FREE NEWSLETTER
TWELVE PERCENT. THIS is a pivotal number in my financial life.
What does it refer to? Is it the average annual return on my investments? I wish. Is it the percentage of my pre-tax income that I dedicate to retirement savings? No. That number, including pension and 403(b) contributions, is closer to 25%.
Instead, that 12% is the slice of my pre-tax income reserved for housing. When picking a place to live, I’m a cheapskate.
THOMAS JEFFERSON once said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and the philosopher Socrates opined that the unexamined life isn’t worth living.
Although they were talking about political freedom and personal philosophy, respectively, Jefferson and Socrates could well have been discussing personal finance. One of the best ways to engage in financial vigilance and self-examination is to keep a daily financial journal.
I’ve kept a personal journal since I was 14 years old,
WHO’S YOUR FINANCIAL hero? This should be someone whose qualities and character lend themselves to emulation in your own financial life.
Let’s set some ground rules here for picking a financial hero. First, your hero probably shouldn’t be the usual suspect: Warren Buffett. While Buffett is certainly a very successful investor, the investment game that he’s playing is very different from the one most of the rest of us are.
The same goes for folks like Elon Musk,
DO YOU REMEMBER the days before you could drive? You felt like you were on a leash. No freedom. No fun.
I have news for you: Those days could return.
One of the post-age-65 nightmares that we don’t talk about enough: Most affluent retirees live in the suburbs. Homes are miles from grocery stores, medical offices, movie theatres, restaurants and—perhaps most important—drugstores.
In the suburbs, the stream of city-based public transportation usually slows to a trickle.
AS ALWAYS, DR. SEUSS said it best: “Oh, the places you’ll go and the people you’ll meet.”
In making this statement, the good doctor could have been talking about the benefits of volunteering. Since inheriting some money in 2011, I haven’t had to work multiple jobs, as I did in graduate school and during the three years that followed. From 2012 on, I’ve had mostly full-time work, leaving me with time to volunteer for causes I care about.
I’M IN NO HURRY TO retire—but I am making sure I’m prepared. I’m age 56, and I plan to work full-time until 70 and part-time until 75. I’m an English professor, and I enjoy teaching, service and scholarship. I also enjoy having three weeks off at Christmas and two months in the summer.
I received a fairly large inheritance, which has been growing over the years and which will allow me to do some special things in the years to come.
WORD ON THE STREET is that, if you want to use money to make yourself happy, you should buy experiences rather than things.
In principle, I couldn’t agree more.
There is, however, one kind of experience that I see touted both in the media and on social media that I don’t think reflects money well spent: the expensive family vacation to a distant destination. This status-symbol experience, complete with selfies at ritzy hotels, is supposedly designed to create priceless memories.
I SAT IN THE LAWYER’S office in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 2011. He was handling the high six-figure inheritance I was about to receive. I should have been overjoyed, but I was exhausted.
In fall 2004, my mother, a 70-year-old former elementary school teacher, had suffered a massive stroke and developed vascular dementia. My father, a 76-year-old former elementary school principal, had tried to take care of her by himself. He fell ill in summer 2006 and died that fall.
Comments
So, I left Orlando, Florida, in September of 2016 and moved to Pittsburgh.I had been teaching at a for-profit film school in Orlando, and I wanted a more normal academic job. I stayed four years in Orlando largely because I loved Cocoa Beach on the weekends. I was in Pittsburgh from September of 2016 to July of 2017. I had hoped to find a full-time teaching job there. I did some part-time fundraising work and some ghostwriting for a publisher. I was a finalist for a job, but there was bait and switch. The full-time job that I was gunning for mysteriously became a part-time job, so I said, "No, thank you." I had to go back out on the national market. While I was in Pittsburgh, I lived in a bad apartment in a nice area. I was on Stratford Avenue, near Friendship, on the very edge of Shady Side, which is a lovely area. When I moved to Pittsburgh, which I very much liked, the goal was to pay as little as possible while I looked for work. I think I paid around 690. I'm strongly considering Pittsburgh for retirement. I loved the Strip District. And I would walk to Polish Hill for mass in a beautiful 19c church. I had thought that my rent was really low in Pittsburgh, so I was stunned in Roswell to find something actually a little better and even cheaper. Roswell is in New Mexico, but it's not ABQ or Santa Fe. It's 175 miles south of those places. It's very isolated. When you leave the northern edge of Roswell, it's 98 miles through the semi-desert to the next gas station, in Vaughn. The rents are very cheap.
Post: Home Free
Link to comment from January 18, 2025
Hello. I am single, happily. I'm not exactly sure what "a bachelor's life" is. I work, volunteer, go to church, just like everybody else. You raise an interesting point. Well, my parents rented for eleven years and almost didn't buy. I've had a couple of experiences that convince me that I probably wouldn't buy even if partnered. First, I went to college in Philadelphia. I met lots of people who grew up happily in apartments. Second, I did an exchange year in Edinburgh, Scotland. I dated somebody there. Her parents lived in Council Housing near the castle.That was a long term rental situation. I could see doing something like that. Thanks for your comment.
Post: Home Free
Link to comment from January 16, 2025
No cave. But in Walden, HDT talked about wanting to live in a tool shed. Maybe that's my next move. I do have renters' insurance because my landlord makes me have it. Honestly, I really don't have that much tangible stuff. 5000 dollars would replace just about everything. And one correction: above I said qualified. It's non qualified that I will never sell.
Post: Tracking My Progress
Link to comment from November 2, 2024
I'm not sure what I would need to retain in terms of credit card receipts beyond five years. I'm not planning on selling anything during my lifetime in terms of qualified accounts, so that really isn't an issue. If my journals burned, they're about record keeping, but they're more about instilling the habit of tracking.
Post: Tracking My Progress
Link to comment from November 1, 2024
Well, what you say might be true for some. I don't own many physical assets. No house. No desire for one. I'm a pretty committed renter. Cost basis for all financial assets is obtainable via the companies holding the assets. Everything else that I would buy would be recorded via credit card.
Post: Tracking My Progress
Link to comment from November 1, 2024
Well, I'm a science fiction writer and fan. I think back to Battle Star Galactica. Adama said, "We have many computers on this ship. None of them is networked." He was a wise man. I get the alerts you do.
Post: Tracking My Progress
Link to comment from October 31, 2024
You were not incorrect. Grin. I think a lot of technology is overrated. For example, I may be the last person on the face of the earth without a smartphone. I've seen what they've done to my students. Why replace something that already works just fine?
Post: Tracking My Progress
Link to comment from October 31, 2024
It takes about 15 minutes a day. I do not automate bill pays, and I don't have that many bills. I just don't like giving up that control.
Post: Tracking My Progress
Link to comment from October 31, 2024
Why do I need more efficiency? I would never store this stuff in the Cloud. I think because I take notes on the numbers, I'd prefer to handwrite. Thanks for your comment, though.
Post: Tracking My Progress
Link to comment from October 31, 2024