I SHIFTED TO WORKING part-time more than a year ago. It was a way to ease into retirement and give me time to explore new activities. My reduced work hours were also a way to experience life without the singular job focus that had defined my working years and, indeed, my identity.
My new part-time status was, of course, accompanied by a markedly shrunken paycheck. That allowed my wife and me to see what it was like to be without the guaranteed and steady income we’d relied upon for nearly three decades.

I DON’T KNOW THAT MY life has been all that different from that of others. Still, what’s happened to me has—I believe—been good preparation for retirement. Here are seven life lessons I learned on my journey from childhood through to my departure from the workforce just before my 70th birthday.
Lesson No. 1: Doing it yourself can save big money. My older brother got me interested in cars. This was the late 1950s and 1960s,

THERE’S A SAYING that “perception is reality,” meaning that what you believe is your reality, whether it’s true or not. Changing our perception isn’t easy. It takes effort, along with a willingness to discover and accept facts.
Many Americans’ perceptions are incorrect, leading them to make subpar financial decisions. Consider:

Social Security. Nobody stole the trust fund, it’s not going broke and, yes, it will be there for you.
Medicare. It’s not socialized medicine.

AFTER MY COLLEGE freshman year in engineering, I was hired for a part-time summer job by a civil engineering firm in my home town. The office was in an upscale building where a lot of respectable businesses were headquartered. The company had an impressive name. But after starting, I discovered it was just a one-man show. Mr. Jones was the owner. I became his sole employee.
Jones was probably in his mid-70s. He’d headed up his own company for decades.

HI CHRIS, IT’S BEEN 45 years since we broke up, we’re now both age 78, and I’m winding down. I wanted to touch base and catch you up, but mostly let you know that I often think back on our 11 years as husband and wife, and how much I value the time we spent together. Sometimes, that period of my life seems far in the past, but other times it’s right on my shoulder,

WHAT DRIVES THE PRICE of individual company stocks, and why do some soar while others sink? It comes down to five factors, I believe.
The first two factors are a company’s observable strengths and weaknesses. Consider Apple. Its strengths are easily quantifiable. In the U.S., it’s captured more than half the smartphone market. When you take into account the company’s premium prices, it collects a disproportionate share of the industry’s revenue. Last year, Apple’s profits hit nearly $100 billion,

IT’S HARD TO OVERSTATE how challenging it is to generate retirement income: We need our money to last at least as long as we do, and yet we don’t know how financial markets will perform, what the inflation rate will be, whether we’ll get hit with hefty long-term-care costs and how long we’ll live.
Moreover, the generic advice offered inevitably doesn’t work for many—and perhaps most—folks because we all start retirement with different attitudes,

IN 1980, MY FIRST WIFE and I spent the Labor Day weekend with friends on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We went out for breakfast and I drank a lot of coffee. Our friends were planning a day at the beach. This is not a good idea for me because—being of Irish descent—I come in two colors, red and white. Either I look pale and sickly or I’m red as a beet. To avoid this latter state,

MY WIFE RECENTLY GOT the chance to showcase her artistic talents at a cultural festival in Kansas City, Kansas. Lori’s craft is stained glass, and this was the first time she’d displayed her creations in public.
She began working with glass five years ago, shortly after she retired. We’ve discussed the possibility of turning her hobby into a business. She’s dreamed of selling her artwork so she could at least cover the cost of her craft.

MY UPBRINGING WAS difficult. The alcoholism and rage among adult family members were often at their worst during the year-end holidays, and Thanksgiving could be particularly bad. What made this even worse was that I thought the popular images and ideas about Thanksgiving were accurate descriptions of other people’s good times.

One familiar depiction of Thanksgiving is Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting, “Freedom from Want.” The picture has come to represent the central moment of our Thanksgiving celebration: the roasted turkey arriving at the table as the prelude to eating ourselves into a tryptophan coma.

WHEN MY DAD HAD cancer, we’d take walks through the neighborhood. One day, on our stroll, we met a neighbor, Ted. My dad introduced me. “This is my son, Denny, he’s taking care of me.”
Ted gave me a smile and said, “I hope my son will take care of me if I need help.”
Not long after that conversation, my dad was in hospice care. My mother and I were standing over his bed.

LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, I’ve made both bad and good decisions during my financial journey, and those have affected the financial well-being of my now-older self. Here’s what I consider my five worst financial decisions, followed by my five best:
1. Contributing too little to my 401(k) early on. I’ve confessed to this in a prior article. I missed out on a lot of potential growth by making only token contributions to my 401(k) during my 20s.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN you’re hit by the proverbial beer truck? Will it be easy for others to pick up the pieces—the pieces of your financial life, that is?
To my knowledge, my wife isn’t checking the delivery schedule for the Anheuser-Busch brewery here in Columbus, Ohio. Still, she’s worried about the complexities of our finances. I’ve made a concerted effort since I retired to consolidate and close financial accounts, reduce our investments holdings, and streamline where it makes sense.

ZERO-WASTE LIVING. Kondo cleaning. FIRE, or financial independence-retire early. Whatever your feelings are about these three movements, frugality is at their core, with the focus on minimizing possessions and living simply.

To these, you might want to add another, “possum living,” which has been hailed as a manifesto for living cheaply. Possum Living is the title of a book written in 1978 by a free-thinking, resourceful young woman who went by the pen name Dolly Freed.

WHEN THOMAS EDISON was a child, he apparently set fire to a barn on the family’s property. After it burned to the ground, his parents were furious.
“Why would you do such a thing?” his father asked.
Young Edison replied, “I wanted to see what would happen.”
The story may be apocryphal, but I was reminded of it recently when I came across a study titled “Not Learning from Others.” A group of economists wanted to understand more about how people learn.