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haliday11

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    • Like any thinking person, I wrestle with these age-old questions and reach conclusions about how to live my life. These ideas last about 5-10 years and then they evolve. I read somewhere that no matter how how old we are, we think we’re the best we’ve ever been in the age we are. I feel that way from at least a psychological and metaphysical perspective. My knees don’t agree. Two books have influenced me most recently. This last decade I have worked to be happy by what Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert learned from the research about happiness. I now intentionally work to learn from the experiences of others. AND, most importantly, I try not to remember things by how they ended. Irv and Marilyn Yalom’s touching book A Matter of Death and Life sits in my heart as a treatise on how to love, to live and to die. Each chapter is written by one to the other as Marilyn opts to die by assisted suicide and Irv resists—his famous psychology practice was defined by helping people to grab joy from life, not end it. Jonathan, I, too, have “been frequently sold” as the old western song laments about being taken financial advantage of and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. To trust others is to risk. And more often than not, that trust is rewarded. Though now I’m a little more Reaganesque in that I trust and verify!

      Post: Why We Struggle

      Link to comment from January 4, 2025

    • Until the air conditioner breaks down!

      Post: Forget You

      Link to comment from December 21, 2024

    • Well, I figured I could swing forgetting my bosses (non-profit boards, ugh). When my brother died with two ex-wives and no children. I’ve got a 99% success number with less than $1m. We have been f-t travelers now for over 4 years and loving every border crossing. Live your life. Live your life.

      Post: Forget You

      Link to comment from December 21, 2024

    • I wonder if Elaine might be willing to post about her experience of your various financial and life missions. As the wife of someone diagnosed with terminal cancer who has stubbornly lived despite doctors’ prognostications for over 10 years now, I’m well aware of the various emotions from the spousal side. It might be helpful for other spouses if she’d be willing to share her perspectives.

      Post: Model Behavior

      Link to comment from December 21, 2024

    • Your thoughtful article prompted me to ask this question of my husband. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer 11 years ago and he wanted to know his prognosis then (it was 6 months to 3 years!). He still wants to know but, based on his experience, will likely be skeptical. And I definitely want to know because, historically, having knowledge gives me the hallucination of control. You were a good son. And you made the right choice. She died knowing she was loved—that is what matters most.

      Post: At the End

      Link to comment from December 7, 2024

    • Even the most rational among of us have an emotional bent when it comes to money and aging. My mother divorced my alcoholic abusive father when she was 50 years old. At the age of 51, she had a brain-damaging aneurysm. My brothers and I banded together (we were 26, 24 and 21 at the time) and took care of her physically and financially for the next 25 years until her death. It was catch-as-catch-can: living with each of us and/or in places arranged by us. Until she left cigarettes lit and burned down two homes in two years which led to 6 different mom and pop nursing homes we could afford. More aware than most that life is short, I left my husband at the age of 52. And as soon as the math worked, I quit work to travel full-time with a new and non-alcoholic husband. Ironically, it was my brother’s death at the age of 63 which pushed the math into “quit work” territory. I have absolutely NO trouble spending money after saving it for so long. And I viewed the money I inherited from my brother as a permissive gift. I want as happy and full a life as I can muster on this slow slide to the void. Money is a means to that end. And I plan to spend as much of it as I can.

      Post: Pick Your Peril

      Link to comment from December 7, 2024

    • As a non-profit executive, the organizations I worked for were grateful recipients of QCDs. And I would include a paragraph reminding donors of the opportunity in our fundraising letters. I have two suggestions: 1)Please make these gifts early in the year. The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a busy one for non-profits! 2)Alert the charity that the gift is coming. Brokerages do not include the names of donors—the stock just shows up in our brokerage account with no attribution. We once got a large gift from a QCD and despite repeatedly asking the brokerage, never learned who it was from. We had a small donor pool—I came to the belief that it might have been in error—that the DTC number was wrong and came to us instead of another worthy organization. My RMD age is a couple of years away and you can bet the 10% of my gross income (now from SS and investments) that I’ve always given to charity will be via a QCD.

      Post: QCDs: Concerns for First Timers

      Link to comment from December 7, 2024

    • Regrets. I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention—sings Old Blue Eyes. Interesting self-inquiry. I don’t regret ANY purchases (well, maybe that lemon Opel that burned through oil). I DO regret touching and/or cashing out investment and retirement accounts (an early Merrill Lynch Sharebuilder, a state pension fund). And some of my late, tech-savvy, futurist brother’s stock tips turned out to be dogs (NNLX!) but I have been more than well-compensated with others (IONQ, RGTI and JOBY!). And, as a lifelong arts administrator, owning a Vignon would be deeply satisfying. Why not buy one now? Surround yourself with things you love now that you know death is closer than you once imagined. And what a gift to your heirs to eventually own something you treasured so much.

      Post: Hardly Missed

      Link to comment from November 30, 2024

    • I so identified with your emotional connections about your splurges in the wake of a relatively frugal life! As an arts administrator, I never made as much as many of my friends in the corporate world. And I saved as much as I could. I stopped working completely 4 years ago with as big a nest egg as I could muster. And we launched our life of full-time travel. I’m easing into not worrying so much about our budget and enjoying some luxuries. This year we took the COVID-delayed world cruise we’ve dreamed about since 2015. We ate at 7 Michelin-starred restaurants. We rented a 5-bedroom ski condo for a family T-Day in Copper Mountain. And I sprang for first-class airfare! We head to Lima on the pricey Oceania Marina next week. Experiences that have no price tag. Our combined social security payments of $70K annually (I waited until I was 70, living off investments for 3 years) plus an additional $30-$50K of investments make for a good life. And, miracle of miracles, my nest egg is actually LARGER than it was when I quit in August 2020. We are die-with-zero people and I can’t seem to spend enough money to make that happen. Live your life. Live your life.

      Post: Living It Up

      Link to comment from November 30, 2024

    • As a full-time traveller with a phone filled with reservations, I’m still a belt-and-suspenders kind of gal—my month-at-a-glance paper calendar is my daily bible. And goes in my backpack, never a checked bag. And mnemonics for names and numbers? I create songs in my head for them (sometimes to “Jenny, I got your number!”) Or songs or poems with the person’s name in them. In the Nick of Time, Eleanor, and Mary, Mary Quite Contrary. It works most of the time. (Although the infamous Seinfield episode about a mnenomic relating to a woman’s body part is a cautionary tale)

      Post: Try to Remember by Andrew Forsythe

      Link to comment from November 16, 2024

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