In my conversations with you, you tell me how you hiked all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000 footers. You were a lot younger, but it feels like yesterday. You and I know one of the secrets to life is simply putting one foot in front of the other. It’s putting food on the table, the kids through college, and retirement checks in the bank. You tell me how much you learned from your dad. How he could build anything and how your kids feel the same about you because you’re always at their house working on something. I remember like it was yesterday a conversation we had where you said, “Dad helped me … [Read more...]
Surviving to Climb New Hampshire’s 4,000 Footers and More
In my conversations with you, you’re telling me how life throws you curveballs. Who would have thought you’d be navigating pre-retirement as a cancer survivor with one lung? But, you tell me, “that’s life.” What’s been on your mind is what you can do with it. Can you, for example, still hike like you used to? Can you still summit a 4,000-foot mountain? And so, that’s what we talked about earlier this fall as you planned your trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where 48 of the 4,000 footers reside, many in the Presidential range. If you’re familiar with the White Mountains, you … [Read more...]
How to Find Your Retirement Life Forever Home
The best advice you can get when it comes to finding Your Retirement Life forever home, is to spend time in the area you think you’ll like. Take our cabin in New Hampshire, for example. I knew the area like the back of my hand having spent a season as a ski instructor after Babson and then going up on weekends after my parents bought a house there. Over time it became obvious to me that we, as a family, were going to be spending a lot more time in New Hampshire and it felt right. That wouldn’t have happened over a weekend. It took years. From Beth DeCarbo in the WSJ: To Rick Brown and … [Read more...]
Your Retirement Life: Come Monday You Went to Work
Happy Monday. Who’s got your back in times like these when everyone’s making money, money, money? Let’s not forget when the music stops, not everyone’s going to have a chair. Like a broken record, there are always more investors than you’d expect who will be pushed to the floor. Happens every time. “It won’t happen to me,” is a common refrain. When I think about how hard most of you have worked to create what you have, I know come Monday, you got up and went to work. And the next week, same thing. Rinse, wash, repeat. That’s a lot of years and a lot of hours. Imagine having to do that all … [Read more...]
Your Retirement Life: Living in Vacation Destinations
Here’s a problem that’s not going away—the cost of living in certain vacation destinations is prohibitively expensive. I see this in Newport as well as Key West. When there’s no place for workers to live, what happens to the service industry? When the Fed pumps too much money into the system inflation is the natural result. And when million-dollar houses and then some, are selling sight unseen, there’s too much money in the system. How is that good for places you like to visit or live? It’s not. Read about Newport's housing problems here from Bethany Brunelle of The Newport Daily … [Read more...]
Your Key to Happiness Is to Keep On Swimming
On Friday night, Becky and I visited with college friends for dinner at Scales and Shells here in Newport. It was so much fun. It had been a few years since the last time we were together, bringing back some great memories of our time at Babson. With our oldest child now a sophomore in college and our youngest applying, it’s a funny time to be a parent. We’re in sort of a slack tide, knowing day-to-day life will be a lot different this time next year when we’re empty nesters. It’s hard not to think, “Wow, this has gone by fast.” On Saturday, Becky and I felt like college kids taking a … [Read more...]
LIVING FREE: Riding Through Crawford Notch in Autumn
You want to live somewhere your hard work is respected. In a state like New Hampshire, with no income tax, you can be sure politicians aren't treating you like a piggy bank. But you can also enjoy some of the most beautiful country in America. Every year droves of tourists flock to New Hampshire for the fall foliage. The Conway Daily Sun reports on some of those who ventured there this year, writing: Michelle and Pat Case of Brookhaven, Miss., said they were first-time New England fall foliage viewers. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Michelle. She said they had flown into Bangor, … [Read more...]
An Island of Freedom Where You’d Least Expect It
If you’re looking for the island life, consider my favored liberty retirement state of New Hampshire, which sits on an island of freedom surrounded by tax-hungry blues states of the Northeast. As a fair disclosure, my family owns a log cabin in the White Mountains of NH and we're looking forward to spending time there over Thanksgiving. Once you start thinking about your retirement life, you quickly realize you deserve to keep more of what you earned or to live free or die in a place where you’re looked upon as a resident, not a piggy bank. Here's a list of small towns in New Hampshire … [Read more...]
BIG CITY SUCCESS: Miami’s Secret Recipe
You've read a lot about the failure of the big blue blob cities of the Northeast, and how everyone wants to escape San Francisco. But there are a few examples of big cities done right in America. Miami is one of them. With its Republican Mayor Francis X. Saurez, Miami has found the secret recipe to running a big city the right way. Karol Markowicz explains in The Wall Street Journal: Residential real estate here is a seller’s market, repeatedly setting records for total sales, percentage of asking price and lowest inventory. More homes were sold in Miami in the first nine months of 2021 than … [Read more...]
Survival SUPER States: A Place to Call Home
When you can’t even send your kids or grandkids to public schools, you ask yourself, “What am I paying for?” When your local police force is gutted, you ask yourself, “What am I paying for?” When your politicians treat you like a piggy bank you ask yourself “What am I paying for?” This simple question is being asked at kitchen tables all over this country every single day. But it’s different this time, as big blue cities and states, usually the recipients of workers, are suffering from a once in a lifetime exodus to RED STATES. As retirees tell loved ones “Don’t worry we’ll be back to … [Read more...]
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