Richard Connor

MY FATHER-IN-LAW Jim was born in January 1927, the sixth of eight children, to an Irish-American couple in Philadelphia. During the Second World War, his three older brothers were in the armed services. That meant that Jim, barely age 16, had to quit high school and enter the work world, so he could earn an adult’s wage. His salary must have been critical to the family’s economic stability.
Jim’s brother Bill was killed in an accident at sea during ship maintenance in 1944,

FOR MUCH OF MY adult life, my view of financial planning was similar to that of many others: Simply put, financial planning equaled investment management.
I spent my career in aerospace engineering, surrounded by highly educated, mathematically competent colleagues. I was lucky enough to span the transition from defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution plans. My colleagues and I closely followed the market’s performance, our own company’s shares and emerging tech stocks. Some of the more mathematically inclined dabbled in options.