My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on December 20, 2022

By CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Since I’m a tail-end baby boomer, at least according to the charts, the thought of “did I plan properly for retirement” regularly crosses my mind. Having lived through the last couple of decades of economic ups and downs without significant inflation  …beyond the normal and desirable 2-3% per year (except for education and health care), it does make these last couple of years of inflation rising a little more concerning.

• How long will it continue?
• Is it going to go even higher than 7-8%?
• Will savings and investments keep up?
• Do we need to cut back on expenses and lifestyle before it is too late?

Now if you say “oh don’t worry about it,” well then you might want to read “These are the top 10 mistakes people make when planning for retirement” from Market Watch earlier this month which was republished in BarronsOnline. Number 1 on this top ten list is inflation.

These are the top 10 mistakes people make when planning for retirement — See what you’re doing wrong and what you need to change.

We all make mistakes in planning for our golden years. But which are the worst, which are the most common, and which ones do we all need to watch out for?

Financial planners have weighed in with the top 10 they see among clients. It’s emerged in a survey conducted by money managers Natixis and just released. And it’s a terrific checklist for anyone who wants to see how they’re doing, and what they need to change.

The top 10:

1. Underestimating the impact of inflation (cited by 49% of advisers). This surely needs no explanation—least of all this year. The S&P 500 SPX, -0.90% is down 17.5% so far in 2022, but in real purchasing power terms the figure is much more brutal, at 22%. We cannot eat “nominal” returns, meaning returns before counting inflation. Yet we still talk about these things in nominal rather than “real” terms, which means after inflation. If inflation averages, say, 3% a year, over 25 years the purchasing power of a dollar falls by 50%. Ouch.

2. Underestimating how long you will live (46%). Cue “longevity risk.” Sure your savings can last 10 or 15 years. But what about 30?

LINK to full Marketwatch article

Category: Financial | No Comments »
Tags: baby boomers, barrons, Financial, generations, inflation, marketwatch, mistakes, planning, retirement

Posted By RichC on December 19, 2022

On Saturday I mentioned a cold front arriving before next weekend and possibly having a white Christmas … and therefore couldn’t help but think of Bing Crosby singing Irving Berlin‘s “White Christmas.” It is not a song from my generation, but I definitely remember my parents playing it when I was a boy. It is most definitely a classic for Music Monday.

Category: Memories, Music, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: bing crosby, irving berlin, music monday, musicmonday, white christmas

Posted By RichC on December 18, 2022

It took a little research, but the thought of the 10th President of the United States still having a living grandson alive today seemed … well, unbelievable. Mentally, I worked the numbers … and then had to do a little Internet sleuthing … but low and behold it was true.

President John Tyler was born in 1790 and was president of the United States from 1841 to 1845. If you recall American history, you might remember the slogan “Tippecanoe and TylerToo” during 1840 when he was the running mate of William Henry Harrison.

Anyway back to the family tree: With John Tyler’s first wife Letitia, who was the same age, he had eight children. She died during his presidency in 1842. Then in 1844, he remarried a woman who was 30 years younger, Julia Gardiner. With Julia, he had seven more children (the most offspring of any U.S. president). One son was Lyon Gardiner Tyler born in 1853. Lyon, like his father, remarried a younger second wife, after the death of his first wife Anne in 1921, with whom he had three children. His second wife Sue, was 35 years Lyon’s junior, and had three additional children. One son, Harrison Ruffin Tyler who was born in 1928, is therefor the grandson of President John Tyler and is still living as of 2022 and is 94 years old. An amazing bit of human interest of history.

Category: History, Human Interest, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: america, harrison ruffin tyler, History, john tyler, lyon tyler, presidents, tenth, united states

Posted By RichC on December 17, 2022

We have had a relatively mild, although gloomy, couple of weeks this December 2022 so far … unlike it was in 2010. BUT … this could change by the end of next week as the forecast is for a winter snowstorm to hit much of the eastern half of the U.S. According to forecasting yesterday, a cold front will be colliding with a lot of moisture coming up from the Gulf of Mexico … which means snow. Better get out your boots, warm coat and hat out if you are planning to go outside or travel. It could be a White Christmas.

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Category: Holiday, Personal, Photos, Travel, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: christmas, forecast, foxweather, snowstorm, storm, travelers, tree, white christmas

Posted By RichC on December 16, 2022

What “should” a person do when an older piece of tech stops working?

Give up? Buy new?

Well we have an older first generation Amazon Echo Dot continued to be unreliable in maintaining a WiFi connection to our mesh home network. After several restarts over the last couple of months, full reboots and re-setups, I’ve given up. Partially because voice assistants have improved and are all that not that expensive anymore (Amazon, Apple and Google all want customers married into their ecosystems). In our case, I had a spare unused Echo Dot that replaced the one in the iAV2B alarm clock and so curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to see what exactly was inside.

Category: Alexa, Gadget, Technology, Video | No Comments »
Tags: Alexa, amazon, ani gif, anigif, apple, echo dot, google, mp4, teardown, voice assistant

Posted By RichC on December 15, 2022

First up, is a rainy photo of the second car that I rebuilt … but this 1974 Capri was really my first car since I bought it with my own money (paid $600 at a junkyard in 1978). The car I think of as my first car would be a 1967 Ford Custom 500 (link to when it was newer and towing a trailer) was really my mom’s car that I learned to drive on. It eventually required rust repair, repainting and the engine rebuilt when I was in high school (great lessons with some extra help from my dad and neighbor). The Capri required a bit more (cough, cough)  body work since Dallas and I replaced a front quarter clip (photo left).

The other couple of photos: 1) Was sailing (racing Thistles) on Kiser Lake just east of Sidney, Ohio and 2) my long time college buddy and good friend to this day Jeff Pitts when he was volunteering as an EMT in Ada, Ohio (looking out of our 2nd floor Founder’s Hall dorm window).

Great memories and am glad to be able to archive these photos before they are gone!

Category: Archive, Automotive, Friends, Memories, Personal, Photography, Photos, Sailing, TBT | No Comments »
Tags: 1974, ada, archive, capri, ford custom 500, founders hall, jeffp, kiser lake, mercury, ohio, old photos, onu, rebuild, sailboat, sidney, TBT, thistle

Posted By RichC on December 14, 2022

As is my December tradition, I’m including a digital copy of what once was our Corbett Christmas Letter but is now a just a “card” on my blog. Our year as a family was full of too many great times to include, but highlighted by a special event: a 40th Anniversary and trip planned by our family to the Canadian Rockies (part 1 and part 2). Our year was also intermixed with family gatherings for holidays and birthdays, babysitting in Perrysburg and several trips to Florida. Our grown children had a few house-highlights of their own, as Katelyn and Drew started their homebuilding project and Taylor bought a nicely remodeled condominium in Walnut Hills/Cincinnati.

Like the short, but sweet (Idiom) update on the card, I’ll close with Merry Christmas wishes to all who read my blog and for peace, hope, joy and love as we welcome in a new year.

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Category: Archive, Holiday, Idioms, Memories, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: 2022, christmas, christmas card, Corbett Christmas Letter, family, homebuilding, house, oostra, postcard

Posted By RichC on December 13, 2022

My daughter is great at sending links to items she thinks would be great for the blog. The other day Katelyn sent an “Ohio Turnpike Name-A-Snowplow Contest” story that had some pretty creative names — well actually, like her mom, she had her husband send it 😀 (BTW, Happy Birthday Drew!). 

Here are the winners:

• Ctrl-Salt-Delete, Nicole G.
• Blizzard Wizard, Jacqueline F.
• Plow Chicka Plow Wow, Joshua K.
• You’re Killin’ Me Squalls, Linda V.
• The Big LePlowski, Matthew S.
• The Blizzard of Oz, Annette B.
• Ohio Thaw Enforcement, Jonathan H.
• Clearopathtra, Samantha S.

LINK to full story

Category: Misc, Personal, Tidbits, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: birthday, contest, creative, drew, katelyn, ohio, snowplow, turnpike, winter

Posted By RichC on December 12, 2022

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Category: Music, Obituary, Video | No Comments »
Tags: chicken shack, christine mcvie, christine perfect, fleetwood mac, mp3, music monday, musicmonday, rob sheffield, rolling stone, youtube

Posted By RichC on December 11, 2022

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Category: Archive, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, backyard, bid bed, blue spruce, chalk paint, christmas tree, drew, ellerie, family, homebuilding, katelyn, santa