I was standing in a crowd with friends, watching one of my favorite bands - Switchfoot, when the line that wrote this newsletter came around:
"We were meant to live for so much more / Have we lost ourselves?"
A couple Thursdays back, I took care of a couple daytime to-dos in the observatory before driving to my daughter's house to spend a couple hours with three of my grandkids. Then my friends picked me up to head downtown Detroit. Dinner at a fantastic Cuban restaurant, a stop at a local cigar bar (I don't smoke cigars, so spent my time trying to stay upwind of their cigar smoke), and finally off to the Fillmore for the concert. All-in-all, a "good Tuesday" but on a Thursday.
"We were meant to live for so much more / Have we lost ourselves?"
I've heard that song a hundred times, and even performed it once as part of the house band at a youth convention. Thursday it landed differently, because the question has an address now. At 62, retired, standing in a theater on an ordinary Thursday night — dinner with friends, no alarm clock tomorrow — I had an answer ready, and it surprised me: no. I don't think I've lost myself. But I know exactly what the lost version looks like, because I spent forty years watching people live it. Some years, me included.
"Meant for so much more" is doing a lot of work in that lyric. It's not about achievement — nobody in that crowd was thinking about promotions. It's about authorship. Whether the life you're living looks like one you chose, or one that happened to you while you were busy.
The good-Tuesday test asks it on an ordinary day. Switchfoot asked it on a Thursday night with the spotlights streaming from the stage. Same question.
So here's the lighter version of the test, borrowed from a rock band: when's the last time an ordinary day of yours looked like something you meant? If you can't remember, that's data — the most important retirement data point you'll get this year, and no portfolio fixes it until you do.
— Brian
Education, not advice. I'm not a financial advisor. I share what I do and why, with the math showing — you make your own calls.