Rich Is Relative
Dennis Friedman | Oct 18, 2021
THE OTHER DAY, I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. I checked Zillow to see the current estimated value for the condo I sold last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. I knew real estate prices had gone up quite a bit since I sold in June 2020. But when I looked at Zillow’s price, I was still surprised to see my old home had risen 19% during that short period of time. It’s hard to imagine, even in California, that a 789-square-foot one bedroom, one bathroom condo built in 1968 can have an estimated value of $453,500. Do I have seller's remorse? No. I was glad to get rid of it and start a new life somewhere else. That said, my new home does feel different. I don’t feel as rich as I did living in my old condo. Where I used to live, a lot of my neighbors were first-time buyers and renters. You didn’t have the sense people were flush with money. It made me feel wealthier as a retiree who’d done well saving and investing over many years. Where I live now, homes, restaurants and even car washes are more expensive. Most of my neighbors are at an age where they’re entering—or are in—their peak earning years. Even though the value of my investment portfolio hasn’t changed much, I feel poorer. I don’t feel I’m doing as well as I did in my old neighborhood. For most people, rich is a relative term. How rich you feel isn’t solely based on the size of your portfolio or how much you make. It has a lot to do with who you associate with and where you live. You also don’t have to move to a different state or country to feel richer or poorer. I only had…
Read more » Sharing the Journey
Dennis Friedman | Jun 9, 2023
MY WIFE IS OUT OF town for a while, so I have a lot of free time on my hands. I asked Carl, an old schoolmate, if he’d like to have lunch. I thought it would be a chance to give Carl a couple of copies of the HumbleDollar book, My Money Journey. I didn’t think Carl would actually read the essay I wrote, let alone the whole book. Carl is like most of my friends; they're not interested in reading about money. But he knows lots of folks, and I thought he might find someone who’d like to read about how 30 people found financial freedom. Meanwhile, my wife left for six weeks to visit her mother. She’s giving her brother a much-needed break from taking care of their mother. I wasn’t able to accompany Rachel on this trip for various reasons. Her mother is going to be 99. She’s still mobile and coherent. I hope Rachel has her mother’s good genes. I told Rachel to take the opportunity to ask her mother lots of questions. She asked, “What kind of questions?” The kind of questions I wish I’d asked my mother: Who is the elderly man in the painting that hung outside her bedroom, and who painted his portrait? Where did she get the Chinese vase with the Chinese writing on the bottom? Where did she buy the cornmeal for her cornbread? I was so involved in my mother’s finances, health care and daily activities, and yet I wish I’d taken the time to ask her more questions about the smaller details of her life. Those types of questions may not seem important at the time, but they somehow become more meaningful when the person who has all the answers is gone. For now, I’m a bachelor for…
Read more » Can’t Go On
Dennis Friedman | Oct 1, 2021
WHEN I WAS IN HIGH school, I had a summer job at a machine shop. My job was to deburr large cutting tools known as end mills. I would take a penny and run it over the cutting edge of the tool to smooth it out. Once I finished my job, the tools were sent to another facility for the next operation. There was a young man in his 20s named Max whose job was to load these heavy boxes of tools onto a truck and transport them to the other facility, where he would unload them. He would do this all day long until one day he never came back from lunch. I was excited to get Max’s job because I’d just got my driver’s license and I got to drive a truck for the first time. It didn’t take long for reality to set in. I got my first taste of what hard manual labor was like. I spent the rest of the summer soaking my aching body in a warm bath after work. I was lucky to spend most of my adult life working behind a desk. Not everyone gets to do that. More than 10% of all workers nationally hold physically demanding jobs. In 2002, 29% of workers ages 55 to 60 said they experienced chronic pain in their jobs. There have been discussions in Congress about how to keep Social Security solvent, including raising the full retirement age to 70. This doesn’t seem fair to laborers who do hard work. Their declining bodies makes it difficult to work longer. In addition, they usually start working relatively young and hence spend more years paying into Social Security. I admit I don’t have a solution to this conundrum—one that would be fair to all workers. But I…
Read more » When You Can’t Take Care of Yourself
Dennis Friedman | Mar 19, 2025
I don’t believe I’ve ever enjoyed life more than I do now. What is there not to like about my life? I have my health, financial stability, plenty of free time to do the things I want, and I have a companion to share my journey with. I wish this stage of my life was never-ending. But at age 73, I know my life could be turned upside down tomorrow. Lately, I’ve been thinking about what Rachel and I should do if we can’t take care of ourselves. Although I’m six years older than her, there is a chance she could need a caregiver before me. Women tend to have fewer years of good health to live than men. According to a Washington Post article, “Women are more physically frail than men in old age.” We, like many folks, want to remain in our house until the very end. But I know that might not be possible, especially if it’s only one of us left behind. It can be expensive to hire a caregiver, and you can run the risk of running out of money. In California, where we live, the median hourly rate is $38.19. Also you might not get the quality care that you need. As an alternative, we have been looking into a continuing care retirement community, or CCRC. Enrolling in one might be the biggest financial commitment of our lifetime. Here is what we learned, along with some of our preferences. CCRCs can be either not-for-profit or for-profit. We believe a not-for-profit CCRC would better serve our interests than one that has to answer to investors or shareholders. We would also try to avoid a CCRC that is part of a consortium because we wouldn’t want someone from far away making important decisions concerning our community.…
Read more » What’s Really On My Mind
Dennis Friedman | Dec 3, 2025
MY RETIREMENT HAS been wonderful so far. Honestly, sometimes I have to stop and remind myself how lucky I am. Rachel and I have our health and enjoy each other's company, which is not always true when a couple retires. However, there are four things that concern me as I reach my mid-70s. Loneliness I tried calling Mark, my old high school friend, a couple of weeks ago, and I haven’t heard from him. I tried again and got a message that his mailbox was full. I texted him asking him to call me when he had time. This isn’t like him. I’m beginning to think there’s something wrong. He has health issues, and when you’re my age, you think the worst. I can’t keep track of all the people who were a part of my life who have passed away since I retired. Some of them I was extremely close to and will be terribly missed. I never thought that when I retired, I would be more concerned about running out of friends than running out of money. If I ever lost Rachel, and I keep losing friends, I think I’d need to move into a retirement community just to have more people around me. The silence would be too much. Stock Market Lately, it feels like the economy has been built for people like me — retirees who already own their homes and have money in the stock market. I never expected our net worth would jump this much these past couple of years. The rise in real estate prices and the AI-fueled market boom have nudged Rachel and me into spending more freely. We eat out more than we used to — not fancy places. We even booked business-class seats on our last trip, something I never…
Read more » Retirement Begins Long Before You Retire
Dennis Friedman | Sep 15, 2025
Including my time delivering newspapers, I’ve had a total of ten different employers in my life. Some jobs were more memorable than others. One of my early roles was at a company that created merchandise catalogs for department stores. I was twenty—shy, insecure, and working part-time while attending college. I mostly did the tasks no one else wanted: vacuuming, taking out the trash, cleaning the bathrooms. Yet, two women at that company saw potential in me that I couldn’t yet see in myself. One was Leni, the owner. She encouraged me to switch my major from history to business and promised that if I earned a business degree, she would make me her right-hand person. The other was Jodi, my age, who worked on staging photo shoots—and sometimes modeled herself. Fred from shipping insisted she liked me, but I never had the courage to find out. I never took Leni up on her offer. Perhaps it was because her son, who also worked there, didn’t like me. Or maybe I simply didn’t believe in myself. As for Jodi, I never asked her out. I couldn’t imagine someone like her being interested in a guy who cleaned toilets and had no plan for his life. My shyness held me back, too. These days, I’m no longer that shy, self-doubting kid. I tend to speak my mind—which brings me to retirement. Looking back, I realize that the habits I struggled with in my early jobs—self-doubt, hesitation, and risk avoidance—can have real consequences later in life, especially as we approach retirement. Some of what I’m about to say might be uncomfortable, but it’s important. Here are three ways people sabotage their own retirement: 1. Neglecting our health On a seven-hour flight to Amsterdam, the man next to me drank two regular Cokes, a…
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