Some Lessons Learned

I was in my kitchen cleaning up the last of the post-thanksgiving turkey grease and I was thinking about my dormant-to-deadish blog and 10 or 12 years of me stepping into retirement finance. Did I learn anything? A little math and some coding, certainly. But in the end it wasn't the numbers or models or code or optimal this or that that stood out. It was that some things were more important than others. Some things dominated others if only in tiny ways that would probably matter somehow at some cumulative straw-and-camel[1] level. 

I sat down after washing the grease off my hands and jotted down a starter list of "what dominates what" in my amateur opinion. Many of these probably need some additional explanation but I won't do that so don't ask :-).  This is what I came up with, some of which is tongue-in-cheek, others I mean sincerely while others still are maybe incoherent. So then this:

Moderation and middle path > extremes and edges

Adaptation > fixed attachments

Spending choice > risk allocation, in the middle zones anyway

Operations research and mgmt > finance

Large scale > small scale* Think margins of error and redundancy/robustness

Triangulation with many models > single models

Simplicity > complexity, before and past some point but maybe not in-between

Chaos > uncertainty > certainty (remember "dominance" not "better")

R > Excel

Right brain > left ... past some point. I am past a point

Family > spreadsheets

Spreadsheets > an unsupportive (now ex) gf

Income > wealth

Transparency > opacity

On that last point, and this comment is not retirement finance at all but 100% a non-sequitur, I was just talking to my youngest last week about "trust" which has been a big hobby-horse for me over the years. I told her I defined trust through this lens: 1) transparency, 2) consistency over time and 3) good-faith communication. Told her I would hold myself to that and that she could do whatever she wants but that my preference was she try to (continue) to do the same especially as she launches herself out of my home. We have worked together well over the last year because I practice this stuff assiduously. 

I'm sure we can quibble with the list and the various definitions (nah, pass) but maybe a better question is: would you add anything to the list?

RH

Notes --------------------------

[1] I was at the butcher the other day, digging through the freezer (looking for an elk steak) and picked up a frozen thing. Wtf: "ground camel!" Would you? I took a pass.