Tag Archives: aging

Boycott Burgerville

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Every year this time of year, Mount Bachelor calls, and some crazed cycling friends and I answer. I will not run or swim this week, just turn the pedals. Over and over. Big ups to the daughters for looking after their momsie.

When I travel, I mentally prep by imagining all the bad things happening, canceled flight, middle seat, etc. In this road trip case, construction delays, accidents, and who knows what else.

And therein lies the problem, my imagination wasn’t up to anticipating today’s crisis. There I was pulling into Burgerville for an early lunch before juicing up the electric whip in Sandy. Because I always try to eat healthy during Big Weeks, I said to the speaker, “I’ll have a 16 ounce strawberry shake.” Don’t judge me, it’s fruit, right?!

“$5.99 at the second window.” “Okay, thanks.”

Then, right as I began to finally empty my bulging coin purse, it happened. The crisis I did not anticipate.

“Oh. Senior discount. $5.39.”

Nevermind the carbon fiber bike in the back of the $40k car, Oregon thinks I deserve an “old person” rebate of 60 cents. Hey Oregon, how about discounting Millennial milkshakes since most of them, unlike me weren’t born at the right time to the right two parent family.

Senior discounts don’t make any sense for the half of seniors doing well. But this story isn’t about flawed economic and tax policies. It’s about my ego and how a woman at Burgerville shattered it. It may take all week to recover.

The Big Question In Retirement

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Who am I now that I’m not working? That’s the question Stephen Kreider Yoder, 66, and Karen Kreider Yoder, 67, reflect on in this Wall Street Journal essay.

Karen writes:

“I no longer have the career that was the dominant part of my identity. Instead, I have a many-faceted identity.

Sure, there are mornings when I feel melancholy, often when the coming day feels unstructured or without purpose. On rare occasions, I stay in my pajamas all morning and wish I were back to my routine of setting off before dawn by bike to the ferry, across the San Francisco Bay and back on the bike for the last leg to the university. It was an invigorating commute, and I had heady work building a department that made an impact in the community.

But the pressure and the stress? The sleepless nights preparing for meetings and classes? I am happy to have left that behind, and the place it had in my identity. Now, if I’m not satisfied with my day, it’s my own fault.”

I wonder though, is it her own fault?

I’m struck by the limited opportunities for retired peeps to share their unique skills and work/life experiences, insights, and wisdom. A cynical view would be that “society” just doesn’t care. That it has an ageist, “thank you for coming”, perspective.

Sure, retired people can volunteer for any number of non-profits, and some create “encore” careers, but for the vast majority it’s not easy to find the right fit. To be able to make similar contributions as they did when working, just in significantly less time, and with less stress.

I wonder if I happened onto a large part of the answer when I entered the crib last Saturday afternoon. The GalPal had just finished tutoring a recently retired lawyer-friend who is learning Spanish. Afterwards, she said she felt a sense of purpose that is decidedly more elusive in her post-teaching life.

I wonder. If for retired people struggling with their new, post paid work identities, the answer may be informal small groups where each participant contributes a unique skill.

Which leaves me wondering. How might we facilitate more grass roots, retirement, purpose making?

Are You 50 Years Old?

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Or stupendous and sixty? Or sublime and seventy? Or extraordinary and eighty?

If so, I highly recommend two essays.

  1. Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think by Arthur C. Brooks.

  2. How to Practice by Ann Patchett.

Both beautifully nudge the reader to contemplate the end-of-life. Patchett’s piece is the single best thing I’ve ever read on decluttering as an intentional act of preparing to die. If you think you might die someday, forget Marie Kondo, just sink deeply into Patchett’s story.

Patchett had me from the jump when she described the stages of life as “. . . youth, middle age, and . . . the downhill slalom.”

Ski on dear reader and read on.

Two Types of Legacy

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We’re not getting any younger. How will you be remembered?

Jack Bogle, creator of low cost index mutual funds, died yesterday at 89. In Warren Buffett’s opinion, Bogle did more for the American investor than any person in the country by putting “tens and tens and tens of billions into their pockets.” “And those numbers,” Buffett added, “are going to be hundreds and hundreds of billions over time.”

As a self-taught investor, I’ve learned more from Bogle’s writing than from every other financial author combined.

Bogle’s direct, tangible legacy, low cost passive investing, is something that generations of investors will benefit from in perpetuity.

Just as generations of Pacific Northwest citizens will benefit in perpetuity from a local group’s incredibly effective activism that saved Olympia’s LBA Park from being turned into one more housing development.

A second type of legacy is less direct, tangible, and obvious; but equally meaningful. It entails living so exemplary a life that one’s descendants, and others, seek to emulate the deceased person’s attributes.

In the winter, much to the Good Wife’s dismay, I keep the house cooler than she’d prefer. Recently, when I pressed pause to think about why, it took about five seconds to realize it didn’t have anything to do with Jimmy Carter or our household’s economics. I realized it was one small way of honoring my dad’s frugality that stemmed from his Eastern Montana upbringing. A tribute of sorts. My dad never had to tell me to live below my means because he modeled it so persuasively. I want to be humble like him, just as I want to be one-tenth as generous as my mom.

Yesterday I listened to Dan Patrick interview Ian O’Connor author of Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Coach of All Time (so much for humble titles). My interest in football is waning, but Patrick is a great interviewer and O’Connor was insightful. One thing O’Connor said is that both Belichick and Brady are intensely conscious of their respective legacies.

Which got me thinking. I bet Jack Bogle was not intensely conscious of his legacy. I know for sure that Don and Carol Byrnes were not. My plan is to try to do good work, and even more importantly, be a good person, and let my legacy take care of itself. If I’m lucky, someone, sometime, will seek to emulate an attribute or two of mine.

Thursday Assorted Links

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1. The New York Times Bombshell That Bombed.

“And what the NYT can still do to find an audience for its Trump tax story.”

This blows. I was hoping he’d have been fined $400-500m dollars and impeached by now. Maybe some jail time for good measure.

2. Can’t help but wonder if the bombshell bombed because people have been distracted by what Tay is up to. I got you. Taylor Swift Succumbs to Competitive Wokeness. Wokeness a future Olympic event? How might one begin training?

3. We Slow as We Age, but May Not Need to Slow Too Much. Finally, some good news. Footnote. Last Thanksgiving I ran my first marathon in a long time. My time was only 5 minutes slower than my personal record from a decade earlier. Probably my greatest athletic performance ever. A legend in my own mind.

4. Amsterdam’s Plea to Tourists: Visit, But Please Behave Yourself. The problem of “overtourism”. Based upon the pictures, I will pass.

“Sometime it is as simple as tourists not realizing that real people live here.”

Reminds me of signs I see in a nearby neighborhood I cycle through regularly. “Drive like your kids live here.”

Bonus.

The Beginning of the End

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That’s how one pro football coach described the moment to his players right before game 9 of 16 this weekend. Hearing that, I thought it aptly described my present stage of life. Then again, life is fragile, so who knows, I could be a little or a lot closer to the End than I realize.

If it’s hard to figure out how to approach the End, it’s doubly hard when married because everyone thinks about the End a little, or a lot, differently. The Good Wife and I are thinking fairly differently about how to live at the beginning of the end. It would be a lot easier if she would start thinking more like me.

Don’t Ask Me How to Raise Teenagers

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My daughters have early August birthdays, meaning more than turkey was cooking lo’ those many Thanksgivings ago. Four day weekend, frosty outside, fire burning inside, what do you expect?

J, now 20, is a fun and funny girl. The day before her birthday she proudly declared that she had now officially “avoided teen pregnancy”.

And a few days from now, a few blocks from Wrigley Field, A turns 23.

I’m proud of my daughters and love them dearly despite their making me feel old.

They’re a talented duo, especially skilled in reclamation projects. Through an interest in and feel for interior design, and lots of paint, A has transformed her utilitarian Chicago apartment into a nice home.

And through practice and steadily increasing technical know-how, J can wield her camera to transform almost any subject, no matter how ghastly into something nearly tolerable. For example.

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