I was having lunch the other day with a retired colleague and friend. We catch up periodically, filling each other in on our children’s activities and our lives. This time, he really wanted to spend some talking about the retirement experience.
He’s not your ordinary retiree. In his last several years with Vanguard, he studied for and passed all the Certified Financial Planner™ exams, because he thought it would be helpful personally and as an alternate career option.
I hate buying cars. Even though I’ve had the good fortune to not have it be a frequent experience, when the time comes for another car, I cringe at the prospect.
The worst was when a car dealer wouldn’t give me back my license after a test drive because he was so anxious to make a sale. It’s so bad that I’ve delegated the process to my husband for the last two purchases. Here’s our deal: he gets the thrill of the hunt and I lose the right to lodge any complaints. So far, so good.
In my January 25 post, I looked at two tactical retirement issues: improving savings rates and evaluating portfolio risk levels. In this post, I’ll wrap up with three additional ideas.
This time of year we are flooded with reminders, checklists, and predictions. Many are useful, but some are merely entertaining.
While there are many items related to your financial health that deserve attention at the beginning of the year, this might be a good time to order your annual free credit report.
For those of you who watch or have heard of the hit series “Mad Men,” you’ll know that the show provides an interesting story line, some fascinating characters, and great commentary on the social mores and gender differences of the late ’50s and early ’60s.
I’ve been watching lately with an eye toward the financial side of life in that era. There are no credit cards to speak of—Don Draper, the main character, peels off cold cash when he asks his secretary to buy Christmas presents for his children. This is pre-401(k)s and IRAs, and Don and his band of not-so-merry marketers left behind whatever pensions they had coming to them when they broke with their old advertising agency to go out on their own. There is little if any dialogue concerning personal investing at all.
