The Big Shill

Everyone is selling something but at what cost?

In 1999 Julia Child and Jacques Pepin did a cooking program together for PBS. The show was filmed in Julia’s kitchen in her home in Cambridge, Mass. It’s the same kitchen that was lifted whole and placed in the Smithsonian Museum of American History. You can see it there today. The program was great fun due to the fantastic chemistry between Julia and Jacques. There are whole episodes of the show on YouTube and I encourage you to check it out. I’ve watched all the episodes many times including the one on “Pork,” which contains not a single dish that I can cook. 

One thing you will not find in any of the 22 episodes of the series is the name of a single brand or product. Even when they were using a popular brand of mayonnaise or olive oil, they took pains to make sure that the label was facing away from the camera. They never mentioned the brand of their food processor or cookware or even a favorite knife. 

Yes, there was a mention of the show’s sponsor during the opening credits. Something along the lines of, “Today’s show was made possible by a grant from the Acme Product Company,” but that was about it. Julia never endorsed a single product for money during her entire career. 

My, how things have changed. 

I am a big podcast listener. I listen as I am walking every day. With a few exceptions, all of these podcasts feature the hosts endorsing this product or that. The same products seem to show up over and over. A certain dietary supplement, a hydration powder to add to your water bottle, a mattress guaranteed to improve your sleep or at least to track it. In most cases, I do not begrudge the endorsements. If making a podcast is your whole work, you need to find a way to make a living and accepting ads and/or endorsing products is a way to generate revenue. 

But if you are famous for say, acting, is it reasonable to trade on that fame to make a little more money? And if you are going to do endorsements, I do think it is a reasonable question to ask yourself, “What is the value of my reputation and how much of it am I willing to squander.” Because for each paid endorsement, even for a product you truly believe in, there is a price to be paid in reputation. It may be small or it may be large. What is that price and why should you care?

This is the question that occurred to me recently when I started seeing a series of ads for Wells Fargo Bank featuring the comedic actors Steve Martin and Martin Short. I don’t know anything about the financial circumstances of these two living icons of comedy. I’d assume they are doing ok but I must admit that I don’t know. Perhaps the only option at this point in their illustrious careers is performing in ads for what is arguably one of the most corrupt and criminal banks in recent history. (Don’t take my word for it. Here is what the U.S. Department of Justice said about Wells Fargo in February of 2020. 

And more recently, Wells Fargo was still at it in 2023.

Even worse, the Short-Martin ads aren’t even mildly amusing. 

In a world in which almost everyone will sell almost anything for a few bucks, those who will not stand out. One such a holdout is Sam Harris. Harris has a popular meditation app called “Waking Up” which is available by subscription and contains no advertising. He also has a Podcast called “Making Sense” which has no ads and is also available only through subscription. If you don’t have a subscription you can listen to the first 20-30 minutes of each episode free. After much debate (I hate subscriptions), I subscribed to the show for $150 per year and I am glad I did. He offers very thoughtful interviews and commentary— ad free but not free.

Another example is “For Heaven’s Sake” a podcast from the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, which features analysis on the changing situation in Israel and is also ad free. 

Other podcasts have ads but allow you to forgo them in exchange for a paid subscription. But that is not the same as Sam Harris who has the courage to say, I am not going to take ads; if you want my content you have to pay for it. 

But folks like Sam Harris feel like exceptions to the rule. Even government officials and political figures are selling meme coins, crypto currencies, NFTs, and beach towels with their likenesses. Often they are giving the impression that what they are selling is their favor. In other words, it often looks like a bribe. 

Most of us are not famous enough to be in a position where we can trade our endorsement (or likeness) for cash but it still may be a useful thought exercise to ask yourself: Just how much would it cost to buy you?

Your reputation is what’s left when everything else is gone. What’s the price for yours?

The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing. 

Legacies

In the fall of 1982 I spent a semester in London. I lived a few steps from the Warwick Ave, Underground Station in the northern part of the city near Regent’s Park. I lived in a large house with other students from my college and from another college, Drew University located in New Jersey. One day when I was in the communal kitchen making tomato sauce for pasta, one of the Drew students, Mary (last name not remembered) showed me how to easily remove the skin from a clove of garlic by lightly smashing it with the back of a spoon. I still peel garlic this way (though I often use my knife handle instead of a spoon) and every time I do it, I think of Mary and of London. It is not something I do consciously, it just happens. Mary and I were not really friends, we never spent much together that I can recall. I have no idea where she might be now and I can’t imagine that she remembers me at all much less showing me how to peel garlic. 

When I was a kid we we lived in a house in Baltimore that had a “secret” doorway in the kitchen leading to a narrow wooden staircase that led to a room we called the library because it was lined with bookshelves. From there a narrow hallway connected to a the smallest bedroom in the house which had its own tiny bathroom attached. In earlier times the bedroom, bathroom, and library (which had probably been a storage room of some kind, it was freezing cold in the winter) would have been occupied by a live-in maid who would have been able to slip down those steps early in the morning to get breakfast going without disturbing the still sleeping family.

We never had a maid live-in or otherwise. The extra bedroom was used as my father’s den (the precursor to a man cave) and the extra bathroom was his photography dark room. On the back of the door to the secret kitchen stairs hung a storage thing with pockets where, for some reason, we stored shoeshine polishes and brushes. One time when I was 9 or 10 years old my Grandpa Alfred was visiting and he taught me how to shine my shoes back at those kitchen stairs. To this day whenever I shine my shoes, I think of my grandfather leaning over the library steps showing me how to brush the newly polished shoes to a lustrous shine. 

Around twenty years ago, my wife and I traveled to New York for the weekend to see master blade smith Bob Kramer talk about knives and sharpening in a Sur La Table kitchen store. I am crazy about Kramer’s knives. His handmade knives from his shop in Seattle cost thousands of dollars and you have to participate in a lottery just to have the chance to buy one. I will never own one of his handmade knives but I do have several of his licensed designs manufactured by Zwilling to his specifications. They are the closest I’ll get to a real Kramer Knife but they are my favorites notwithstanding. Anyway, after his presentation, I got to speak with him for a few minutes and he showed me his method for honing a blade on a steel that I use to this day. Whenever I hone my knife on the steel (nearly every time I cook) I think of Bob Kramer and how he personally showed me to do it.

There are countless other people from different eras of my life that float through my mind as I make my way through the days and weeks performing a skill that they taught me or just remembering how they were there in the right place at the right time and made my life better with their mindful presence.

We all wonder what our legacy will be. Many of us have worked at jobs or in organizations our whole lives to change things for the better and then wonder if we made a difference. Yet it may be that our most lasting impact may be in the moments we stopped and helped someone with a kind word, a teaching, or a smile. Maybe that person will forever associate you with a place, with a skill they learned, with the kindness you showed.

You’ll probably never know exactly what your legacy is. But you can be sure that you’ll leave one.

The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Retire

A friend and former colleague of mine recently emailed me to tell me that he was about to retire. He has spent the last few years in an intense and stressful job and he said that it had taken a physical and mental toll. His financial advisor had signed off on the plan and in a few weeks he will take the plunge.

Like me, my friend has worked for nonprofit organizations for most of his career. Those of us who choose this kind of work, are often driven by the mission of the organization, by the purpose of the work as much as we are by the need to pay bills. For those of us who are lucky enough to find work that we deeply believe in, work is more than a paycheck. It is an expression of our identity and sense of purpose.

This very fact means it can be very hard to call it quits and after one does, it can be a significant, even painful adjustment.

Like retiring from any job, there is the psychological impact of not earning. After a lifetime of saving for just this day, it is very difficult to turn off the tap and allow the water to start running out of the bowl. Your calculations (or your advisor’s) that tell you that it will be fine, that you have a great chance for success, don’t help much. And no, the number on the paper doesn’t matter. The discomfort has little to do with how much you have and everything to do with the mental transition going from saving to spending.

Second, for those of us for whom work is a part of our identity, there is a feeling of being adrift. Who am I if I am not [insert your job title here]? What is my purpose if I am not working, earning, providing, and serving the mission?

Finally, for those who have often spent more time at work than with their own families, work provides a large part of one’s social life, human interaction, mental stimulation, and yes, relationships. When you leave your job, things can get very quiet awfully quickly.

My friend and I are getting together for lunch a few weeks. He probably won’t ask me for my advice on retiring but if he does, here is what I will say.

If you can, you should.

Not everyone can retire. You have to be able to make ends meet. How much you need depends on lots of factors including your age, your financial obligations, and how you’d like to live. If you have a financial advisor, ask them to help you run an analysis. If you are a do-it-yourselfer there are lots of online resources to figure it out (ask me, I’ll point you in the right direction). But if you determine that you can retire, you should. There are simply too many other interesting things to do and too little time to do them. I have had friends who told me that they haven’t retired because they can’t imagine what they would do with themselves all day. To which I say, “Imagine better!” Others have told me that they had friends who retired and dropped dead shortly thereafter. But, it turns out that those who don’t retire also die. Whether you remain at work or not your time is not infinite. Of our 4,000 weeks (average human lifespan) if you are 60, you have maybe 2,000 left.

Time is of the essence.

Don’t wait to do the things you want to do. Once you retire you should have a plan of how you want to spend your time. It could be travel, volunteer work, outdoor adventures, or classes. Whatever it is, don’t wait. You might have 20 years of good health ahead of you, but you might not. If there is something you dream of doing, do it. Three days before my wife retired, we set out on a 3 month road trip to Alaska. The next spring we did a big trip to the National Parks of the southwestern U.S. including a hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. In the course of the following year, we both had some health complications that made traveling more difficult. Those issues only kept us home for a few months but they were a wakeup call. Don’t wait for anything. You just don’t know how much time you have. As far was we know, we get just one shot for our singular consciousness, unique in the history of the universe, to experience everything it can.

You have to work hard at maintaining the friendships that are important to you.

When you stop working, most of the people who were a part of your life day in and day out just vanish. They are still up to their eyeballs juggling work and family. Getting together with you may not be their top priority. Even if it is, you might find that without the current crisis at work in common, you may no longer have that much to say to one another.

Having said that, social relationships are even more important in retirement. Figure which friendships are most important to you and take the initiative to keep in touch. The onus is on you to call, email, and suggest getting together. If your friends are still working, make it easy for them by meeting them for lunch near their office or home. And if they don’t seem interested or motivated, that’s ok. As painful as it may be sometimes you may be more interested in maintaining the friendship than they. Move on. Sometimes it is easier to focus on other friends who are retired. They may be craving social interaction too. Hardest of all is making new friends but I can tell you it is possible.

Stopping paid work doesn’t have to mean loss of purpose and meaning.

When I first stopped working in 2020 I had the chance to meet up with a childhood friend who now lives in Denver. We went fishing together. (Well, he went fishing. I watched). I told him that although I had retired, I still felt that I wanted to make a contribution. My friend who had spent his career teaching history and economics told me, that if I was in a position to retire, the all-knowing marketplace was letting me know that I had already made a sufficient contribution. Notwithstanding, I still felt like I had more to offer. Shortly after that, I launched my blog and began writing a post every week. In addition, I have added some volunteer work and then there is the non-stop occupation of helping family and friends with their Apple products. Most people, I think, find it rewarding to be useful to others, to society. Find something that you are good doing or making and give it away.

If you can afford to never again work for money it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t but be selective about it.

When I was planning to leave Hillel at the University of Rochester, I had thought that I might take another interim gig somewhere. But then Covid happened and there were no gigs. June 30, 2020 was a cold, hard stop. The phone stopped ringing, The emails stopped. There were no more zoom meetings or deadlines to meet. It was a shock but I am glad it happened the way it did. I was forced to confront what it meant not to work in terms immediate and real. It was the first time, I had been without a job since 1986. The longest vacation I had ever taken was two weeks. Other than some one-off teaching gigs, I didn’t do any paid work until March of 2022 when my friend David asked me to join his organization in a part-time finance role. By that time, I had made peace with the fact that would probably never work for pay again and I had realized that I was ok both financially and in terms of having things to do. So when David approached me, I was able to consider the offer in light of whether it was something that I really wanted to do. I didn’t feel like I needed to do it if I didn’t want to. I decided that I would enjoy working with him and I took the job. Two years later, when David left the organization, I quit too. I  just didn’t think it would be fun without him and I knew my life could be completely full without paid work.

Now my only criteria for considering work is: will I enjoy it? Will I have the opportunity to learn something new? Will I like the people I will be working with? The answer to all of these must be yes. If not, thank you for thinking of me, I’ll pass. Every job, even volunteer work, can have some amount of aggravation and stress. But if the aggravation exceeds the pleasure, I’ll find something else to do.

Being retired requires more discipline than working.

Without deadlines, bosses to be accountable to, and the pressure of proving that you are worth your paycheck, it is easy to get lazy. To procrastinate. If you want to do more than just run out the clock on your remaining years, you need a plan and you need to execute it. It’s ok if that plan is to “become as good at golf as I possibly can” as long as you have examined yourself and determined that is what you truly how you want to use your remaining time.

I have work to do in this area. I don’t always use my time as fully as I might but here is what find myself working on/doing:

Volunteer work

I serve on a volunteer committee for a fantastic nonprofit, The Good People Fund, and do some one on one consulting for their grantees. I have also taught my class Financial Basics for Nonprofit Managers a few times in the past year.

Exercise

I walk 90 min to 2 hours per day and try to get to the gym twice a week. The gym doesn’t always happen, but the walks pretty much always do. During my walks I listen to podcasts about history, philosophy, or ideas.

Blogging

My recent sabbatical notwithstanding, I try to write a blog post every week. Sometimes, I am not sure if anyone is reading them, but I decided that I write them for me and if no one reads them, I am ok with that.

Household Chores

I spend a not insignificant amount of time grocery shopping, cooking, and managing our finances. It’s all stuff that had to get done before I retired but somehow it seems to take more time now. Barbara and I often scratch our heads and wonder how we got anything done when we were working not to mention when we were raising children!

Travel

Since 2020 my wife and I have driven to Alaska and back, visited the parks of the southwestern U.S. Had a bike trip to Wisconsin. Spent a week in Maine. A few weeks in Florida during the winter. Drove to North and South Dakota and back. Most recently we spent a month traveling to Big Bend National Park in Texas and back. We’ve put more than 100,000 kilometers on our camper van. This fall we are planning our first international trip since covid. (Stay tuned for details.). We pretty much always have a plan for some trip coming with within the next few month. Not everyone enjoys traveling but if you do retirement gives you the time to do it. And you don’t have to be wealthy to do it. We travel cheap and slow. We mostly camp which is usually $15-40 per night and we mostly prepare our own food, which means we spend the same or less on groceries as we would at home.

and, yes, some work

Until April, I was doing some paid work. Right now I am not, though there are some possibilities on the horizon. If the right thing comes along that would give me the chance to do something fun, learn and work with good people, I will do it though the most I would consider would be a quarter to one-third time.

Retirement is not exactly what I expected. I had a fantasy of days of endless travel, stacks of books, long backpacking trips, and music lessons – somehow all at the same time. The reality of it is that it is more or less life is as was before but less work and more time for the fun stuff. There are some things I miss about working. I miss the camaraderie of the workplace, the sense of shared purpose. But I am also aware of how much more there to do besides work and I am grateful that I have some time to do it.

The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.