Recent content by Hnicols

One year seven months and 18 days since ER but who is counting. Sure has been fun and travel filled but I still feel like time is rushing by. Camping for two weeks right now and that does help to slow it a bit. And still some times miss the intellectual stimulation and power from the job. But...

What this time isn't different? I thought it was a sea change, a new paradigm, a fundamental shift to the new normal. Why I haven't seen so marked a change in market fundamentals since Enron ushered in the new energy markets, or was it World Com bringing us new telecom. Well it was one of them...

And JPM will keep taking a skim from us all:) Disclaimer: I hold shares in those I besmirch.

Same as it was in 2000? Funny how so much turns on where you start and end your looking. I retired 12-31-11. Someone recently suggested that I got where I got (retired early and happy) because of good market conditions in 80s and 90s. I had to admit it did seem like an extraordinary period...

Good to know I am not the only one who is nuts. "I have this need to keep doing things all the time" sure describes me too. One of the reasons I went away hiking by myself. Was driving my wife crazy!

Three months and 18 days into retirement and I am exhausted. Camping, diving, cruising, surfing, skiing and hiking. Just finished today a two week hike of the Shenandoah national park (110miles with a pack, ouch) i am too old for this. Need to go back to work! But when I am not sore, it is...

I don't think I am on the list of 75 so I may screw up your number. Hnicols (55) 12/31/11

Sounds good, but you are talking to someone that so far has lived and survived by the code of "everything to excess". So at least for a while I am going to adopt the philosophy of "you rode hard, now play hard"!

I think you eventually have to decide to just do it and not get to caught up in forever planning. I really liked my job, was the boss, and got paid lots. But as the years slipped by I realized that this could be it and i could do it forever. Not that that would be terrible, but I believe we...

Yeah, I have the first book but a quarter of the way through decided just to step back for a bit. Have some winter camping I want to do this month with some skiing in between. Planning 30 days on appal trail end of march with my dog. Got horses coming in in May and that will keep me...

Add me. Retired dec 31, 2011 at 55.

Just retired...today! So no time yet to be disappointed. But do worry that until now I was a man with a plan. for 30 years I was largely my profession, a lot of people listened to me (I was the boss so they all pretended I was smart) and I felt that i could make lots of things happen So now I...

Hope I have 3 or 4 decades to try! Feels odd though after 30 years of running flat out and traveling non-stop to have no tomorrow "I've go to...."

Hard to believe but finally here! so much planning to get here, will need a few years to figure out what comes next. find myself between anticlimactic and anxious. So today I took the polar bear plunge in lake George. So far I find ER cold.

As to annuities, I understand, I think, some of the reasoning behind annuities but can't bring myself to paying others a skim For essentially promising to give me back the money I gave them minus the time value of money. And yes I know it is possible they will return more than that, although...