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After a career in book and magazine editing at companies like Reader’s Digest, Sesame Workshop, and Wenner Media, in 2008 Laura joined her husband, author Warren Berger, in forming WBLK Media, Inc. where she helped a variety of small businesses and solopreneurs tell their stories via digital media and self-published books. Now in their mid-60s, the couple is winding up their business, doing some travel, and thinking about if and when to sell their house. Laura has written a few articles for HD.com, but mostly is learning from the wisdom of others on this site.
Going Back to Work (Briefly)
42 replies
AUTHOR: Laura E. Kelly on 3/26/2025
FIRST: Marjorie Kondrack on 3/26/2025 | RECENT: Martin McCue on 4/3/2025
Unexpected, cautionary or funny tales about managing your retirement accounts online
7 replies
AUTHOR: Laura E. Kelly on 8/2/2024
FIRST: Dan Smith on 8/2/2024 | RECENT: John Yeigh on 8/7/2024
ONE SUMMER MORNING in 2023, my husband Warren and I had an ad hoc business meeting over bowls of cereal. He told me, “The pandemic really hurt my in-person speaker’s business. I’m not sure it’s ever going to come back.” Then I mentioned that my freelance-design income had also really slowed down, the result of a lack of marketing and enthusiasm on my part.
Neither of these was a newsflash. But that was the moment we realized this is what retirement looks like for a self-employed couple in their mid-60s.
HOW MUCH OF YOUR retirement planning revolves around your kids and grandkids? Your estate planning goals probably include bequeathing a meaningful sum. Perhaps moving closer to your kids and grandkids is part of your plan. Whether you consciously think about it or not, you may be counting on your children to help out if needed during your final years. That seemed to be my father’s plan.
But what if you don’t have kids? How different would your retirement plan look?
MANY OF US SAY THAT, if we have to die, we’d like to die comfortably in our home. Luckily, hospice—a Medicare-covered model of gentle, holistic end-of-life care—is ready to help with that goal.
Maybe.
At age 78, my divorced father was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. He later admitted that he’d skipped getting any colonoscopies. He was a savvy health-care researcher and, via drug trials, controlled the spread of his cancer for four long years.
Comments
This topic is at the forefront of my mind right now. One of my slightly younger sisters recently lost her 63-year-old husband to a sudden heart attack in December. She had happily given him full charge of their financial situation, but he kept putting off writing things down for her. Not only was there nothing like a Next of Kin (NOK) box with password lists for various accounts, but he had just gotten a new laptop she could not get into—no passwords anywhere to be found. Luckily for her, she was able to get into his iPhone, and that helped a little. This sister has had no access to money in this first month since his death except her own meager savings account, but luckily she had a credit card to put some bill payments on. It’s like their 60s snuck up on them. They had done no estate planning or will either. The delays of probate are in her future. My husband and I both know where all our papers and passwords are, but what happened with my sister has been a real wake-up call. I made an appointment with an estate lawyer to review our 10-year-old estate plan and get some recommendations for going forward now that we're retirement age. Frankly, though, I’m more concerned about someone else having to piece things if we both died one after another for some reason (we don’t have kids). I will either order a NOK box or create something like it myself very soon. As for your question about “what worked for you,” I know from my mother’s sudden death at age 66 back in 2001 the best gift she gave her kids was a folder in the red desk in her house that contained written instructions on who first to call (the cremation place she had prepaid for) and then who next to call (she had a whole list, starting with her doctor) if she suddenly died, and also how exactly how she wished her funeral to go (down to the songs someone would sing). She had her house and money papers in the folder, too. She never spoke to us directly about any last wishes, but when she died suddenly, we all remembered her telling each of us four kids about the "folder in the red desk." In our 30s and 40s, we would have had NO idea what to do otherwise. My father, many years divorced from my mother, did NOT leave us a helpful folder when he died 15 years after her, but that’s another story.
Post: Your two best investing books—and do you also keep an End-of-Life “family binder”?
Link to comment from January 20, 2026
I'm on Team Suzie. We paid off our 1996 (6%) mortgage as early as we could. I don't care if it was a good decision or not, monetarily. It's just been one less thing to think about for decades now. Being debt-free is what works for me. Plus I made a few of my friends jealous, which is fun.
Post: The $8,000 Cost of Peace of Mind
Link to comment from January 20, 2026
😁
Post: Spending Without Guilt: An Overlooked Retirement Skill
Link to comment from January 20, 2026
What is the "HB ecosystem"? If you're asking about content on HumbleDollar.com, I am retirement age and come to the HD.com site for updated money investment and budgeting tips as our world continuously changes, since I have to plan to fund another 30 years of living (possibly). So "general investment" articles would be of interest, but mostly if they are written by someone with some real knowledge and experience and are not written for those just beginning their savings and investment journeys.
Post: Retirement or Investment Content
Link to comment from January 17, 2026
When I read posts like this one and Where to Keep Cash (which I have way too much of, but at least not at .01 APY), and all the commenters who chime in, I know I have found my tribe. I’ve been part of the Mac ecosystem since my first computer back in the ’80s, and now own an iPhone and an iWatch, two Swiss Army Knife–devices that are worth their price because of the many things, big and little, they can do. My iWatch timer just buzzed me to remind me that the clothes in the dryer are ready and when I glanced at its watch face, it showed me a random photo I’d taken of a sparkling canyon river in Zion Park a while back. These random photos make me smile many times a day and often evoke a little ping of gratitude, which is worth something, I think. Along with some other commenters, I am a Subaru fan. We bought a 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Sport that is similar to our 12-year-old Subaru Impreza (in that it is short enough to fit into our 1950s garage) but has all the safety features I’d heard tell of (favorite: the rearview mirror blindspot lights) and sits much higher up—less groaning getting in and out! 😳 I guess I subscribe to “little things mean a lot.”
Post: The Point of Diminishing Returns
Link to comment from December 6, 2025
If reading through the latest ins and outs of authentication & passkey set-up (see Doug C's comment below) makes my head hurt, it will make my Luddite husband's head explode. I would love to bolster our digital security but still waiting for a simple silver bullet. Maybe it'll be passkeys? Still not sure how facial recognition or fingerprint fits into everything, particularly if you need to access someone else's devices. For now, I'll just keep following HD threads like this, looking for that silver bullet.
Post: Dealing with Financial Affairs for Someone Else…..
Link to comment from November 25, 2025
Have to share this wonderful NYTimes profile of a Seattle man who changed his working life. It begins: "Eleven years ago, Paul Lundy was dying a slow, workingman’s death under fluorescent light." Gift share: How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life
Post: When to walk away
Link to comment from November 23, 2025
For four years in a row, my failing management would come to me in early spring and tell me that I had to lay off another percentage of my staff by the end of the fiscal year in June. It would be months of stress and sorrow, teeth-grinding and weight loss. When they came to me the fifth year, I said, “Take me this time,” and handed them a plan. It took months of convincing them, but when I finally got out of there in September 2008 to take up a new career as an editorial freelancer, it was one of the happier days of my life. And that’s even though the 2008 financial crisis erupted the day before my last workday there and now my 401k was circling the drain. But sleeping through the nights and being master of my own fate proved a much more valuable compensation to me at that point. If you can leave a job that makes you sick and tired, get creative and save yourself.
Post: When to walk away
Link to comment from November 23, 2025
Loved this story! Thanks for sharing it. If you want a laugh, Google "David Sedaris and picking up trash" and read the humorous tales of how a new Fitbit tracker in 2014 triggered in him an obsession with cleaning up the countryside that he was walking through. That litter-picking obsession threads through a lot of his essays. There are worse obsessions!
Post: Purple Handcuffs and the Gift of Time
Link to comment from November 12, 2025
Adam's post above is more measured than this alarming article in the NYTimes yesterday from William A. Birdthistle, former head of the Division of Investment Management at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2021 to 2024. He's not just talking about AI and the unsettling concentration of many U.S. index funds on 7 tech companies, but the complicating X factor of the current administration's actions. The #2 'Reader Picks' comment to the above Times article laments, "Thanks for this warning. Now can someone at NYT do an article on how normal people can prepare for a severe, extended downturn, particularly people in retirement?" That was followed by 21 reader comments with advice all over the map, including "learn how to plant and grow vegetables. Get some chickens if you can." Speaking of chickens, I feel a bit like one with my head cut off. It is obviously time to "take inventory" for those of us in retirement who hope our invested savings will grow not sink. Will the U.S. stock market continue to mostly trend up, as it has for so long? I wish I could believe it.
Post: AI Rally Market Risks
Link to comment from November 8, 2025