MY WIFE AND I PLANNED our retirement using several standard assumptions, including how long we might live. Dorothy was healthier than me, so we assumed I’d be the first to go. But on June 30, she died suddenly, and I was the one left to deal with the fallout—including the many pesky, practical details.
Those details were bureaucratic and technical, and it didn’t take long to complete them. Dealing with the funeral home, Social Security and various financial institutions was straightforward.

SOMEONE ASKED ME this week if he should own pork bellies in his portfolio. While he was kidding, this does get at a real question: Should you own commodities like cattle futures, gold, oil, lumber, soybeans and more?
Those who favor investing in commodities typically cite two benefits. First, commodities are seen as a bulwark against inflation. This is obviously a timely concern. Second, because commodities don’t move in lockstep with stocks or bonds,

WHEN WE RETIRE, we win back control over our daily life. Gone is the boss, the expectation that we’ll be at work at a certain hour, the worry about what the next office email will bring. We have a degree of freedom that, in many cases, we last knew when we were students contemplating a long summer vacation.
But even as we gain that freedom, there’s also much that we lose. If we’re to be happy retirees,

I BEGAN MY FIRST JOB out of college 38 years ago. A newly minted electrical engineer, I was assigned by Philadelphia Electric Company to work at its Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta, Pennsylvania. As a young child, I had visited the Peach Bottom Unit 1 Visitor Center, never anticipating that I’d someday return to the site as an employee.
My concentration in college was power engineering, so I fully expected to be working in the transmission and distribution side of the electric power business.

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO remember when companies rewarded employee anniversaries with lapel pins. The number of years you served determined the quality of the metal and how many jewels were embedded in the pin.
I also remember when two different hospitals where I worked moved away from this practice in the 1980s and 1990s. Human resources departments came to realize that many employees didn’t value the pins. Perhaps there had been a day when pins were something people wore,

IN THE CENTER OF the Maine village where I spend my summer, a few residents live in a makeshift encampment. It consists of four popup trailers—the kind towed by cars—plus some cars, dilapidated lobster boats and a couple of pup tents, one containing children’s toys.
The residents live without running water, so they bring it to the site in gallon jugs. Their laundry hangs on clotheslines strung between trees and a lobster boat. The site looks forlorn and temporary,

WE USUALLY HAVE Chinese food every Wednesday. It’s our weekly night out for dinner. While waiting outside our favorite restaurant for a table, I heard my wife call out, “Hey, Doe, our table is ready.” That’s what my wife calls me. It’s my new name. She used to call me Dodo. Now, she’s shortened it to Doe.
How did this nickname come about? One day, I called myself a dodo for a silly mistake I’d made.

I SPENT ALMOST 43 years either on active duty or in the reserves for the Navy and Army. Yes, I’ve been around.
The following is my list of the top 17 items—including some pertinent financial details—that might surprise those who have never served in the military.
No. 1: Our primary mission is not to fight wars. Instead, it’s to be so big, so bad, so mean, so well equipped, so well trained and so well led that any potential enemy in its right mind wouldn’t want to fight us.

“CLEAN YOUR PLATE.” “You’ll eat what’s for dinner and like it.” “There are children starving in Africa.”

Those are lines I often heard as a child. I guess my parents weren’t aware of hunger in the U.S.—or the long-term damage to our waistlines and health that such clean-your-plate advice could have.

Still, at least we weren’t squandering food, which is a big problem these days. Each year, 80 million tons of food are wasted in the U.S.

I’VE NEVER RENTED TO cats. The opportunity came my way recently via an email from my property manager. An elderly couple was interested in renting our flagship duplex, which would become available in August.
The prospects were smitten by the location near their church and grandchildren, and they seemed like a landlord’s dream. No undergraduate mayhem and no complaints from neighbors about beer cans strewn on the front lawn. They were also likely long-term renters,

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE of life? Is it to die with as much money as possible or, as magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes was quoted as saying, “He who dies with the most toys, wins”? An intriguing and provocative book, Die With Zero, says no.
The book’s author is Bill Perkins, a successful energy trader. In it, he argues that the purpose of life is to accumulate as many fulfilling experiences as possible,

NO QUESTION, MANAGING an investment portfolio is tricky. On the one hand, you want stock market exposure to help drive your portfolio’s performance. But on the other, it’s agonizing when the market drops 30% or 50%—or more—as it’s done on several occasions.
How can investors strike the right balance? Like most things in personal finance, there isn’t one right answer. In general, investors can choose one of five approaches when building a portfolio.
1.

THERE ARE ALL KINDS of financial talents that seem desirable. Who wouldn’t want a knack for finding undervalued stocks, identifying star fund managers, and figuring out which way the stock and bond markets are headed? The problem: While some folks may briefly appear to possess these talents, it usually turns out that their apparent prescience was nothing more than dumb luck.
Where does that leave us? Forget the obvious but elusive financial superpowers, and focus on those that—with a little work—are available to all of us.

DRIVE A BEATER. That’s what my coworker Neil admonished us to do. He explained that this was a key strategy on the path to financial freedom. Neil, as you might recall from one of my earlier articles, was the colleague who warned about the perils of funding a 401(k) plan.
All you really need is something to get you from point A to point B, Neil said, and consistently spending money on expensive cars simply meant you’d be forced to stay in the workforce longer.

IT’S BEEN A YEAR since New Jersey banned all plastic bags from grocery stores, and yet I’m still wandering into our local store without my reusable bags. You would think I’d have gotten the memo by now.

I used to keep the bags in the trunk of my car—but out of sight, out of mind. As a visual reminder, I now keep them inside my car on the passenger side. But they might as well still be in the trunk.