many people don’t have the luxury of choosing their ideal retirement date because life intervenes: They get let go from their job or experience health issues that dictate the answer to the “when” question.
I’M NOT SOMEONE WHO enjoys spending money on luxury travel. I’d never pay cash for a business class airline ticket or a hotel suite. Nonetheless, on a recent trip to Spain with my husband, we flew business class and had suites in all four hotels we stayed at.
We also visited lounges in every airport before our flights, had access to executive lounges at two hotels where we could get free meals, snacks and cocktails,
THE PROLIFIC MR. QUINN recently wrote that people who were irresponsible in one area of their life, such as failing to return shopping carts, also tend to be irresponsible in other areas, like managing their finances. He’s probably right. Still, I’ve had times when, even though I’m a “responsible person”—I’ve had a successful career, my kids lived to grow up, and so forth—I nonetheless had pockets of disorder in my life.
For me, the two biggest areas of chaos were managing money and maintaining a healthy diet and exercise regimen.
“I’D BE HAPPY TO JUST come here every year,” I told my husband. We and our two daughters had arrived on Maui 72 hours earlier. It was May 2000—and our first trip to Hawaii.
We’d signed up for a timeshare presentation in return for discounts on tours and activities. By the time we got to the meeting, I’d fallen head over heels in love with the place. The timeshare salesperson had an easy time persuading me to buy.
MY HUSBAND AND I WERE late bloomers when it came to estate planning. Though we took care of the basics when we became parents, such as purchasing term life insurance and naming a guardian, we never had a professionally executed will and trust until 2016, when we were in our late 50s.
Observing my in-laws, now in their 80s, made us realize how important it was to get our own estate-planning house in order.
Comments
I’m the cook in our family. I keep wishing and hoping that maybe hubby will join me sometimes to make something more elaborate—he’s more of a foodie than I am, so if he wants a more involved recipe, I think he should have some skin in the game—but since I’m retired and he’s not yet, I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Honestly, since he does the dishes, he probably wishes I’d cook less and get more takeout, but that leads to more calories than I want on the regular.
Post: Ten Frugal Habits
Link to comment from September 16, 2025
I think that can be a great exercise right when you retire or even the year leading up to retirement, but I agree that if you’ve done it and are now satisfied with where your money’s going, there’s no particular point in continuing. I suppose if something changes and you need to recalculate, it could be good to have that as a strategy.
Post: Ten Frugal Habits
Link to comment from September 16, 2025
Oh, I do grocery shop from a list, but that’s less about being frugal and more about not wanting to forget something. And I completely agree with not shopping while hungry!
Post: Ten Frugal Habits
Link to comment from September 16, 2025
I have found that you pretty much can’t tell adult children anything. Or aging parents. The best I can do is to casually bring up something in a “here’s what happened to me” storytelling kind of way but with no moralizing or advice. I don’t give advice to family members unless they specifically ask for it. (I’m known as the family travel planning expert, so sometimes they do ask me about that!)
Post: The Catch-22 of Success: How Our Achievements Shape Our Children’s Choices
Link to comment from September 16, 2025
I’m sorry to hear about all the stresses you’re going through and especially hope that Connie is fine. You’re right that being able to pay for emergency expenditures is a great blessing. We also have had that garage door situation a few times in our building. There is a way to open it manually, but it’s not that easy to do. We replaced our refrigerator this summer. It hadn’t died, but we’d always hated it (it came new with the condo), and it became less and less functional as time went by. I watched for a sale and we’re much happier with the new one, and I’m now also eyeing our range, microwave, and dishwasher, wanting the appliances to all “match” (as to brands), but we’ll see. Hang in there, and I hope your week gets better!
Post: A bit selfish, but still seeking peace of mind
Link to comment from September 15, 2025
Sighhhhh. Usually I work out 1-2 hours per day, a mix of cycling, walking, rowing, strength training, and Pilates, different mixes everyday. Last week I made it through a challenging Pilates class at the studio and then woke up in the middle of the night with my left side on fire. Tweaked my oblique. Had to go on the injured list for a few days. Today I very carefully made my way through a 30-min low impact ride. It still hurts, but I’m taking Aleve every 12 hours. Not sure how to mitigate the “risk of hurting myself while exercising.” (Probably more stretching. That’s doable.) I also tweaked my left ankle in Bora Bora a couple of weeks ago when I slipped and fell while climbing into a boat to go jet-skiing. Maybe the lesson there is to remember that I’m 65 years old now.
Post: Retirement Begins Long Before You Retire
Link to comment from September 15, 2025
I upgrade my iPhone about every three years, which is the point at which I can get an upgrade by trading in my phone and not paying extra for it. I have an iPhone 15 right now. I’m usually one model behind the latest when I trade in. I’ve found that I start having battery and other issues with the phones if I keep them much longer.
Post: Philosophy Around Phone Upgrades
Link to comment from September 14, 2025
I have a (free) dashboard on Empower (formerly Personal Capital) that tracks our retirement accounts, cash accounts, mortgage balance, and the Zillow “Zestimate” of our home’s value (for whatever that’s worth, which is dubious). That’s enough. I took our main checking/savings and credit card accounts off of it because it’s always changing and was never up to date and it just muddied the waters. The net worth calculation has always been unhelpful to me because of our pensions. We get three between us, and when my husband leaves his current position, we’ll get a fourth. All get COLAs and all have 100% survivor benefits. They obviously won’t be part of our estate, but they also obviously are an enormous part of our retirement planning, along with Social Security when we start drawing it. If you do those online retirement calculators, they will say we haven’t saved enough. But since we won’t be drawing from our portfolio to pay our bills, we have more than enough. So our pensions aren’t part of our “net worth,” but they’re a huge part of the big picture.
Post: The Financial Metric I Refuse to Calculate
Link to comment from September 14, 2025
Oh, here’s another version of an answer to this question. My husband retired from a state agency in 2016. He’s definitely retired from that job—he’s gotten a pension ever since, and we both get his retiree health benefits (now a Medicare supplement) since he put in his 20 years to the day to get vested. He even threw himself a retirement party to say goodbye to his colleagues and invited family and friends on Facebook. However, he didn’t actually retire, as in “stop working for a salary.” He took a job with a private firm, gave himself a 10-week sabbatical between jobs with vacation time he had accrued from the state, and then went back to work. He’s still working for that firm. He tells people, to be funny, that he’s “retired, but I have a very lucrative hobby.” That, plus the official retirement announcement back in 2016, confuses people who think he’s been retired for years, and technically he has been, but… I find it all a bit annoying—I think he should just tell people what he does now—but I suppose it’s his story to tell!
Post: What is retirement?
Link to comment from September 14, 2025
I’m going to be surprised if it happens (the class). If they “recall” me as a retiree to teach, they have to pay me a prorated portion of my final salary to do so. The Dean’s office would rather hire a grad student or some recent PhD as an adjunct than pay me. I’ll be their last resort. But if it happens, that will pay for a nice trip or perhaps some new kitchen appliances.
Post: What is retirement?
Link to comment from September 14, 2025