Careers

I was in Flapjacks with my friend Jerry on a Monday morning that looked  like it had the potential to be a much-needed good day. But the pancakes were warmer than the conversation.
“How could you have embarrassed me like that? “
“You mean what I said last night when we were having dinner at Café Bernardo with those insufferable  attorney friends of yours?” I knew darn well what he meant but I didn’t think it was such a big deal.

Early in my career, I took a quiz meant to determine how suitable a person was to be an entrepreneur. A high score indicated that one’s personality and interests were aligned with a life of entrepreneurship. A score close to zero was neutral, indicating neither a proclivity nor an aversion to being an entrepreneur. I scored deep in negative territory. I determined at that point to always be a salaryman, a path that worked out well for me.

“I’m giving up on your cousin Bernie, Fay.”
“Bill, grow up already and stop acting like a wounded bird. Be a good husband and give him another year.“
“Another year?  It’s already been three years and he told me two. Good-bye to our $20,000. I told you it wouldn’t be so easy to go from men’s clothing to shoes. Your family’s in la la land.”
The business lesson. My father looked up from his lamb chop and poked his fork at me.

SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN clumsy. Tools never seem to fit their hands. Their hammer finds a thumb more often than a nail. For them, running looks and feels like an ungainly, uphill battle—even on level ground.
I don’t claim to be physically gifted. But my clumsiness shows up in a different way. I have a notable social deficiency: I’m naturally clumsy with people. Why is this important? It defined the first quarter-century of my life,

Note: This is the third in my Forum series of previously written pieces that I never submitted to the editor for consideration. 
AN INTERNET ARTICLE I printed out over 15 years ago set the work-life balance standard for me. The article has been relegated to the dust bin of cyber space so I can’t link to it or even identify who wrote it. The author discusses a friend who “seems to have found the ultimate sweet spot in his career.”
The friend made a comfortable living working less than 40 hours a week.

Note: This is the second Forum piece from my ‘shelved articles’ archive. It was written months ago but never submitted to Jonathan.
These days, people often debate the value of a college education, but what about the value of a good high school education? I was fortunate to attend high school in Moorestown, New Jersey, a community that has always valued having an excellent school system.
With the perspective shaped by over 40 years of life post-graduation,

WE MET IN THE GALLEY, the cafeteria in Vanguard Group’s nautical lexicon. Jack Bogle shook my hand. My pulse raced.
I’d learned about Vanguard’s founder while working at Morningstar. I’d read about him in Jonathan Clements’s Wall Street Journal columns. And I’d devoured his first book, Bogle on Mutual Funds.
“Where’d you go to college?” he asked. “Good board scores?”
We sat down, tucked into our meals—some sort of industrial casserole for me,

What you give for $386,000? If you were 5 years from retirement, would you move 3 hours away from your home and friends to accept a job that pays about $60,000 more annually? Assume you won’t sell your house but would rent a small one-bedroom or studio that would cost maybe $1000 a month.
So, I tried following the decision-making process of David Gartland (link to Make That Choice) to help me with my decision. First,

OVER THE PAST SEVEN years, HumbleDollar has become my professional life’s passion. Cancer means I have maybe another year in me—and then it’ll be up to you. My hope: The site will have a life beyond me.
On the site’s homepage, just below the latest articles, you’ll find a new feature dubbed Forum. Will HumbleDollar have a lively future, rather than fading into a dusty collection of old articles? That all depends on whether readers and writers embrace the Forum,

RETURNING TO NEW YORK for the summer was out of the question. It was spring of my freshman year, and I wasn’t about to acquiesce to my parents’ wishes, not after the whirlwind of college life that included an introduction to pot and dating non-Jewish girls from small Midwestern towns. I didn’t give much thought to what I’d actually do. Maybe meeting girls taking summer school in The Grill or driving all the way to Miami and party,

I BEGAN MY CAREER as a part-time employee for an engineering consulting firm. At the time, I was working on my master’s degree in mechanical engineering. I shifted to full-time when I’d wrapped up my coursework but before completing my research and oral defense.
Over the next four years, I finished that degree and passed the national exam to become a registered professional engineer. I also got married, and bought a dog, a second car and a house.

IF 20-SOMETHINGS ASK me for financial advice, I suggest getting a job right out of college and saving like crazy, so they quickly get themselves on the fast track to financial freedom.
If 60-somethings ask me for advice, I advocate a phased retirement, seeking part-time work in their initial retirement years and, if they enjoy it, perhaps keeping it up into their 70s.
Yeah, I know, I sound like a real killjoy. My advice raises an obvious question: Is there ever a time when we should cut ourselves some slack and not have a job?

COULD HUMBLEDOLLAR be replaced by a website chock-full of articles created using artificial intelligence? The short answer: It would be remarkably easy—and I fear readers wouldn’t object, especially if they didn’t know how the articles were generated.
To show what’s possible, I requested eight personal-finance articles from three freely available artificial intelligence (AI) tools, ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot. The first of those articles is published today, with the other seven appearing over the next four days.

MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE movie is the Coen brothers’ 2000 classic, O Brother, Where Art Thou? At one point, Holly Hunter’s character, Penelope, declares, “I’ve said my piece and I’ve counted to three.” Her estranged husband, played by George Clooney, understood from long experience that once she had “counted to three,” her mind couldn’t be changed.
Last summer, I wrote an article that explored the decisions my husband and I are working through about our retirement date and location.

IN MY EARLY 50s, when retirement began looking like a viable option, I started thinking seriously about what my life might look like after I stopped working as an engineer at a nearby nuclear power plant. Earlier in my career, I’d imagined living off my pension and not working at all. But by my 50s, I wasn’t so sure. I felt retirement could be a time to explore other work opportunities.
My favorite hardware store is less than a mile from my house.