Quick Hits: Positivity | Retirement Spending | If

August 12, 2022

Maybe it’s the second half of the year and everyone is done with the negativity…

Maybe it’s because it’s an election year…

BUT things seem to be looking a lot better according to the media:

CDC is now labeling un-vaccinated and vaccinated as equal Removing all quarantine and exposure rules/recommendations. Does this mark the end of the pandemic?
S&P 500 is finishing up a 4^th week in a row of positive gains
We’ve had 1 “good” inflation report – 8.5% is still at the largest increase in 40 years…

Also, other big headline news:

Former president trump’s house was raided by the FBI – still waiting on warrant report.
IRS is looking to hire 87,000 new agents with $79 Billion dollars over the next decade.

All things considered; things “feel” more positive lately!

As far as marketing goes, retirees are still showing up at live events and we are still seeing high RSVP rates!

Let’s keep the foot on the gas!

Here are your Quick Hits:

Great read to share on how your spending changes in retirement
“Specifically, most such research assumes that your amount of annual spending is something over which you have complete control. But anybody who spends even a few moments thinking about it realizes that that’s just not the reality.”

“there are a lot of unhappy people in the housing market right now. Among the most miserable are sellers realizing they have listed their properties too late.”
“The days of bidding wars and homes selling for tens of thousands of dollars over asking are over,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.

Fossil fuel plants are closing faster than green alternatives can replace them. Producers of oil and gas can’t keep up with a surge in demand. How did this happen, and what will it take to fix it?
“Federal decisions made over the last three decades to encourage competition, lower costs for consumers, sell oil and gas to foreign buyers and encourage the development of more renewable sources are having unintended consequences now that the energy market is in turmoil.”

From the archives:

I read Thoreau’s quote the other day and it lead me down a rabbit hole of what “quiet Desperation” really means, and I thought this article does a great job of defining it.
“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,—that is your success.” – Thoreau
“The greatest of these lessons is to learn the art of raising the little into the large. That doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on big, outwardly-facing goals, or a love for far-ranging travel, or full-time employment in order to be content with a very quiet, leisure-filled existence out in nature and close to home. But it does mean learning to be satisfied with that which is “wild and free,” so that anything beyond the simple essentials of life can be pursued out of autonomous choice, rather than compulsive craving.”

Read this poem this week and had to share it – for those of us who last read it in high school!
- “If you can keep your head when all about you
- Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, “
- “ If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
- And treat those two impostors just the same; “

Posted in Quick Hits