This past weekend, I celebrated another birthday. I turned 57, which is not old enough to qualify for Social Security, but still is old enough to say “may I have the senior discount, please?” at the movie theater. Anyway, at my age, a birthday is a good time to pause for a moment and reflect about the past, take stock of the present, and look forward to the future. I’ve made my share of life mistakes, but I’ve never had…
I have some friends who recently became grandparents, and they have been proudly showing my wife and I pictures of their new grandson (who, truth be told, is a cute little fart). As I look at the pictures, I can’t help but reflect on my own kids, and the job my wife and I have done as parents. We raised our girls to be smart, independent young women, and now that they are both young adults, they are out in…
The month of May brings about many things. May flowers, the Kentucky Derby, Cinco de Mayo, and this year, even a royal coronation, but it is also the month for most high school and college graduations. All over the country, young men and women will be dressing in gowns and mortar boards, shaking hands with academic elite as they walk across stages, and awkwardly hugging that uncle or aunt they see once a year (and who is totally embarrassing them…
As my daughters are quickly learning and often quoting to me these days, “adulting” is hard. There are so many interactions to navigate, so many decisions to be made, and so many moving parts of to an adult life. There’s transportation, work, paying bills, obtaining housing, shopping for groceries, relationships, preparing meals, washing clothes – the list goes on and on. While my daughters think that an old hand like myself makes these daily, weekly, and monthly tasks look easy,…
Retirement. It is the dream we’ll never catch, right? It’s hard not to read an article about how working adults don’t save enough for their retirement, how much longer they’ll have to work (if they can stop at all), the “gloom and doom” forecast of Social Security and Medicare, or the staggering amounts of accumulated assets pundits say you’ll need to survive (which are grossly inaccurate, by the way). You get the idea. All my life, I’ve tried to prepare…
My brother recently turned me onto a podcast where they interviewed an author by the name of Bill Perkins, who was sharing ideas from his latest book ‘Die with Zero’. To summarize, the author theorizes that in order to get the maximum fulfillment out of life, we need to prioritize and allocate our lives based upon three different buckets: time, money, and health. Building off of the inevitability that our time on Earth is finite – his gauge is approximately…
Another major milestone in the Snyder household this week. My oldest daughter just turned twenty-one years old. I know – it’s hard to believe – and a little shocking to say. Not to wax nostalgic, but it really doesn’t seem like all that long ago when the hospital in Florida let us go home with her – a tiny infant that would totally rely on us for her future existence. My wife and I looked at each other with fear…
Once all of the Christmas stuff starts coming down in January, it always seems like a good idea to start taking a good look at the house and “de-cluttering” it a bit. It’s an overwhelming task. It’s best to start in one room and just start looking at everything in it. I’ll start with that “junk drawer” in the kitchen? Have you ever taken a good look in there? Yeeessshhhh. I doubt if I need that dentist appointment reminder card…
Ahhhh, the happy dreams of a young (or older) couple that decides to have children. At first – as infants – they require round-the-clock care. Mom and Dad look forward to the day when diapers and formula will no longer need to be purchased (it’s like getting a raise to one’s weekly paycheck each time one of these necessities is eliminated from the weekly grocery bill). Someday, this wiggling, crying human will sleep through the night. What a day that…
My youngest daughter is experiencing a whole lot of “firsts” in her life this week. She’s on fall break from her college, and she decided to fly down to see her grandmother, extended family, and a few friends in Florida. So naturally, there was some planning to do. Some “adult” things to take care of – as with any journey – but in the past these things were always handled by myself or her mother. This time, she is the…