Latest Posts
Thoughts on reinvention, clarity, work, money, and the quiet decisions that shape a life. New essays each week as we explore what it means to build a life with intention.
The Joy of Giving: How to Share Your Time, Talent, and Treasure Wisely
In 2009, my father-in-law’s cancer diagnosis, a struggling preschooler, and the Great Recession hit our family all at once, and four couples from our Life Group carried our pack. Almost two decades later, I can’t remember much of what they said, but I remember that we weren’t walking the trail alone. Here’s how to share your time, talent, and treasure wisely, from small acts of service to donor-advised funds and the 2026 tax changes.
The Retirement Line Item Nobody Budgets For: Adult Kids
At seven, our son planned to build a nest in a Japanese maple so he could live there with his wife and ten kids and stay close to Mom and me. A decade later, the nest became an apartment in Tucson. Here are three conversations that can help you launch your adult kids before you leave full-time work.
Five Financial Decisions That Made My Downshift Possible
I was fourteen, shivering in a borrowed tent on the Appalachian Trail in a waterlogged cotton sleeping bag, too proud to ask my dad, a retired Marine, for the gear that was sitting in our basement. Thirty years later, here are the five financial decisions that made my downshift possible, and the lesson it took me a cold night on a mountain to learn.
The Weekday World I Never Saw
In my twenties I sat at the same corner table every weekday morning, life rich and money poor, watching the Blue Ridge disappear into haze. I traded it for twenty-five years of building. This month I walked back into a coffee shop, a gym, and an empty trail to find out what the weekday world looks like before I move in for good.
Already Gone, Not Yet Gone: The Psychology of the Final Stretch
I'm still doing the work, still delivering results, trying to finish strong. The psychology underneath it has changed. This is what the last year of work feels like from the inside, before anyone knows you're leaving.
She Could Have Asked Me to Keep Working
At nineteen I decided a woman might be right for me because she pulled grape at a 7-Eleven. At fifty-two I brought her the biggest decision of my adult life, and she told me that making it on a feeling wouldn't be right. This is the conversation underneath the spreadsheets, and the one almost nobody talks about.