YOU MIGHT WANT TO check your mailbox. Mr. Market has been sending around a book of discount coupons on some great index funds and individual stocks. Twenty-two percent off the S&P 500's closing high set earlier this year. Seventeen percent off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. How about a whopping 33% off the Nasdaq Composite? Still kicking yourself for not scooping up Amazon’s stock (symbol: AMZN) in early 2020 when it was—adjusted for the recent stock split—below $100? Well, it’s almost there now. How about some Apple stock (AAPL) at $132, nearly 28% off its 52-week high? Or PayPal (PYPL) below $74, a whopping 76% price cut from a year ago? Yes, it’s sale time in stock-land. We’re officially in a bear market and good stocks and index funds everywhere are selling at a discount, some even at fire-sale prices. We all knew it was coming. After all, markets don’t go in a straight line to Nirvana. We were overdue for a correction. These are the times that try the souls of market timers but make investors’ eyes light up. Who doesn’t love a good sale? When the sellers are running to the exits, long-term investors rush in, looking to put to work that cash they’ve been holding on the sidelines. As they like to say on Wall Street, bear markets are when stocks return to their rightful owners. Maybe you’ve been putting off getting into the market because it felt overbought. Maybe you didn’t buy during past market swoons and didn’t benefit from the sharp recoveries that followed, and you’ve always regretted it. Now is your opportunity. What better time than when stocks are selling at a discount? Oh, but this crash is different, you say. Today, we have out-of-control inflation. We have a war in Ukraine. We have major global supply chain issues. Biggest of all, we don’t have the Federal Reserve throwing near-free money into the markets to stoke demand and job growth. Here’s the thing: Every time the market crashes, it feels different, it feels unique, it feels like the world is coming to an end. Remember how it felt back in 2008 and 2009, when the subprime mortgage market collapsed and people were talking about the prospect of a global financial meltdown? Remember how it felt back in early 2020 when people around the world were locked in their houses, and it seemed like there was no way anyone would ever fly on an airline or take a cruise again? [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] Guess what? The world didn’t melt down 14 years ago. Today, people are rushing to airports and taking cruises again. It’s part of our ancient lizard brain to always look for the worst. Sometimes, the lizard is right and the worst-case happens. Most times, it doesn’t. In between lies opportunity. In every market swoon over the past two decades—the popping of the dot-com bubble in 2000-02, the Great Recession of 2008-09, the pandemic-fueled crash of 2020—I put money to work. The reason I was able to leave the workforce last year and go off to pursue a second-act career is largely because I invested during those past downturns. Sure, it doesn’t feel good to be grabbing the knife of a falling market, not knowing where the floor is. But no risk, no reward. In the words of the great Warren Buffett, be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. Is a 22% discount on the S&P 500 not enough to entice you to buy? So what is the discount where you’re willing to jump in? Twenty-five percent? Thirty? It’s important to know your price. It’s also important to realize that, like an auctioneer, the market might give you your price—or it might not. Will you be kicking yourself if it doesn’t hit your 30% off discount price and takes off again to fresh record highs? Market timing is hard. In fact, it’s impossible. I don’t have a crystal ball and neither does anyone else. But there’s one thing I’d be willing to bet on: The market will see fresh highs again. When? I don’t know. But it will. I know this because I have faith in the markets, in capitalism, in the awe-inspiring ability of companies around the world to innovate and grow. If you don’t have that belief, you probably shouldn’t be in the stock market at all. But if you share my faith, check out those discount coupons in the mail. I’m going through my booklet right now and putting together a shopping list. James Kerr led global communications, public relations and social media for a number of Fortune 500 technology firms before leaving the corporate world to pursue his passion for writing and storytelling. His debut book, “The Long Walk Home: How I Lost My Job as a Corporate Remora Fish and Rediscovered My Life’s Purpose,” was published in 2022 by Blydyn Square Books. Jim blogs at PeaceableMan.com. Follow him on Twitter @JamesBKerr and check out his previous articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

WHEN I STOPPED AT CVS the other day to pick up a new charging cable for my iPhone, I was reminded just how woefully out of fashion I am. The young lady behind the counter handed me a box from the rack and watched as I took the cable out to make sure it was the right one. I guessed her to be in her early 20s. She was wearing a pair of those huge loopy earrings that you could jump hoops through out in the parking lot. When she saw me bring out my phone, she gave a little laugh. “Is that an iPhone 8?” she asked with genuine amazement. I looked at the phone in my hand, then back at her. “Yup,” I replied. “Wow,” she said. “It’s been like years since I saw somebody with an iPhone 8. Why haven’t you upgraded?” By now, I was feeling a little self-conscious. Would she make fun of my reading glasses too? The boring dad haircut that I’d gotten at Hair Cuttery for $25? The clothes that I wear over and over because they’re comfortable and I’m too cheap to buy new ones? But I steeled myself and told her there was no need to upgrade because my phone worked just fine. I was able to do everything I needed to do on my iPhone 8, and it also takes pretty darn good pictures. Plus, it was paid off, and I wasn’t particularly eager to take on a new monthly payment now that I’m semi-retired and living off my savings. “I’ll replace it when it breaks,” I said. “I do that with everything.” It’s true. I like to get my money’s worth from things and tend to hang on to them until they die—phones, cars, old pairs of jeans. It’s a habit I learned from my parsimonious father, who used to hold up the hose at the pump to make sure he got every drop of gas he’d paid for into the tank. I once drove a 10-year-old Ford Escape until it died. The engine, which had 138,000 miles, had been failing for months. I had the pedal to the floor as I drove it to the local dealership to trade it in. The girl at CVS took in my use-it-until-it-breaks philosophy with a vacant stare. “I upgrade every couple of years,” she said. “I just got the iPhone 13 Pro.” With visible excitement, she brought out her phone and held it out proudly for me to look at. I had to admit, it was gorgeous. Even from behind the COVID-safety plexiglass that separated us, the slim piece of aluminum pink technology glittered in the light like a jewel worthy of going around a queen’s neck. My five-year-old black iPhone 8 suddenly felt as elegant as a rock in my hand. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] I found myself wondering how much the latest phone cost, thinking somewhere in the $1,000 range. The upgrade price, of course, would be lower than that, but then you’re locked into a three-year phone plan at the cost of a small monthly mortgage. I was on a basic cut-rate phone plan myself. Forty bucks a month for unlimited talk and text, no contract, no strings attached. Simple, just the way I like it. “It’s amazing,” the girl said, about the phone. “It even has lidar.” Lidar, I asked. What was lidar? She tried to explain it to me—some kind of radar scanning technology that shoots laser beams across the room to create a 3D image—but I wasn’t getting it. “It’s really cool. My friends and I use it to see how tall we are and move objects around the room.” “Move objects around the room?” I asked. “Virtually,” she explained. “In games, you know.” I nodded vacantly. How to explain to her that I’m a hopeless frugalist? “Simplicity” is my rallying cry, taken straight out of the pages of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which I read back in high school and has been my north star ever since. It was Thoreau who taught me the concept of economy not as a measure of societal output and consumption, but rather as something we practice when we keep our needs simple and live below our means. From Thoreau, I also learned that the value of something is more than just the price we pay for it. It’s the cost of the time we put into earning the money to pay for that item—time that we could use doing something else. After Thoreau, it was a natural progression to teachers like Warren Buffett and Jack Bogle, who taught me the importance of investing in low-cost index funds, avoiding fees like the plague and letting the market do the work for me, instead of paying up for people who think they can outsmart a random walk down Wall Street. But I wasn’t sure it would do any good getting into all this with the young lady on the other side of the plexiglass, plus other people were waiting in line. She rang up my charging cable, put it in a bag and I walked away. I was thinking about that iPhone 13 Pro, how beautiful it was, all the things I could do with it. I could measure just how short my girlfriend Rachael is—she is really short. I could move things around the room. Virtually, of course. But then I thought about the monthly payment and my ancient plain-black phone seemed just fine as it was. Rock in my hand, I pushed through the glass doors of the consumeristic madhouse and, like Chief Bromden, out into freedom. James Kerr led global communications, public relations and social media for a number of Fortune 500 technology firms before leaving the corporate world to pursue his passion for writing and storytelling. His book, “The Long Walk Home: How I Lost My Job as a Corporate Remora Fish and Rediscovered My Life’s Purpose,” is forthcoming in early 2022 from Blydyn Square Books. Jim blogs at PeaceableMan.com. Check out his previous articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

RACHAEL AND I WENT to Walmart the other day to stock up on dog food—and came away with a severe case of sticker shock. We feed our two dogs a daily menu of dry food mixed into a delightful mash with a little canned wet food. Our go-to brands are Purina Dog Chow for the dry food and Pedigree Chopped Ground Dinner for the wet food. The cost of the 40-pound bag of Purina dry food has barely budged. The price of the 12-can pack of Pedigree wet food, however, has jumped from about $12 to nearly $20. What’s going on? Doing a little research, I discovered that Pedigree dog food is made by Mars Petcare, a subsidiary of Mars—yes, the same company that makes M&Ms and Twix bars for us humans. I sent a note to the people at Mars Petcare and got the following response back: We're sorry you are disappointed in the increased pricing. Our top priority will always be the happiness of your pet. Increasing our prices will allow us to maintain our standards and quality to ensure that our treats include the ingredients and flavors that your pet loves.   Being a former PR guy, I can appreciate the spin in this nice note, but I’m not buying it. Yes, roaring inflation has made everything more expensive over the past couple of years, and pet food is no exception. But to raise the price of canned dog food by 60% overnight, without an obvious market or supply-chain shock driving the increase—clearly, something beyond ordinary inflationary pressures is at work here. The answer came to me as I scanned the pet food shelves at Walmart. There were literally dozens of brands of bagged dry food to choose from—Purina, Iams, Kibbles ‘n Bits, Blue Buffalo, Nature’s Recipe and more. The choices were much more limited, however, when it came to wet food. We had maybe 10 choices of canned food, and all of them had gone up significantly in price. What’s more, all these wet food choices came from the same two or three suppliers. This, it seems to me, was a classic case of an oligopoly of producers taking advantage of price inelasticity to increase profit margins. Economically speaking, price elasticity measures the sensitivity of demand for a given product to changes in price. An inelastic product is one where demand stays relatively static when its price or other supply factors change. Marketers love situations like this because they can raise prices without suffering a huge fall in sales or profits. Inelastic markets typically occur in situations where consumers don’t have much choice when it comes to adequate substitutes. The market for pet products is one such market. Why? We pet owners are obsessed with our furry companions and are willing to pay up to take good care of them. Many of us are even willing to spend extra on so-called “organic” pet food, even though the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate the labeling of organic foods for pets. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] I’m not one of those pet owners. Until research provides clear evidence of the benefits of pricier “natural” pet foods, I’m happy choosing a “regular” product that has the right mix of protein, fiber and nutrients. The fact is, all the products on the Walmart shelves, whether regular or organic, are highly regulated and use real meat by-products. The difference in prices have a lot to do with the branding of the product and the advertising dollars that go into it. As an educated buyer, I’m willing to switch brands if my favorite product becomes significantly more expensive than another product with a similar mix of quality ingredients. My willingness to switch brands based on price is where I, as a consumer, gain power during inflationary times like these. I can do so through the important economic principle of the substitution effect, defined as the decrease of sales that happens when a product’s price rise causes consumers to switch to a cheaper alternative. Those cheaper alternatives don’t necessarily have to be in the same narrowly defined category. If, for example, a sudden shock in the supply of coffee beans makes ground coffee outrageously expensive, I could drink tea instead. In the case of dog food, I have many competitive choices for dry dog food—which is likely why prices haven’t increased that much. With fewer choices for canned dog food, however, I’m at the mercy of sharp price increases, such as those I’m seeing on Walmart’s shelves. For our household, what are the alternatives as we strive to keep our dogs healthy and happy without breaking our limited budgets? Well, we could cut back on the wet canned food, or eliminate it altogether and stick with dry food only for our dogs. While I suspect my Cassie would be fine with this, Rachael’s fussy Cavachon likely wouldn’t be happy with this option. We could mix gravy in with the dry food to make it more appetizing. Both dogs would love that, and there would be no change in the nutrients they’re getting. Another more radical option: We could cook up the ground venison in our freezer and mix some of that into the dry meal. The venison comes from a buddy who hunts my property up north. We know that venison is grass-fed and free of hormones, and we have plenty of it. We’re still weighing our options as we work through the last of the canned dog food. At times like these, a little creativity goes a long way toward staying on budget and retaining our power as consumers. James Kerr led global communications, public relations and social media for a number of Fortune 500 technology firms before leaving the corporate world to pursue his passion for writing and storytelling. His debut book, “The Long Walk Home: How I Lost My Job as a Corporate Remora Fish and Rediscovered My Life’s Purpose,” was published in 2022 by Blydyn Square Books. Jim blogs at PeaceableMan.com. Follow him on Twitter @JamesBKerr and check out his previous articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

I HAVE A RITUAL ON New Year’s Day—and it has nothing to do with making resolutions or watching college bowl games on TV. Every Jan. 1, I pull up my handy financial planning spreadsheet on my laptop and input year-end numbers for my investment portfolio based on where the various funds closed out the year. I created the spreadsheet 20 years ago when I was in my early 40s, had just gone through a financially devastating divorce, and retirement seemed like nothing more than a pipe dream. At the time, I was working long hours in the all-consuming world of corporate communications and investor relations. I had a magic number for what I thought I’d need to step out of the frying pan no later than age 63. I knew how much I would have to contribute and earn each year to get there. It was just a matter of continuing to chip away, putting the plan on autopilot, and checking in once or twice a year to see how I was doing. The spreadsheet is pretty basic, reflecting my relatively simple portfolio and investment approach. There are three tabs. The first tab looks backward, capturing the year-end value for each of my investment accounts—IRAs, individual stock holdings, money market accounts and so on—as well as the estimated market value of my house, net of mortgage debt. These values then add up to capture a snapshot of my net worth and how it’s grown over the years. The second tab looks forward, projecting the expected growth of my investments in the years ahead using average market returns for a well-diversified portfolio. The third tab contains a working budget for my golden years, based on a conservative spending level of $75,000 per year. The budget itemizes general categories of expenses—housing, utilities, medical, travel and such—as well as sources of income to cover those expenses. The income sources include a conservative 3.5% annual draw on my investable assets (not including real estate), Social Security income (starting at age 66), a small pension that I’m getting from a former employer, and any income I expect from my consulting business. For most of the past 20 years—and particularly during the bull market that began after the 2008-09 market crash—updating this spreadsheet every New Year’s Day has been a happy exercise. With the market delivering close to an average 10% annual return during this period, I’ve consistently been pleasantly surprised to find that I outperformed my projected account values. By year-end 2020, two years earlier than projected, I had surpassed my magic number. The following year, at age 61, I handed in my notice and made the big leap out of the corporate world. It was about this time that I began doing something else with this little spreadsheet of mine. With the market and my investments doing better than my original projections, I began dreaming. I built in scenarios where I could use the surplus funds to splurge on fancy vacations, luxury items for my house—and perhaps even buy a condo in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, or another warm-weather location for snow-birding during the cold winter months. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] Then came 2022 and the worst market for stocks since 2008. Like a lot of other people, I’ve avoided looking at my investment accounts over the past year for fear of just how bad the carnage would be. I couldn’t even hold out hope that the bond side of my portfolio, which represents about 40% of my investments, had held up as bonds typically do during stock market swoons. Everything would be down double-digits. But avoidance is not a strategy and so, on this past New Year’s Day, I logged into my accounts and took a look. As expected, it was ugly. I had lost all the market gains in my portfolio for the past two years. So much for dreaming. Forget the fancy vacations, the luxury items for the house, the condo in Myrtle Beach. But then I reminded myself of why I’d created the spreadsheet in the first place. My goal had never been about getting rich or living an extravagant lifestyle. It was about gaining my financial freedom. As much as I enjoyed my career as a corporate communicator, I had a burning desire to go out on my own as an author and storyteller. To do that, I would need to sacrifice income for independence. I’m doing that now and loving it. Every day, I get to wake up and do what I love—write and tell stories—with no one telling me how to spend my precious time. My plan worked. I’m living the dream. It’s a simple dream I’m living, but it’s my dream, made on my own terms and no one else’s. As long as I don’t change my income or expense assumptions, I should be able to continue to live this dream for as long as I’m healthy. As for the market, there’s no telling what it’ll do. If the bear market continues, I may have to adjust my income assumptions, increase my consulting work or perhaps take Social Security early. That’s the way it works with plans. We make assumptions for an uncertain future and adjust along the way. Who knows? Maybe a new bull market will begin in 2023, my portfolio will roar back and I’ll be able to dream again of that condo in Myrtle Beach. In the meantime, I’m enjoying my independence. James Kerr led global communications, public relations and social media for a number of Fortune 500 technology firms before leaving the corporate world to pursue his passion for writing and storytelling. His debut book, “The Long Walk Home: How I Lost My Job as a Corporate Remora Fish and Rediscovered My Life’s Purpose,” was published in 2022 by Blydyn Square Books. Jim blogs at PeaceableMan.com. Follow him on Twitter @JamesBKerr and check out his previous articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

I'M THE PROUD OWNER of a shiny new, state-of-the-art left hip. My new hip is made of super-strong titanium and cobalt chrome with a ceramic femoral ball. The doctors tell me that with proper care—alas, no more running—it should last me a good 25 years.  The prosthetic was implanted in early June and already this modern medical miracle is changing my life for the better. It’s less than two months since the surgery and all the old arthritic pain that I’ve lived with for so long is gone. I have a range of motion I haven’t had for years. I can bend, I can kneel, I can walk the dog without limping or hurting, I can sit in a lotus position while meditating. Other than some stiffness when I get up from sleeping or sitting, most of the time I forget the new hip is even in there. Amazing, just amazing. Now, all I need to do is pay for it. Including the prosthetic, surgeon’s fees, hospital services, anesthesia, imaging and various other incidentals, the whole elective surgery cost upward of $50,000, according to the explanation of benefits statements I’ve received in the mail. It’s an astronomical amount of money, and all I can say is: thank heaven for medical insurance.  When I made an early exit from the corporate world late last year to pursue a second act as an author, I stayed on my former employer’s insurance plan by opting for COBRA coverage. The premiums aren’t cheap. I pay about $650 a month, but it’s a good plan. Between deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, my total financial responsibility for the hip replacement is about $5,000. It’s not easy for anyone, let alone an early retiree living on savings, to come up with $5,000 for elective surgery. Fortunately, I have other tools in my toolbox to help with these expenses—in the form of two health savings accounts (HSAs) that I carried over from old employers.  While I was working, I purposely overfunded these HSA accounts as part of my “gaining my freedom” strategy. I knew I wanted to step out of the workforce at age 62 so I could do something different while I was still young enough. Given that I wouldn’t be eligible for Medicare until 65, I wanted enough money socked away to pay any out-of-pocket medical expenses I might incur during the intervening three years. After all, life has a way of tossing curveballs our way, especially health issues, so I wanted to be as financially prepared as possible.  [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] Enter the HSAs. The benefit of an HSA, of course, is that it’s built from tax-deductible dollars. The extra money I threw into those accounts each month not only reduced my taxes but also gave me a future buffer of funds that I could spend tax-free on eligible medical expenses. Overall, I was able to put away a total of about $15,000 across the two HSAs. I figured that would allow me to cover an average of $5,000 a year in medical expenses over the three bridge years until I could go on Medicare. With the hip replacement, I will be spending a bit more than $5,000 in this first year of freedom. But at least I know that I’ve maxed out my deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses on my medical plan this year. Any additional medical-related needs through the rest of 2022 will be covered 100% by insurance. I plan to take advantage of that by scheduling a needed routine colonoscopy at the end of this year. On Jan. 1, 2023, the reset button gets pushed and I will be back to square one on deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. With my 18-month COBRA benefit running out in March, I’ll also need to find a new insurance plan next year. I plan to do that during the open enrollment period this fall. With my limited consulting income this year, I hope to qualify for reduced-cost health care coverage through the health care exchange. Either way, I have about $10,000 in remaining HSA funds to cover at least a fair chunk of my medical expenses until I can go on Medicare at the end of 2024. Nothing wreaks greater havoc on a sound retirement plan than unforeseen medical bills. For me, my HSAs are a key part of weathering the storm, and I’m grateful I have them. Now, I’m off to do a hike. James Kerr led global communications, public relations and social media for a number of Fortune 500 technology firms before leaving the corporate world to pursue his passion for writing and storytelling. His debut book, “The Long Walk Home: How I Lost My Job as a Corporate Remora Fish and Rediscovered My Life’s Purpose,” was published in 2022 by Blydyn Square Books. Jim blogs at PeaceableMan.com. Follow him on Twitter @JamesBKerr and check out his previous articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]

I RECENTLY HAD a revelation about my adult children: When it comes to money, they’re a lot like me—and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. I had this revelation while dining with my 25-year-old son at a sports bar over the New Year’s holiday. The food was marginal—it was a sports bar, after all—but the plates came loaded with food. What’s more, the prices were quite reasonable, especially compared to those in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., where Liam spends the bulk of his time these days.  All of this made him quite happy. He has, he told me, three criteria for what constitutes value while eating out. The quantity of food comes first. Second is whether the cost is reasonable. The quality of the cuisine comes last on his list.  In other words, he could get outstanding food, but it would fail his value test if he didn’t get enough of it. His meal would really be a loser, value wise, if that superb-but-stingy dish also cost too much. Now, let it be said that Liam is currently a law student and has no money. It could be that his criteria will change when he’s a bigshot lawyer earning lots of money, and can afford the best chefs and restaurants in the land. But I doubt financial success will change his mindset. Why? Because he’s my son, and his frugal, value-based way of looking at money happens to come from me. I’ve always been conservative about finances. It’s something I learned early on from my thrifty parents, who never made much money but were somehow able to make ends meet for a hungry family of eight.  Through my folks, I learned the importance of working hard, living simply and below your means, paying the bills on time, being exceedingly careful about debt, and socking away every dollar you can for a time when you might need it. While these time-honored principles will never land me on a list of the world’s richest people, I have been able to achieve a modicum of financial independence here in my early 60s. All that’s good, I think. And I’m happy to say that my financial conservatism has been passed onto my three adult sons, who are quite responsible with their finances.  But there’s a point where frugality and penny-pinching become excessive, and I fear I’ve spent too many years of my adult life in that realm. It’s the part of me that has hesitated to take a fancy vacation because it will set me back $5,000. Or passing on a chance to have a prime rib dinner at a three-star Michelin restaurant and opting instead for a BYOB hole-in-the-wall because it will save me a hundred bucks. I know where our familial tendency toward excessive thriftiness comes from. Parsimony is in our blood, passed down over the generations through the Scottish lineage on my father’s side. We Kerrs do not like spending money, and we hate wasting it even more. Maximizing the value we get from our hard-earned dollars is all-important to a Scot, a mission to which we devote every ounce of our analytical minds. [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] I saw this with my father, who was forever bargaining with people while making purchases, as if all the world was an auction and he the sole bidder. He threw nothing away, no matter how old and obsolete it was, on the remote chance it could come in handy in the future. He was determined to squeeze every ounce of value from the things he paid for. I remember sitting in the car as he pumped gas and seeing him lift the hose at the end to get every last drop into the tank.  I don’t go that far with my gas, and I’m also not a hoarder, preferring to keep my surroundings simple and free of clutter. Still, now that I’m older, I realize that for too many years I’ve focused too much on shaving costs and saving money over seeking experiences.  I mean, what good is money if we don’t spend it on all the wonderful things this world has to offer? Life is short and a slavish pursuit of value can turn a pleasant walk down Easy Street into a bleak stop at the dollar store. Alas, I’m seeing some of these same tendencies with my kids. I once witnessed another of my sons calculate the per-square-inch cost of various pizza options on the menu to figure out which offered the best value for money spent. I remember thinking at the time, “At what point does seeking value move from common sense to madness?” Like Scrooge after his nighttime visits by the ghosts, I’m determined to change my ways in whatever years I have left. I have a long "challenge list” filled with both fun experiences and educational activities, and I’ve committed to pulling out my wallet to make those things come true. In March, for instance, I’m splurging on a two-bedroom beachfront condo in St. Pete Beach for Rachael and the kids, even though March is spring break time in Florida and ghastly expensive. I’m also determined to use whatever resources I have to make a difference in the world through volunteer activities and charitable giving. I’ve joined the local Rotary Club and have dedicated to giving author proceeds from my recently published book to charity. Hopefully, all of this will set a different example for my children and maybe even break the familial chain of Kerr parsimoniousness. It seems a father’s work is never done—even after the kids have flown the nest. James Kerr led global communications, public relations and social media for a number of Fortune 500 technology firms before leaving the corporate world to pursue his passion for writing and storytelling. His debut book, “The Long Walk Home: How I Lost My Job as a Corporate Remora Fish and Rediscovered My Life’s Purpose,” was published in 2022 by Blydyn Square Books. Jim blogs at PeaceableMan.com. Follow him on Twitter @JamesBKerr and check out his previous articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]