I admit it, I’m an Olympic junkie. I’m sure I’m not alone in this community (or any other for that matter). I can sit for hours and watch cross-country skiing and ski jumping, ice skating and even “sports” I don’t really understand that involve surfing down a hill on a board and doing flips like a crazy person. Every couple of years this is just what I do (Mrs. Oldster is actually worse than me). Continue reading
I am approaching a retirement milestone this year. This is the year I turn 59 ½. It’s not the first artificial line I’ve crossed on the journey (55 for getting at my 401k without penalty was the first), but it is a significant one. I will be able to access all of my retirement accounts (other than my HSA, at least as a retirement account) without penalty. While I have no intention of doing so (as you may know, I’m still working – by choice rather than necessity), it did get me to thinking about the lines I have yet to cross. Mostly, I was thinking about social security and what that will look like for me, and most importantly, when I will start taking it. Continue reading
One of the things I enjoy most about the FIRE community is the outside the box thinking. It takes original thinkers to turn the work/life/retirement balance on its head and put themselves in a position to live the lives they choose while the rest of the world is running on the usual treadmill that life presents us. One part of the equation that has appeared to me to be difficult to solve has been the educational part. Pretty much everyone who is on this path is a college graduate (as am I – 3 degrees, to be exact). And as everyone knows, college is expensive. We read that almost every day in the main stream press. But does it have to be? As the father of a teen, and the uncle to 12 nieces and nephews, this question calls to me.
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As the third leg of the stool I appear to be building about doing less and being happier, I submit this article from the Financial Times. The article is really a review of Morten Hansen’s new book Great At Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better and Achieve More. There is a better review in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (January 13, 2018), but it requires a subscription to read. If you have one, I recommend it. Continue reading
Those of you who read the article I linked to in my last post, and with whom the idea that too much productivity is dangerous resonated, will enjoy this next installment. This next article kind of piggy-backs on the previous one, arguing that the most creative, the most appreciated scientists and artists of the past and the present, may be the ones who work the fewest hours. Continue reading
