My Retirement Plans for 2026
The road to my retirement has been a slow burn, beginning late 2018. The first year of the last third of my life. I'm officially retired from a company where I worked for the last sixteen years. I've had enough time to realize gardening and travel won't be enough to keep me happy. I need project(s).
My passion projects for 2026 include wilderness treks, opening a lighthouse, writing a book on personal finance, and creating a social media persona.
Fun Adventures
Snowshoeing Trip
This February, I'm going to upstate New York to go snowshoeing in the Adirondacks with my brother-in-law and a couple of other friends. I love the deep powder up there in the winter.
Opening a Lighthouse
My sister turned me on to the idea of cleaning and opening a lighthouse on Lake Michigan, not far from where we grew up. I'll have a chance to reconnect with my sister and our shared past growing up on Lake Michigan. That will be a late April Project.
Spring Appalachian Trail Section Hike
Do a section hike on the Appalachian Trail in early spring. Six nights, five days, between 100 and 125 miles. Solo.
Wind River Cirque of Towers Trek
In the fall, I'll be heading to Wyoming to do a week-long trip in the Wind River Range with my best friend from elementary school. He retired a couple of months before I did, and was the first person I ever did an overnight wilderness trek with at age thirteen.
Late Fall Appalachian Trail Section Hike
Knock off another 100-125 miles solo on the AT in the late fall. The leaves should be at their peak.
Giving Back
I've been hiking and adventuring for the last 35 years, and I want to find a way to volunteer with organizations that work to preserve wilderness for enjoyment. I haven't decided exactly what that will be yet, but I'm looking.
My Personal Finance Book
Beginning late 2018, I started thinking about retirement and our finances. My wife handled our budget and spending while I was focused on making money. The problem was that she did not enjoy investing and felt overwhelmed by all the investment options. This led to savings piling up in places that didn't provide enough return to keep up with inflation and were not building wealth.
I didn't feel panic. The feeling was more like the beginning of a consulting project, in which the client has an inspiring vision of the future but no idea how to achieve it. Needing a plan—we had less than half the investment corpus necessary to live the way we wanted to in retirement.
I created a simple plan that focused on three numbers.
- How much do we spend each month?
- How much do we save each month?
- How much do we need in our investment corpus to live in retirement?
These numbers became the focus of our budgeting in January 2019.
We started living on the amount of money we planned to spend in retirement and invested the rest. By 2022, we reached our investment goal—having enough invested to live the way we had been living during this aggressive accumulation and investing phase. In the subsequent four years, we exceeded our investment goals by 190%. This amount of growth was a pleasant surprise, enabled by disciplined saving and investing.
It is liberating to reach the stage where your money makes you as much money every year as your salary at work. We reached that stage in late 2024.
I want to share these learnings by telling stories from my personal experiences, which is why I'm writing a book on personal finance for the next 30 years. What has worked in the past 30 years won't work in the future. I am working on a catchy title, but haven't discovered one that inspires me yet, so my working title is the SEI/Plan. S=monthly saving, E=monthly expenses, I=money invested.
I discovered in my early twenties that writing down specific goals brings what you need to do into clear resolution.
A few ideas I'll flesh out include: why buying a house is a lousy way to build wealth. The biggest challenge we face in wealth building is the federal government's poor fiscal management. How can we hedge our bets for bad outcomes?
The goal is to provide a roadmap specifically for individuals planning their own retirement or seeking to improve their personal financial strategies, written in a way that enables readers to select approaches suitable to their personal circumstances and to disregard those that are not applicable.
I don't know if I'll finish the book in time for publication by the end of 2026. I'm leaning toward self-publishing and building a writing workflow using AI to help with copyediting, proofreading, and fact-checking. I'm motivated by the idea that AI may be able to replace the workflow that book publishers have traditionally performed.
If I'm not satisfied with the results, I'll go the traditional publishing route.
Respectful Social Media Persona
I have left most social media platforms because the discourse is mostly ignorant, snarky, and uninspiring. That's why I'm developing a persona for political commentary that I will co-write using AI. The idea will be to create respectful, factual daily commentary using a combination of personalities based on iconic leaders from US history. I want to remind everyone what the United States was designed to be by the Founding Fathers and why The Constitution should be cherished.
Future Years
I have other ideas for books. None of them will be about data, but I will use data, historical facts, and personal stories to illustrate ideas. I think my list has enough personal projects for year one. If there's something you think I should be doing that I haven't mentioned, let me know.
That's my plan for 2026. I reserve the right to be lazy and not finish everything this year. I'm retired.