The Crotchety Old Man

Category: The Day Job

  • My Dual-Career Household

    University faculty positions are very demanding. Many of my colleagues work all the time. I don’t. Balancing work and my personal life has always been a priority, and in my opinion, the reason I’ve managed to stay productive. My writing career is also very demanding. Penning a novel takes time. The publishing process adds additional time demands. Promoting books, maintaining…

  • Writing: Career or Hobby?

    Getting the contract for my first novel was like winning the lottery. Rather than the years-long, rejection-filled path traveled by most writers, I’d found success right out of the gate. Until Thanksgiving was going to make me rich! My preconceived notions about publishing a novel were a tad off. Two years, two more novels and a short…

  • Priorities

    My father taught me anything worth doing is worth doing well. Of course, he never actually used those words. Instead, he’d berate me for being half-assed. Thanks to this early training (or an undiagnosed personality disorder), I don’t do things by halves. Nope. Not me. I’m whole ass or not at all. Insecurity nourishes my obsessive tendencies. To compensate for…

  • Countdown to Retirement

    To celebrate Financial Literacy Month, my regular Monday posts in April have focused on my experience planning for my looming retirement. For most of my career, retiring has been an abstract concept — something far, far away. But now that I’m pushing sixty, the time has come to get real about where, when, and how…

  • My Retirement Expenses

    Welcome to the third of four April posts about my retirement planning experience in honor of Financial Literacy Month. I wrote about my preparations for retirement over the years in the first post, and in the second, the sources of income I expect to receive in retirement. Now I turn to my retirement expenses. Figuring out…

  • My Retirement Income

    Last week I kicked off a four-part series about my retirement planning experience. I’m close enough to retiring to get serious about picking a date. Despite the reckless spending of my youth and some stupid decisions along the way, sticking with the plan cut my retirement age from seventy to sixty-five. I made a date…

  • Thinking about Retirement

    I got my first steady job in the summer of 1972 at an ice-cream store in a brand new shopping mall. I was fourteen. Except for a month or two in 1977 after my employer went out of business, I’ve worked at least one job ever since. Those early positions were more character-building than income-producing. Saving…

  • Educator of the Year

    Regular readers know I spent most of the past week at the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education conference in Jacksonville, Florida.  I’ve been a  member since 1989, spent several years on the  Board of Directors, and served as President in 2000.  It’s a great group of which I am proud to be a…