The Simple List That Stands Between You and a Boring Retirement

Four-month lows. Iran hit Gulf energy infrastructure. The 200-day is now the line in the sand.

The quick scan: Thursday extended the week's losses for a third consecutive session, as Iranian strikes on Qatari and Saudi energy infrastructure sent oil higher and rattled markets already unsteady from Wednesday's hawkish Fed. Losses were more contained than the day before, but the direction remains firmly down. The S&P 500 closed just above its 200-day moving average – a level that, if broken convincingly, could trigger a fresh wave of technical selling.

S&P 500: –0.27% to 6,606.49 – clinging to its 200-day moving average by a handful of points. The November closing low of 6,538 is now squarely in view
Dow Jones: –0.44% to 46,021.43 – a fourth straight session of losses, sitting at the lowest close of 2026
NASDAQ: –0.28% to 22,090.69 – tech dragged lower by Micron, which fell 7% after flagging higher capital spending plans that spooked investors despite strong earnings. Nvidia and Broadcom each dropped more than 2%

What's driving it: Iran struck energy infrastructure in Qatar and Saudi Arabia overnight, escalating the conflict beyond the Strait of Hormuz and raising the spectre of broader Gulf supply disruption. Oil and natural gas benchmarks rose further across global markets, compounding the inflationary pressures the Fed had flagged just 24 hours earlier. Adding to the gloom, February's producer price index – released before the war began – came in hot, meaning inflation was already elevated before the energy shock hit. Micron's earnings offered a data point worth watching: strong memory profits, but management's decision to increase capital spending was read as a margin risk, sending AI-adjacent stocks broadly lower. The week that began with a relief rally has ended in the red across the board.

Bottom line: Three down days after two up days, and the S&P 500 is now sitting on its 200-day moving average – one of the most widely watched technical levels in markets. A sustained break below it tends to invite more selling. For L-Plate Retirees, this is a week that illustrates why staying diversified matters more than trying to trade the swings. The war, the Fed, and earnings season are all live variables at once. Patience and dry powder are worth more right now than conviction.

The 16-Pager

The scoop: Douglas Melin had a problem he didn't see coming.

Not a financial problem. Not a health problem. The kind of problem that tends to ambush people who've spent forty-plus years being productively busy – and then suddenly aren't.

He was at lunch with a retired colleague. And the colleague, by his own account, was bored. Not temporarily bored. Deeply, structurally, unhappily bored. Retirement had arrived, and it turned out to be less of a reward and more of a long, unscheduled afternoon with no obvious end.

Melin, who went on to retire as chief counsel at Marathon Petroleum and wrote about this for the ABA Journal, walked back to his office after that lunch and opened a Word document. He typed out several retirement activities that came to mind, stopped when the ideas dried up, and put the document away. No pressure. No deadline.

That was the beginning of what eventually became a 16-page list. It's now 17 pages. And still growing.

The idea is disarmingly simple. Before you retire – or even if you're already there – keep a running list of everything you might want to do, try, revisit, finish, or experience. Not a bucket list. Not a plan. Not commitments or intentions. Just possibilities. A resource to consult on a slow Tuesday, or in the darker moments when the question "what do I actually do now?" doesn't have an obvious answer.

What makes Melin's approach interesting isn't the list itself. It's the method – or more precisely, the deliberate absence of one.

He didn't sit down and try to think of everything at once. He opened the document, wrote what came to mind, then put it down. He let his brain work in the background. Walking to his car that afternoon, an idea surfaced – something that had been buried deep, waiting for the right conditions to emerge. He stopped and dictated it into his phone immediately. That instinct, he says, is critical. The idea that disappears before you write it down is the one you needed.

Over the following weeks, ideas came from everywhere. A magazine article mentioned a bicycle trail in Missouri, which reminded him of a ride in Ohio, which led to the thought of joining a local cycling club – which, he realised, would replace some of the workplace socialisation he'd been quietly dreading losing. Five activities in five minutes, without trying.

He added categories. The categories generated more ideas. He remembered piano lessons he'd put down decades ago. An urban studies degree he'd never finished. A geology course he'd always meant to take. A veterans memorial he'd been trying to help establish for years. Historical research. Genealogy. Projects that had hit a wall and been quietly shelved.

Two things stand out in how he talks about the list.

The first is specificity. Vague entries are useless. "Travel" isn't a list item. "Three weeks in the Dolomites" is. "Read more" means nothing. "Finish The Brothers Karamazov and finally understand what everyone's been on about" is a list item. The specificity isn't pedantic – it's generative. One concrete idea produces three more. General intentions produce only the vague sense that you should be doing something.

The second is a category he calls closure. These are the things you've been meaning to do for someone – a friend, a sibling, a parent – before time or health makes them impossible. Melin took his older sister on a trip around Ohio to visit places she'd always wanted to see but never got to. He made that trip shortly after retiring. "Perhaps just in time," he writes. He wishes he'd started the list earlier. Some of those opportunities, he says plainly, have already lapsed.

There's a version of this that sounds like self-help advice. But the way Melin tells it, it sounds more like a quiet reckoning with how time actually works. Plans are worthless, he notes, quoting Eisenhower – but planning is everything. Retirement is long. Interests change. Health changes. The people you want to spend time with are ageing too. A list you started at 58 will look different at 63 and different again at 70. That's not a problem. That's the point. The list is a living document, not a contract.

He's careful to note that this isn't Plan A. Plan A, presumably, is whatever fills your days with meaning – work, family, community, creative projects, whatever it is that makes retirement feel like freedom rather than a long weekend that never ends. The list is for the margins, for the open days, for the moments when Plan A is on pause and you need a reason to get out of bed that isn't the news.

What I find most striking is this: nearly everyone Melin tells about the list, regardless of age, has what he calls an "aha moment." It seems obvious once you hear it. The reason it isn't obvious before you hear it is worth thinking about. Most people – including people who are very good at planning their finances, their careers, their children's futures – haven't thought nearly as deliberately about how they'll fill the hours that retirement actually consists of.

Start the document. Open it now, if you like. Write down three things. Put it away. See what surfaces on the walk to your car.

Actionable takeaways for L-Plate Retirees:

• Open a document today and write three things. Not a definitive list – just three things you'd enjoy doing that you keep meaning to get to. The list doesn't need to be ready; it just needs to exist. Starting it is the whole trick.

• Capture ideas immediately, wherever they surface. Melin dictates into his phone mid-walk. A note in your pocket works just as well. The idea that gets away is usually the one you needed most. The habit of capturing is more important than the quality of any single idea.

• Be specific – vague entries are dead weight. "Travel" is not an item. "Ten days in Kyoto in cherry blossom season" is. Specificity triggers more ideas, makes the list useful on a slow day, and forces you to actually want the thing you've written down rather than the idea of it.

• Create a closure category. List the things you want to do for or with specific people before circumstances make them impossible. These are often the items with the shortest shelf life and the longest regret if they lapse. Put them near the top.

• Let the list evolve – it's not a contract. Interests change, health changes, people come and go. A list you started at 55 should look different at 65. Review it occasionally, retire the entries that no longer fit, and add new ones. The value is in the ongoing relationship with the document, not in any single version of it.

• Include the small things. Not everything on the list needs to be a life event. Melin notes that minor entries – a specific museum, a short hike, a research project – are some of the most useful, filling an open afternoon without requiring logistics. Easy to forget unless written down; easy to enjoy once they are.

Your Turn:
Do you have any version of this kind of list – and if not, what's stopped you from starting one?
What's one thing that's been on your mental list for years that you keep meaning to get to – the specific one, not the vague category?
Is there a closure item – something you want to do with or for someone specific – that deserves to move off the mental list and onto a real one?

👉 Hit reply and share your thoughts – your answers could inspire fellow readers in future issues.

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