Careers

Here is my second Forum post. This one is also touches on one my favorite topics – careers
Another week. Another flood of LinkedIn goodbye posts.
Talented people thanking colleagues after being locked out of their systems. No chance to pack their desks. No final email. No dignity.
Some companies now send layoff notices at 3:00 a.m. Others run two Zoom calls at the same time—one for those “safe,” another for those gone.

I have been a long time reader of Humble Dollar and the excellent forum posts. I have been contributing a “Friday Thoughts” articles on my Linkedin page for several years. Today I want to post one of these articles for our youngsters on the importance of networking. Please let me know how much you like this and other topics you would like to hear about career and leadership.
Every year on my birthday, I receive a call from someone I met at work over 20 years ago — and in all these years,

Every now and then I come across an idea that is immediately both interesting and “feels right”. I recently came across one such idea in a podcast from Tim Hartford, his “Cautionary Tales” episode about Tony Hsieh, the billionaire CEO of Zappos. The concept is “obluiqity”, that the best way to actually reach a goal is often to not focus directly upon that goal.
The term was coined by the economist Professor Sir John Kay, who noticed that often when companies had a focus purely on profit,

After church service, I said hello to a fellow parishioner. I asked him, how are you doing. He replied, I’m fine, but I wish my friends would stop dying. I said nothing. Upon reflection, I should have replied, well you need to make new friends.
I retired early three and a half years ago at age 57. I spent my days going to the gym (lifting weights) and swimming (getting my cardio). I would say hi to a few folks,

I’ve been doing some consulting work with my former business again. This time, I’m helping the new owners navigate the fun of year-end tax reporting using the IT systems that had grown organically over the years, systems that made perfect sense to me but turned out to be anything but straightforward for them. What I could do almost on autopilot required careful explanation and documentation beyond what I’d already provided. It seems my “logical” system only made sense to me.

Happy New Year, HumbleDollar folks! Today, besides being the first day of 2026, is also the six-month anniversary of my retirement. How’s it going so far? I thought I’d follow up on a couple of posts from last year–this one was a year ago today (a “six months out” post).
So far, I absolutely love being retired. Seriously, I’m just ecstatic about it. I said to my husband recently, “I thought I’d miss it (my career) a 

What a difference a year makes. Time, it seems, doesn’t merely pass, it can transform us, reshaping the ordinary rhythms of our days into something we scarcely recognize as our own life.
I spent this afternoon at the season highlight of the local soccer league year, an annual clash between the two biggest teams with around 20,000 other spectators cheering them on. My wife Suzie and I had a grand time with my grandson, caught up in the spectacle and the shared excitement.

The best financial advice I know is “live on less than you earn and save the difference.” For too many, though, there’s nothing left over to save after paying the bills.
Basic living costs seem much higher these days. Housing can take an outsized bite of family income as rents and housing prices have risen. Factor in other big expenses like health insurance, childcare, and student loan repayment, and there may not be any money left to save at month’s end.

I was catching up with one of my former employees recently, someone who’d been critical to my business for years. She left a few weeks after I sold the company and has moved into a senior managerial role elsewhere. As we were wrapping up our conversation, she laughed and said she had to get back to being a productive member of society. Then she headed off to work.
It was meant as a joke, obviously. But it stuck with me.

Driving home from the airport yesterday morning after dropping off a friend, an amusing thought crossed my mind: what if I actually calculated my billable hours for the past week? Since retiring, I’ve noticed that friends and family have come to see me as their go-to problem solver whenever something needs doing. The assumption seems to be that old Mark just sits around doing nothing while everyone else is busy being productive.
Let me walk you through my week.

I’m sure we could swap stories about working particularly hard at some point in our life. Feeling exhausted, worn out, temperamental and not performing at our best. In an ideal world we would avoid such stresses and strains, but in reality going “above and beyond” seems to be part of securing some financial stability, raising a family, buying a house, funding retirement, or whatever your financial goals might be.
But a recent local news article got me thinking about where each of us draws the line and says “enough”.

Have I got a job for you.
As a boy I was into tropical fish. I had several tanks, I raised fish and tried to sell them – anything to make money.  At one point I had eight large tanks of fish. 
At 13 I wangled my way into a job after school and Saturday at a pet store for $5.00 a week and the occasional free fish.
After all these years I finally learned the money in tropical fish is not in the fish,

An AI editor helped research and polish this, but the overthinking is all mine.
Two months into retirement,  I’ve been thinking less about how to build wealth and more about what to do with it once you’ve reached a point where you feel “done” with the accumulation game. Maybe you’ve been there too—saved enough, checked the boxes, and then looked around wondering, *What now?*
One recent post on Of Dollars & Data estimated that a U.S.

It took me a few years in the work force to realize I was doing it wrong. For example, annual vacations should be a time to restore and rejuvenate. I began well enough, with vacations spent in the local library, learning photography, honing dark room skills, etc. This was stimulated by a lack of funds among other things.
I was the eldest son, and my father’s idea of enjoyment was fishing at the Chain of Lakes.

A few HumbleDollar writers have written that they worry about a child who seems to be on the wrong track in life. Here’s a story about a kid, who, despite a very rocky start, has turned out okay. 
Her early antics could have caused her life to turn out much different. During her early to middle teen years, problems developed at home, things were not great. Eventually, like many teenagers, she met her first love, he was a few years older than she.