It made me realize that I was completely wrong to rely solely on one source of income to fund my retirement. I then reached out to former colleagues to see if my old position was still available, but the company had already filled the role and there were no other openings. Fortunately, my skills and experience had not dulled too much, so I was able to secure another job.

There is a particular kind of commercial real-estate pain that looks small from the outside and becomes infuriating the moment a company tries to collect. The lease says the landlord will reimburse a tenant improvement allowance. The build-out is done. The contractors have billed. The tenant has already spent real cash. And yet reimbursement gets stuck because the packet is wrong, incomplete, or mapped to the wrong checklist.