Archives for September 2011

Lifestyles in military retirement: Empty nester

Author: Doug Nordman Last Updated: June 27, 2018 2 Comments

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There's a persistent rumor among early retirees that you can only achieve the ambitious ER goal if you eliminate all discretionary spending-- including the money "wasted" on raising a family. The reality is that you have to focus your spending on the things that bring you value. (It's your discretion, not society's.) The prime gold standard of … [Read more...] about Lifestyles in military retirement: Empty nester

Book report: Dilemmas of Family Wealth

Author: Doug Nordman Last Updated: June 27, 2018 Leave a Comment

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Judy Martel was a senior editor at BankRate (a partner of Dollar Stretcher). She still blogs about financial news for the site. Her book "The Dilemmas of Family Wealth" was published by Bloomberg over five years ago. However, the stories she tells are timeless and fascinating reading. You would not expect us … [Read more...] about Book report: Dilemmas of Family Wealth

Pricing insurance and investments

Today's (lengthy) post has been inspired by a reader question. Let me try to stop sounding like a USAA fanboy for a few paragraphs and talk about the issues of pricing and service. "Some of my relatives use USAA and the costs on the services they get are cheaper than what we pay. Which USAA services did you find to be higher than … [Read more...] about Pricing insurance and investments

Answers to USAA’s questions

Author: Doug Nordman Last Updated: June 27, 2018 9 Comments

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The last post described USAA's business model and why they favor member services over profits. This post shares their answers to your questions. But first, I've been reminded that all is not necessarily sweetness & light at USAA HQ. After several days of persistent followup I found a scandalous complaint: the parking at their campus is really … [Read more...] about Answers to USAA’s questions

USAA’s underwear secrets

Author: Doug Nordman Last Updated: June 27, 2018 5 Comments

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This week I'm blogging about last week's USAA Blogger Event. I'll talk about the conference & tours and I'll pass on their answers to your questions. I'll also include the blogs of the other attendees. If you want to dig through the old Twitter feed, we used hashtag #USAABE. For those of you whose curiosity can't stand the suspense, the … [Read more...] about USAA’s underwear secrets

Introverts, extroverts, and retirement

A persistent claim about retiring early is that it favors a certain personality type. This rumor started over a decade ago with a survey comparing personality types with financial-management skills. It was an informal query, not a statistically significant study, and the data is self-reported by the (mostly anonymous) participants. The … [Read more...] about Introverts, extroverts, and retirement

More on caring for an elder’s finances

Thanks for all your feedback since my first post on my financial lessons learned from caring for an elderly parent. Frankly, writing about it helps me make sense of the situation. I also appreciate your backup! My Alzheimer's research led me to a number of websites covering all aspects of the syndrome. Unfortunately no single site covers it all, … [Read more...] about More on caring for an elder’s finances