The wicked stomach flu that has been going around hit our house hard this past month. I’ve been the only one to escape its wrath.

For the week that Anne was out of commission, I got a trial by fire in what she does on a daily basis. Without her, the wheels fell off the tracks quickly. One day I made three trips to the school. Once you do that, there really isn’t much else you can get done. Another day was a trip to the ER, two trips to school, and soccer practice.

We recently hosted a market update for our clients. It turned out to be a timely discussion on the state of the markets.

We went through examples of a few market downturns. They’re usually short lived, are normal, and it is rewarding to have a long-term outlook on our investments.

Last year, I was in a training seminar. We started with a goal-setting exercise. The idea was to think about experiences we wanted to have, places we wanted to visit, impossible challenges we wanted to conquer, and rewards for ourselves if we accomplished our goals.

Most of us have a list of things we want to do one day. But we might not have a purposeful plan for how to get there. It’s easy for our daily commitments and obstacles to overtake our list.

This past weekend some dads from our school took our daughters camping. We of course roasted marshmallows for s’mores. As the girls held their marshmallows over the fire it reminded me of the famous Stanford Marshmallow experiment. It was a study on delayed gratification.

The researchers would offer a child a choice: one marshmallow now or two after a period of time, usually about 15 minutes.

The idea of retirement means different things to different people.

To some, it can mean stopping work completely, hitting the golf course, then hitting the couch.

To others, it could mean selling a business or getting out of the corporate world to focus on a passion, freeing time to travel, but still work some.

Still, others love their careers and never intend to retire.

Every July 1st until 2035, former MLB star Bobby Bonilla receives an annual payment of $1.19 million dollars from the New York Mets. He hasn’t played a game since 2001.

He was owed a $5.9 million buyout in 1999. He and his agent offered a deal. The Mets could defer payments until 2011 with 8% interest, then make 25 annual payments through 2035. In total Bonilla will receive nearly $30 million.