About Me (a.k.a. Dad or Mr. Tom)

As a graduate of the University of Dayton and Indiana University, and after a 40+ year engineering career in aerospace and defense, I was financially ready to retire at age 60. I realized I got to that point on my own, even after a year-long unemployment and several bad corporate retirement plans. I must have done something right, but what exactly? We raised children, moved back and forth across the country a few times, bought and sold a few homes, and saved for college, weddings, and retirement, mostly on one income. But I knew I had developed disciplined money management habits by building and then using spreadsheets week-in and week-out to manage our finances, a process that began 50 years ago, so it was obvious that habit played a significant role in my success.

As I thought about it, I also realized that my financial journey was not a straight line; it required many course corrections along the way. My skill with money management didn’t come from my parents or any school, but rather from years of learning and recovering from my mistakes. A journey that was successful because I kept learning.

Once I retired, I cleaned up my spreadsheets and took the time to capture my habits, the lessons I learned, and the hands-on education I received, and wrote the three-book series What Would Dad Do? My goal with these books is to share my story as an example for others to learn from and become more confident in managing their finances.