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.
Don't Leave It in the Field: An Open Enrollment Guide for an Earlier Exit
In 2016, our 11-year-old picked a plastic skull mask that earned him respect at every door and turned into a sauna on a warm night across 800 homes. It looked great on the porch, but it wasn’t built for the night he was having. Benefits enrollment works the same way, so here’s how to choose the options that fit the life you’re living, whether you’re 10 years out, landing the plane, or already retired.
The Noises in the Night: Five Retirement Worries That May Wake You at 3 A.M.
My phone rang at 3 a.m. in a Dallas hotel room. Our home security alarm was screaming 900 miles away, and the technician we paid to check every sensor missed the real problem. If you’ve done the planning and the questions still come at night, here are the five retirement worries worth naming, and one step you can take this week for each.
Landing the Plane, Part 2: Timing Your Exit and Maximizing Your Final Working Year
You've done the math. You know your number. Now comes the part nobody talks about: actually leaving.
Landing the Plane, Part 1: Building Your Drawdown Framework
Eight years ago I drove through the Valley of the Sun for the first time and knew Arizona was exactly the change we needed. Learning to live there required an entirely new set of rules. The transition from accumulation to distribution is exactly like that.
How to Find Your Next Endeavor
Last week I waded through a red-rock canyon in Glacier's Canadian twin with the people I love most. This week I am at 31,000 feet over Kansas, racing the other direction. Here is the framework I am building toward, and the five paths worth exploring before you leave full-time work.
The Sequence That Determines Whether Your Retirement Lasts (And How to Sleep Through the Chaos)
I graduated from graduate business school in May 2007 into a city buzzing with possibility. By 2008, I was watching people carry file boxes out of high-rise towers. What I learned about markets in that season, no classroom ever taught me. This post is about the one retirement math concept most people skip entirely, and the three protections that let you sleep at night when markets do what markets inevitably do.