It Also Has Wheels
Larry Sayler | Apr 15, 2023
WE'VE OWNED OUR NEW 2023 Toyota Highlander Hybrid for six weeks. The technology and features are breath-taking. Until now, both of our vehicles were 18 years old. I feel like Rip Van Winkle, waking up in a time I do not recognize. Here are some of the bells and whistles on our new SUV, and my evaluation of their usefulness. Please forgive me if some of this information isn’t accurate; I’m still learning about these features. Automatic parking brake engagement and automatic headlight dimming. Every time we put the vehicle in park, it automatically activates the parking brake. At night, the headlights automatically dim if there’s oncoming traffic or if we’re following another vehicle. Both of these are useful but unnecessary. I know how to set the parking brake; I know how to dim the lights. Blind spot monitor. This is one feature I really like. A yellow icon appears on our outside left or right mirror if there’s a vehicle in our blind spot on that side. When passing another vehicle, it confirms that I have gone far enough around the other vehicle to pull safely back to the right lane. Cross-traffic alert. When I’m backing out of a driveway or out of a parking spot, there is both a visual and audible alarm if a vehicle or person is approaching. Nice, but not necessary. Driving position memory. This feature automatically adjusts the driver’s seat and outside rearview mirrors to suit your preferences. Because of the chip shortage, we were given only one key. A second key will be sent to us at some indefinite future time. When my wife and I each have our own key, the driver’s seat and outside rearview mirrors will automatically go to the positions last used by the driver with that key. This…
Read more » Lost in Translation
Larry Sayler | May 4, 2023
IN THE 1980s, I SPENT nearly 12 weeks in an Australian hospital. I learned that language is not always universal. I was a corporate auditor for General Electric, and the company had sent me to Australia for a three-month assignment. To Yankee ears, Australians have an accent. But at least we speak the same language. Or so I thought. Within a week of getting to Australia, I was diagnosed with subacute bacterial endocarditis (SBE), a serious bacterial infection of the blood. I was born with a slight heart defect which makes me more susceptible to SBE. Prior to about 1955, it was universally fatal. I don’t blame the Aussies for my infection. I’m pretty sure I contracted it before going to Australia. The general practitioner said I needed to go to a hospital and be hooked up to intravenous penicillin 24/7. I could go to a private hospital, which would be more like a U.S. hospital, or to a hospital for veterans. I asked which had the best equipment and doctors. He said the veterans’ hospital, so I went to Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney. I had never been in the military. I have no idea why I was allowed to be treated at an Australian veterans’ hospital. Nurses are not nurses. There were no private or even semi-private rooms in the hospital. I was in a ward with 24 beds. Nurses would walk up and down between the rows. If we needed something, it was not unusual to call out for the nurse. I heard other patients call out “nurse” or “sister.” Thinking “sister” was somewhat derogatory, I always said “nurse.” One day, the head “nurse” confronted me. She asked why I called her a nurse; she was a sister. I learned that, in Australia, “nurse” refers to…
Read more » Fries With That?
Larry Sayler | May 7, 2022
MY MCDONALD’S INDEX is the way I keep track of long-term inflation. I worked at McDonald’s in 1971 and 1972, while in high school. The menu was much simpler back then: hamburger, cheeseburger, Big Mac, fish sandwich, small and large fries, coffee, small and large soda, and shakes—one size only. We didn't have Quarter Pounders, chicken sandwiches, salads, lattes, mochas, frappes, smoothies, sundaes, McFlurries, super-sized drinks, meal combinations or Happy Meals. The food was not made fresh. Sandwiches were available in warming bins. Customers gave us their orders. Our job was to grab their food and drinks as quickly as possible. Back then, our cash registers didn’t determine how much customers owed. We totaled it in our head, mentally added tax, and told the customer the amount due. We entered the total in the cash register, took their money and, without the help of a machine, calculated their change. I still remember the prices of almost every item on the entire menu. I’ve developed two McDonald's indexes. The first is my Big Mac index. Back then, a Big Mac was 57 cents. Today, I paid $4.73 for a Big Mac at my local McDonald’s. Over 50 years, the cost of a Big Mac has increased just over eightfold. My second McDonald’s index is a bit more complicated. Back then, McDonald’s had an advertising slogan— “two hamburgers, fries, and a Coke . . . and change back from your dollar.” It was true. Hamburgers then were 20 cents, small fries were 20 cents, and a small soda was 15 cents. Two hamburgers, fries and a soda came to 75 cents. Add three cents in tax for a total of 78 cents. If you paid with a dollar bill, we gave you 22 cents in change. Today, at my local McDonald’s, two…
Read more » Motivated by Money
Larry Sayler | Nov 10, 2022
"WE BEHAVE BETTER when we know others are watching—so be sure to tell friends if you’re aiming to exercise more, lose weight or save more." I love the pithy sayings that appear each day at the top of HumbleDollar’s homepage. This statement appeared Oct. 19. A few years ago, when I was still working fulltime, some colleagues and I adopted this philosophy. Suppose one of us had a goal, such as losing five pounds by the end of the month. We could have simply told our coworkers the goal. But being type-A personalities, we took it to an extreme. We decided it was more effective if we backed our intentions with money. “If I don’t lose five pounds by the end of the month, I’ll give you $20.” None of us really wanted to take a colleague’s money, so we soon changed this to, “If I don’t reach my goal, I’ll give $20 to a charity of your choice.” This led to some interesting discussions. If we were of the same political party, had the same views on abortion or shared the same religion, the penalty for not meeting the goal was to give a contribution to an organization we both supported. That wasn’t much of a penalty. Someone pointed out it would be more motivating if the loser had to make a financial contribution to an organization with which he or she disagreed. If we were a staunch member of one political party and we lost our bet, we had to give $100 to the other major party. Now, that was motivating. Maybe we were exceedingly cheap, but the person always met his or her goal. I don’t recall anyone ever paying a penalty. Of course, we were on the honor system. The person making the contract simply self-reported…
Read more » Our Exit Strategy
Larry Sayler | Jul 18, 2023
IT'S CHALLENGING TO GO from saving during our working years to spending in retirement. Our solution: Use a modified version of the 4% rule. Financial planner William Bengen was the first person to articulate the 4% rule. He wanted to know how much people could withdraw from their investments each year and still not run out of money. Through extensive back-testing, he found that if folks withdrew 4% in the first year, and thereafter increased this amount each year for inflation, in almost all cases they wouldn’t run out of money over a 30-year retirement. With Bengen’s 4% rule, the amount withdrawn is driven only by the initial portfolio value and subsequent inflation. History suggests this approach should be okay despite sequence-of-return risk—the danger that the financial markets perform poorly during the years immediately after a person retires. Still, folks who retire and keep taking out an inflation-adjusted 4% do run some risk of running out of money. I believe it’s reasonable to increase spending when the markets are doing well, while also cutting back when markets perform poorly. Bengen’s model doesn’t incorporate this. Vanguard Group developed a withdrawal method which does. I have read its guide several times and, I must confess, I still don’t understand it. What to do? For my wife and me, I had three criteria for our retirement withdrawal strategy. First, it should be simple, something I can use when I’m 90 years old. Second, the approach should be responsive to market returns. Finally, it should be financially conservative, meaning there’s reasonable certainty we won’t run out of money before we die. A withdrawal each year that’s simply 4% of the prior year-end balance—without the inflation adjustment in Bengen’s approach—meets these three objectives. With such a plan, a person would never run out of money.…
Read more » Super Old
Larry Sayler | May 26, 2022
FINANCIAL ADVISORS used to suggest a 20-year planning horizon for retirement. Now, most advisors say to plan for a 30-year retirement. From my own experience, I believe 40 years should be the norm, and 50 years isn’t unreasonable. If we plan for the longest possible life expectancy, we’ll almost always die with money left over. That’s far better than the alternative—living longer than planned and running out of money. People who live to 100 are called centenarians. The term supercentenarian describes those who are at least 110. While not common, supercentenarians are becoming less rare. My grandmother, Hazel Blecha, passed away a month before reaching age 112. She was born in November 1894 and passed away in October 2006, so she lived in three centuries—the 19th, 20th and 21st. The Gerontology Research Group used to keep a list of verified supercentenarians. Unfortunately, its list is no longer updated regularly. When my grandmother turned 109, we contacted the site and asked if we should start the verification process. We were told to wait. Most people who reach 109 don’t make it to 110. Nonetheless, we started the verification process a few months before she turned 110. The group wanted documentation of her birth date, her change of name when she married and her current identity. The county where she was born didn’t have birth records going back to the 1800s. Her father, however, published the local newspaper. When she was born, he made sure there was a birth announcement in the paper. We also had her marriage certificate to verify her name change and her passport to verify her current identity. The Gerontology Research Group checks this data carefully because some older people exaggerate their age. This is nothing new. Englishman Tom Parr died in 1635, reportedly at the age of…
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