Lazy Man and Money

“It’s a Combination of Things”

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Happy Election Day 2020! I know you can get your fill of political commentary from people today. I’ll give you a break and mostly steer clear of politics.

(Of course, if you want my view on the election and your money, I suggest you read vote Biden for the economy.)

I was thinking about not writing an article today. I know that even I wrote my best article ever, it’s not going to get much attention. Just when I had convinced myself not to write an article, life intervened. This article practically wrote itself.

It’s a Combination of Things

I was looking forward to a productive Monday to start the week. My to-do list was a dozen items long, but I was well-positioned to fly through most of them. The first thing on my list after dropping the kids off at school was to get my car inspected.

I’m fishing through my glove compartment for the car registration when my phone rings. It’s the kids’ school. An automated message says the head of the school has sent out an important email. We all know what that means. I find the registration and walk to the mechanic while I’m reading the email.

I breathe a sigh of relief as there are no positive COVID cases at the school Instead there’s an early dismissal because there were three people who were in close contact with a positive COVID case.

I pick up the kids at school and get them home. My phone rings. It’s the mechanic. The car needs new brakes and some other repairs. It’s going to be $1100.

It wasn’t even noon and it was shaping up like a terrible week. I didn’t give my to-do list another thought.

I did take a minute to reflect on what this truly means. As long as the kids are healthy*, all of this is only slightly inconvenient. For many families in a different financial situation, it would be much, much worse. For many families in a different working dynamic, it would be much, much worse. The (relative) freedom of time and money was the right “Combination of Things” to combat this stressful day.

Those freedoms came from a combination of things:

  1. Our household income is far above average. My wife does well as a pharmacist. I piece together 3 part-time jobs and some contract work while managing much of the household errands.
  2. We live frugally. We drive our cars into the ground. Aldi groceries are cheap. I’m literally wearing a 24-year old shirt while I write this article.
  3. We’ve been very lucky. This shows up in our various ways, but one example is that we’ve had very few financial disasters.

Make more, spend less, be a little lucky… it’s a combination of things.

A few hours later, my mother emailed me asking why anyone thought Cam Newton would be a good quarterback for the Patriots this year. My response was predictable, “It’s a combination of things…”

* The kids were only in school for 2 hours this morning after a 3-day weekend. As there are no known positive cases yet, we are optimistic that health won’t be a concern.

Predicting Retirement is Tough, but it Gets Easier

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JakeBeachGnarly
Retirement can be a gnarly problem and not the way gnarly is usually used at the beach

It seems like everyone is in the prediction business this week. We’re trying to predict which states will vote one way. We’re trying to predict which way the Supreme Court will vote. I’m trying to predict when the Patriots will have a competitive quarterback again. (Wait, that was supposed to be in my inner monologue. The rest of the country probably had enough of Patriots quarterbacks for a number of years.)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of those predictions for a little while. Why not take a break from them? What if instead you focused on your personal finance journey and tried to predict what retirement would look like?

I know I’m a strange bird. It takes a “unique personality” to blog about personal finances for 14 years. I continue to update my passive income and net worth statements. It’s a little outdated, but generally our next 45 years of expenses looks steady.

Most people aren’t strange like me. Has it been a while since you calculated your net worth? When was the last time you thought about what your expenses will be when you retire? Regular readers are likely to do these things more often. I wonder how often the Average Joe or Average Jane looks at this financial stuff. For example, I’m always slipping when it comes to getting my car checked. I had been very bad about seeing dentists (but I’m better now). I have to think that money check-ups are the same for some people.

When I started this blog, I could have made some predictions of what retirement would look like. I would have been wildly wrong. I had never left the Boston suburbs before, but we moved out to California for 6 years. We came back to New England and live in the “drive-through” state of Rhode Island. I may have been able to predict the two kids. I wouldn’t have thought that they’d go to private school, because the discount was just barely good enough, but it’s still extremely expensive.

Life has a way of slowly moving you a different direction than you planned. So if you last looked at your financial plan a few years ago, it is a good time to look again and see if adjustments need to be made. For example, we found that with COVID, not being able to spend on travel has helped our bank accounts. (It’s hard to admit that knowing how negative COVID has been for the country overall.)

I like to think of long-term financial planning (for retirement or even college expenses) as being like a hole of golf. You have to take a big shot with your driver to get as close as you can. Then you focus your attention more and more until you are making a manageable putt.

This might be a good time to see if you are using the correct golf club.