We took up residence at our condo near Lake Tahoe on April 15 after eight days on the road. We spent much of the next week learning about Incline Village, its grocery stores, post office, and gym. We moved slowly because we’re now at about 6,500 feet above sea level, and we didn’t have our customary energy. Continue reading
Category Archives: Retirement
Road Trips Defy Aging
Our van at Lake Tahoe
My wife, Barbara, and I are living about half a mile from Lake Tahoe in Nevada. We rented a condo for two months this spring to be nearer our son (San Francisco) and to visit three couples (old friends) who live nearby. We worked hard to get ready: repaired the house, tried to clean up the garage, disposed of my motorcycle, tended the lawn after winter, consolidated and rescheduled medical appointments, planned prescription refills, studied the spring weather at Lake Tahoe, and planned a route. Finally we selected clothing, packed our electronics and clothes, loaded the van, locked the house, climbed into the front seats and turned the key. Click, click, click, click—a dead battery, on Sunday. Continue reading
A Little Adventure
Hofer’s World Rye
Early life is a time for big adventures, like the army, college, marriage. Later life is for small adventures, like finding a new author or visiting a distant bakery. Continue reading
Making Retirement—the Eclipse
Restaurant worker watches the eclipse.
Should we stay home to see the eclipse, where we’d see 99.1% of the sun covered, or should we head north to the zone of totality, which was only 40 or so miles away? We ordered glasses from Amazon, which arrived in two days—a package of five pairs. I had my eye on a special lens filter for the camera, but by the time I decided to order it, none were available at reasonable prices. Continue reading
Radical Retirement for the Kids
Retire early and fly away
Last time we saw Christy Shen and her husband, Bryce, living one version of a radical retirement: they retired in 2014 (Christy was 31 years old) after only a few years of work. Each year while working they saved more than half of their earnings. Can anyone do that, or were they just lucky to invest when returns were high? Continue reading
Christy Shen Retired at 31: Is She Crazy?
Christy and her husband, Bryce, retired in 2014 at age 31; they had about $1.16 million saved, which includes about 4 years of living expenses ($160 thousand–my estimate). Can two people make the money last in Toronto, Canada, where they live? What if they have kids? Continue reading
Money as Omen and Memory
Old phone reminds me of the phone we had at the Ranger School in 1963, though ours had coin receptacles and a rotary dial.
Last winter, my younger brother, Bill, showed me a notebook I left at home over 50 years ago. It had two pages of expense entries from the summer of 1962, after graduating from high school, and from 1963, when I attended the New York State Ranger School, a forestry technician school in the western Adirondack Mountains of New York. Money spent: I wanted to see what the entries might tell. Continue reading
The American West: Traditional and Trendy, with Photos
A dramatic comparison of federal land ownership in the West versus other regions.
The Atlantic magazine recently published a piece about the West entitled The Graying of Rural America, which argues that, “As cities attract young people, rural America has become older, whiter, and less populated.”
The authors focus on Fossil, Oregon, the county seat of Wheeler County, which they describe as slowly dying. According to The Atlantic, the town began “bleeding jobs” after a lumber mill closed in 1978. Young people leave for educations and jobs in larger cities, and old people become trapped. They exist mostly on investment earnings or government checks like Social Security. Continue reading
Nature’s Drama: Photos Along the Pacific Coast
Sea lions lounge on rocks along the Oregon coast
If the interior West exudes space, solitude, and silence, the Pacific Coast offers drama: isolated beaches, quaint towns, high cliffs, shifting mist and rain, and a coastline littered with large rock formations. We visited the Pacific Coast in early June, before the travel season peaked and, luckily, when the weather was good. Continue reading
Harsh, Open, and Compelling: Photos of the West
Front Range of the Rockies, south of Denver. Residential and commercial property crowd into the Front Range.
On the pages of many outdoor or hunting magazines, photos of the West show mostly places in the Rocky Mountains. As a boy in western New York, I spent hours reading those magazines and came to believe that the West and the Rockies were one in the same. I was 24 years old when I made my first trip west. At that time, I taught high school math, and when school ended in June, I packed some essentials on a motorcycle and headed out. Among other things, I learned that the West was more than the Rockies. Continue reading