I retired 10 years ago and at that time, in a difficult situation, for a variety of reasons big and small, I made the care of -- and continuity of caregiving for -- my kids my single, unbreakable focus. Now, 10 years later, everyone is a little older and a little closer to being on their way into the world. So, now my thoughts turn to other things, things like maybe an encore career or a hobby or something...you know: golf or glass blowing or maybe canasta. But about that hobby thing I've had several epiphanies. I'll enumerate them thusly:
1. I finally realized that this retirement finance thing that I do, partly instantiated as RiversHedge, for better or worse, is a hobby. At least for now. Sick, right? I really had no idea.
2. No one I know or am related to appears to have any interest in or understanding about "the hobby." None. Zero. Zip. There are perhaps three exceptions to date out in the broader professional world but it appears to me that I see an almost universal indifference about or aversion from (of?) or even hostility towards my ret-fin interest among non-professionals. Really? What's up with that?
3. The aversion or indifference I feel from others towards my ret-fin hobby is, my guess, partly abetted by the woeful state of teaching of personal finance to people at an early age, teaching which should probably start around middle school or even earlier but happens...never. That and "they," the older folks, typically think they already have an answer or the answer...usually "4%" or something. I just have to shake my head.
On "1" what can I say? It's just something that came up. I saw my retirement risk revealed to me one day, like a blinding flash on the road to Damascus or maybe like Krisha revealing himself to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, and I knew I had to figure it out. After that it was a Richard Dreyfus thing like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where he obsessively builds Devils Tower in his basement. One day nothing and the next day "flash" and it's obsessive building of models: simulation or perfect withdrawal rates or ruin risk... The obsession comes from somewhere of course (perhaps not extraterrestrial but who knows) but it still has to be built. Note that this is probably the only time this month where you'll read an allusion to the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita and a Stephen Spielberg sci-fi flick in the same paragraph. Or, at least one can hope.
On 2: I don't get it. I realize that my area of interest, my "hobby," is fairly esoteric and can involve a little complexity. I also realize that Wm Sharpe has called it the hardest thing he's studied and that Thaler has quipped that "For many people, being asked to solve their own retirement savings problems is like being asked to build their own cars." But when anything related to the things I study and model and code and post about here at RH comes over the transom of my actual lips to people I know or care about (e.g., friends, family, significant others), this is what I usually get in return (I'm not sure how exactly to articulate it so we'll propose a list here): misunderstanding, ignorance, amusement, confusion, aversion, hostility, knowingness, derision, indifference, denial, etc etc. That sounds a little dark or harsh I suppose but I'll hazard that it is not totally an exaggeration or a lie either. Not once have I gotten a shred of real interest or curiosity or serious engagement. The three exceptions* I mentioned were "professional" contacts from the blog or related correspondence: David Cantor Pension Risk Director at PwC who appears to have an insatiable desire to learn and converse and who always has something new and complex for me to read; Moshe Milevsky - "celebrity finance star," academic, and author to whom I will always be grateful for a short in-person tutorial on ruin calculus; and Corey Hoffstein CIO of ETF strategist NewFound Research who "gets" the full scope of lifecycle finance way better than I expected that an ETF strategist would. But we have to admit that these folks have a vested career, and one would hope personal, interest in this stuff. Let's call it selection bias. Everyone else? zip. This could explain my low readership numbers, though, and my advertising revenue budget of...well, of zero.
On 3? This is tangential to my real point but why, really, do we not teach personal finance at young ages. I mean the lessons and conclusions are simple enough and powerful: spend less, save more, leverage the power of compounding, know a little about probabilities and distributions, and know the impact for good or ill of volatility. That last is probably an advanced topic and is a multi-edged sword worthy of nuanced CFA or grad-level study but I bet an eighth grader would get the basic points faster than a fifty year old that already assumes they know everything.
* ok, I will confess that my twin sister is an exception but she is required by law to be an exception.
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