Dudley Barksdale liked problems. Not actual problems. Actual problems were terrible: broken furnaces, sick parents, water appearing where water had no business appearing, or the glowing check-engine light on a car three days before a road trip. Dudley preferred problems that could be researched, analyzed and eventually organized into something unnecessarily comprehensive. Give Dudley uncertainty and he would ask questions. Give him enough questions and eventually a spreadshee

“Well…not yet.” That was what Dudley eventually said. He meant something very specific: I have not looked carefully enough at the numbers to give you a responsible answer. Betty heard: No. Marriage contains a surprising number of these translation problems. One spouse transmits a sentence. The other receives an entirely different message. Both are technically discussing the same conversation. Betty did not argue. She simply nodded. Dudley recognized the nod. It was not an ang

Dudley wanted to retire. This part required almost no analysis. Knowing whether he could was harder. He was fifty-six. Fifty-six did not look like retirement in Dudley’s head. Retired people had always been older. Exactly how much older was unclear, although he did now qualify for the over-55 menu at Perkins. Unfortunately, tomorrow also seemed far too soon to return to work. Betty had retired, and within weeks had begun looking noticeably more like herself. Dudley had begun

“Retire and do what?” Betty had asked a reasonable question. Dudley had spent several days figuring out whether they had enough money for him to stop working. He had spent considerably less time thinking about what they would do if he did. Betty did not have this problem. “I want to travel.” Dudley nodded. “Not vacations where we spend the first day getting there and the last day thinking about going home. I want to stay somewhere.” “How long?” Betty looked at him. “I don’t k

Dudley now had enough information to ask the question he had been avoiding. Would the money last? He knew they had about $1.2 million in retirement accounts. He knew the portfolio was roughly eighty percent stocks and twenty percent bonds. He knew where the money would come from once the paychecks stopped. He also had a reasonable idea what it cost to be them. The house and cars were about thirty-five hundred dollars a month. Essentials, utilities and insurance were another t

Dudley was retired. This created a new problem. He had spent several weeks trying to determine whether he and Betty could afford to retire. He had gathered the accounts, estimated what their life would cost and run enough scenarios to conclude that things would probably work out. Probably had eventually been good enough. Now he had to manage it. Dudley had spent most of his career managing complicated things. Projects involving dozens of people who could attend the same meeti

Dudley had spent several days assembling his financial tools. Lunch Money knew what they spent. ProjectionLab knew when they might die. Their investment companies knew where most of the money was. Several spreadsheets knew things no spreadsheet should reasonably need to know about two people living in Iowa. Then he discovered a governance problem. Some of the money belonged to Betty. Not metaphorically. Actually. Betty had worked for decades. She had retirement accounts, a ch

Dudley had learned a lot about retirement. This was becoming a problem. He knew about asset allocation. Sequence risk. He had spreadsheets. He had software. He had opinions. What Dudley did not have was complete confidence that any of it was right. So Dudley did something unusual. He decided to ask for help. He found financial advisors. Many of them. This was encouraging. Then he discovered what some of them charged. One percent did not sound particularly threatening. Then D

Betty pulled a legal pad from her purse and clicked her pen. Jingo settled beside her at the kitchen table. Borris was asleep in the chair Dudley had intended to use. Betty looked at Dudley. “Are we okay?” Dudley turned toward his laptop. “No.” He stopped. “I didn’t do anything.” “You were going to open something.” “I was going to answer your question.” “You were going to explain my question.” Dudley looked at the laptop. This was possible. Betty wrote three things on the pad