The modern idea of retirement was built on a bet that turned out to be wrong. It assumed people would spend most of their lives working and only a relatively short period of time retired. Instead, many Americans now reach 65 healthy, active, and with an entire third of their life ahead of them. Yet we’re still using a retirement model designed for a world in which old age was shorter and fewer people expected decades of life after leaving the workforce.

My guest says that outdated assumption creates some unfortunate unintended consequences. It causes people to stress excessively about money, postpone meaningful experiences with family and friends, and sometimes sacrifice the very things that make life worth living in the first place. He argues that by rethinking retirement — not necessarily eliminating it, but reimagining it — we can enjoy more of our lives now while actually feeling more secure about the future.

His name is Derek Coburn, and he’s a financial advisor and the author of Let’s Retire Retirement. Today on the show, Derek explains why the traditional retirement model came about, why it may no longer make sense for many people, and how working even a few years past 65 can dramatically change the math of retirement planning. We also discuss the surprising psychological challenges many people face after they stop working, why purpose matters more than leisure, and how thinking differently about retirement can free you up to spend more time on what matters most right now — whether that’s traveling, strengthening your marriage, or making the most of the limited summers you have left with your kids.

Connect With Derek Coburn

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

It’s summertime, which means a lot of you will be loading up the car and hitting the highway for vacation.

I love road tripping. I prefer it over flying because flying is for the birds. When you’re on a road trip, you’re in control. You’re not getting herded through a terminal like cattle, packed into a metal tube, and told you can’t use the bathroom because the seatbelt sign is on. You can be leisurely. You can watch the scenery change from plains to mountains to desert. You can pull over to see some Cadillacs stuck in the ground.

But a great road trip doesn’t just happen. Over years of driving my own family across the wide expanses of the United States, I’ve figured out a few things that separate a smooth haul from a miserable one. I also solicited some tips from a friend who’s done likewise.

To make your long drives this summer more enjoyable, here are 30 rules of the road to follow:

1. Do a pre-drive check the week before. Check the tire pressure, oil, coolant, and washer fluid and make sure they’re all good. You want to avoid those breakdowns and tire blowouts where you’re left stranded on the shoulder of I-40 between Amarillo and Tucumcari.

2. Start with a clean cabin. Declutter your vehicle, vacuum its interior, and wipe the dash. Sure, after 500 miles, the inside of your car will look like a tornado touched down inside a Love’s Country Store, but there’s something about starting a trip in a clean environment that makes it feel a bit more pleasant.

3. Pack a real paper map. Even in the cell-tower-dotted landscape of the modern age, you’ll still encounter dead zones along your drive. GPS is great right up until you’re crossing one in the desolate West. A Rand McNally Road Atlas never drops to one bar. Also, looking at it is a great way for your kids to pass the time instead of staring at a screen.

4. Stock an emergency kit. We’ve got a whole article on what every man should keep in his car, and a road trip is exactly the scenario that list was written for. Stock jumper cables, a flashlight, basic hand tools, flares, and a solid first-aid kit at the least.

5. Download what you need for entertainment and navigation, and charge devices completely the night before. From podcast episodes to playlists to directions, download everything you want to have access to, even when your phone hits SOS, before you depart. Make sure the kids have downloaded episodes of Bluey or Gilmore Girls, and that everyone’s devices are fully charged the night before.

6. Prep for quality conversation. A road trip is a great time to get in some quality conversation (QC). But QC doesn’t just happen. You have to prep for it. For the adults and older kids, send them an article or podcast to listen to before the trip so you can spend some time discussing it while on the road.

7. Bring more wet wipes than you think you need. The gas pump handle is filthy, hands will end up coated in Cheeto dust, and the public restroom soap dispenser will be empty exactly when you need it. There’s no such thing as too many wipes.

8. Take it nice and easy. One of the advantages of driving over flying is that there’s no pressure to leave at an exact time. There’s no worry about missing a flight. So take it easy. Sure, have a general time you’d like to leave and arrive by, but there’s no need to get stressed trying to stick to a strict agenda and lapse into little irrational bouts of Dad anger.

9. Drive while the little ones sleep. If you’ve got infants or toddlers, the dawn patrol and the late-night push are your best friends. A mile covered while a toddler is unconscious in his car seat is worth roughly three covered while he’s awake and restless.

10. Everyone gets a turn being the DJ. Either rotate through passengers’ respective playlists of choice, or take turns picking each song.

11. Gas up at a quarter tank. Around town you can ride the needle down to E and play chicken with the fuel light. When you’re out in the middle of nowhere and the next gas station might be 50 miles away, play it safe, and make a quarter tank of gas the minimum you’ll get to.

12. Stick to the mega travel centers for pit stops. When the family needs to use the bathroom and restock on snacks, look for the towering signs of a national chain like Love’s, Pilot, Flying J, or — if you’re blessed enough to be in their territory — a Buc-ee’s. You are guaranteed a high baseline of restroom cleanliness, an elite, wall-to-wall snack selection, and brightly lit spaces. Leave the sketchy, dimly-lit, one-pump stations as pit stops of last resort.

13. Clean the windshield at every fill-up. A smudge of bug guts might not bother you in town, but staring through a kaleidoscope of dead gnats while driving into the setting sun is a recipe for annoyance and impaired vision. Grab the squeegee while the pump is running; it takes 60 seconds and drastically improves visibility.

14. Everyone pees when you stop. Whenever you take pit stops, everyone must go to the bathroom. No exceptions. No “I’m good.” Because the kid who was “good” will announce 30 minutes later that he was, in fact, right on the cusp of being not good and now needs to go.

15. Everyone moves when you stop, too. Your bladder isn’t the only thing that needs attention when you pull off — so do your hips. Eight hours folded into a driver’s seat will turn your lower back into a rusted hinge. Walk a lap around the gas station, do a few toe-touches or squats by the pump — get the blood flowing again.

16. Run a dedicated trash bag. One designated bag for trash keeps the footwells from turning into a landfill by the afternoon. Empty it at every single gas stop. Replace with a new bag.

17. Pad the timeline. If the GPS says eight hours, plan for ten and a half. Kids move slow, bathroom stops run long, and the surest way to ruin the drive is to chain yourself to an arrival time you were never going to make.

18. Treat screens as a tool, not a crutch. While it’s tempting to just let your kids zombify in front of their screens the entire trip, resist the urge. All kids need to experience the boredom of a road trip and the pleasures that can come with watching the landscape move past them. Put them on a rotation, like two hours off screens for every one hour on.

19. Have an arsenal of games ready. Road trip bingo, 20 Questions, Shotgun, the alphabet game, magnetic checkers. Cycle through them throughout the trip.

20. Kids must play Mad Libs. At least once. It’s a kid road trip rite of passage.

21. The left lane is for passing. Treat this as an unbreakable law of the universe, obey it religiously, and teach it to your kids by example. If you’re not passing somebody, get over. The republic of the road depends on it.

22. Use cruise control. Ensures you keep a steady pace the entire trip and keeps you from drifting up to 90 without noticing, which is how you end up explaining yourself to a state trooper while your kids watch terrified from the backseat, thinking their dad is going to jail.

23. Take the dumb detour. See a brown sign for a state park, a roadside museum, or a giant fiberglass something-or-other, and you’ve got the time? Take the exit. The World’s Largest Ball of Twine may become a core memory.

24. The hotel pool is non-negotiable. If you’ve got to stop at a hotel for the night, picking one with a pool is essential — at least if you have kids. After being strapped into a seatbelt for eight hours, your kids will have the pent-up kinetic energy of a coiled spring. Throwing them into a heavily chlorinated rectangle for 45 minutes before bed is the absolute best way to ensure they actually sleep through the night.

25. Curate the snacks. Beef jerky, almonds, pretzels — elite road fuel. Anything powdered, crumbly, melty, or sticky will end in regret. Powdered donuts in particular are an interior-ruining liability, and you will be vacuuming that white dust out of the seat seams six months from now.

26. Embargo “Are we there yet?” Ban the question outright. We get there when we get there.

27. No farting. Have some decency. Passengers are locked in a confined space and can’t escape.

28. Find an audiobook for the whole cabin. Eight hours of screens will turn their brains to mush. A good audiobook the whole family can sink into — or even some vintage spooky radio shows — unites everybody and vaporizes a couple hundred miles.

29. Embrace the silence. You do not need a podcast, audiobook, or Spotify playlist pumping through the speakers for all 1,000 miles. Let the cabin fall quiet for an hour. It gives the driver a break from sensory input and often leads to the best, most organic conversations of the trip.

30. Remember the drive is the trip. If all you care about is getting there, you should’ve bought plane tickets. The arguments, the inside jokes, the gas-station weirdos, the Killers singalongs, that’s the vacation, too, and often the stuff you remember most.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Note: The following tips are excerpted from Survival Hacks: Over 200 Ways to Use Everyday Items for Wilderness Survival by Creek Stewart.

Having taught survival skills to thousands of individuals from all over the world for nearly two decades, I’ve come to one conclusion: the most important survival skill is innovation. Using what you have, to get what you need, is what will ultimately make the difference between life and death in a sudden and unexpected survival scenario. I often call this “survival hacking.”

Over the years, I’ve learned (and sometimes invented) some very interesting survival hacks that I think everyone should know. Why? Well, it’s like I always say: “it’s not IF but WHEN.” Below are a few survival nuggets for the when.

Framework Collar Connector

If you need a long pole, you’ll often have to lash together two limbs or saplings to get the right length. This is the case when making a dome framework for wigwam-style shelters, for example. If cordage is in short supply, using an energy shot bottle (like a 5-Hour Energy or similar product) from your trash may be the solution. After slicing off the top and bottom of the bottle, a very strong cylindrical tube remains. You can use this tube as a collar for connecting the ends of two limbs. Taper the ends of the limbs so they slide into the tube opposite each other and form a snug fit when wedged together. This collar will hold them surprisingly well and will not stretch with moisture, as many lashings do. If the collar is a bit loose, heat it over coals or a flame and it will shrink and tighten the fit.

Blanket Chair

Finding a good place to sit in an improvised survival camp can be very frustrating — especially when the ground is wet or snow covered. This hack improvises a very comfortable seat in just a few minutes. The only parts you need are four sturdy poles and a blanket or scrap piece of durable fabric. Cut three poles that are 6′-8′ long by 1″-2″ thick, and then cut a fourth that is the same thickness and 4′ long.

Connect two of the long poles together at one end using a bipod lashing. Fold the blanket or fabric in half, bunch the end together, and suspend this end with rope from the cross at the bipod lashing. Insert the 4′ pole in the unsecured fold of the blanket so that it sticks out at both ends, and rest it against the longer poles. Finally, kick lash the last long pole in the center as a support, and lean back to relax.

Condom Canteen

Many survivalists, including myself, suggest packing non-lubricated condoms in survival kits. They are small, compact, and inexpensive, and have a plethora of survival uses. One noteworthy function is as a compact emergency water container. Here are a couple tips I’ve learned from experience for using a condom as a canteen:

• Fill the condom in a sock to protect it during travel.
• Use any rigid hollow tube such as an ink pen, elderberry branch, or bamboo section as a spout and secure the base of the condom around it using duct tape or paracord.
• Carve a spout stopper from any dry branch.
• Add a sling, and you’re ready to make tracks with more than a liter of drinking water. 

2-Liter Rain Collector

The ability to collect rainwater, especially if stranded on an ocean island, is critical. Luckily, that task can be easily done with just a plastic bottle (be sure it has a cap; the mouth must be sealed). Start by cutting off the bottom of the bottle. Next, cut vertical slices 1″-2″ apart up the side of the bottle, starting at the bottom and going a little more than halfway. Fold the sections out, giving the bottle a flower-like appearance. (Using heat during this step makes the bottle more pliable and speeds up the process; it also helps keep the petals in place once finished.) Finally, plant the top of the bottle a couple inches into the ground and wait for rain.

This water collector is modeled after nature itself — the leaves on many plants and trees help funnel rainwater toward the main stem or trunk. These plastic “petals” help to funnel water into the central reservoir. The water can then be drunk with a straw or piece of hollow reed grass, or poured into a canteen.

Match Feather Stick

If you’ve studied survival or bushcraft very long, chances are you’ve heard of “feather sticks.” With a sharp knife, you shave long wood slivers down the side of a stick. Just before a sliver is completely shaved off, you stop and begin another sliver from the top. After several minutes’ work, you’ll have a stick covered in feather-like wood shavings. These shavings catch fire much quicker and easier than the larger solid stick. Consequently, feather sticks are an excellent and easy fire starter that’s found in nature.

Let’s take that concept a step further and apply it to wooden matches. In extremely difficult conditions, when you might need additional help starting a fire, use your knife to shave small wooden slivers just above the match head, creating a mini feather stick. When the match ignites it will very quickly catch these shavings on fire, which will create a stronger and bigger flame.

Jumper Cable + Pencil = Fire

Using a battery power source is a very popular firestarting method. There are many different ways to do it using many different types of batteries. This one involves using a car battery, jumper cables, and a regular No. 2 pencil. Start by shaving down an area on each end of the pencil to expose the lead. Then clamp on the positive and negative jumper cable clamps, one on each shaved area. Be sure the clamps are touching the pencil lead. Place the clamps and pencil on top of your tinder bundle, clamp the other ends of the cables to the car as you normally would, and turn on the engine. The electricity from the cables will turn the lead into a red-hot ember and the wooden pencil will erupt into flame in about 2 minutes’ time. Use the flame to ignite your tinder bundle.

9-Volt Razor Hack

As mentioned above, batteries can be used in all kinds of different ways to make fire. Another way is using the very thin blades from a disposable razor to short-circuit a 9-volt battery. A tiny spark will fly when a blade touching the positive terminal is crossed with a blade touching the negative terminal. The correct tinder at this intersection, such as char cloth or thin shreds of tinder fungus, can be ignited with little effort.

You can use nearly any metal or wire to short-circuit a low-voltage battery, but it must be extremely thin in order to deliver positive results. Also keep in mind that repeated attempts can drain the charge from your battery source.

Mylar Emergency Survival Blanket Lens

Yet another fire-starting method involves harnessing the sun’s rays using a Mylar blanket, a container with a plastic snap-on lip, and a hollow tube or ink pen. First, trim out the interior of the plastic lid so that it is just the rim that snaps onto the container. This circular rim will tightly hold a piece of Mylar placed over the top. Pierce a hole in the side of the container and insert a hollow tube or ink pen. This allows you to suck the sealed Mylar into a convex parabolic shape that can create a solar ember in direct sunlight on suitable tinders such as punky wood, agave pith, deer poo, char cloth, and tinder fungus (chaga).

The Fire Pick

Did you know that guitar picks make incredible fire tinder? They are made from a material called celluloid, which happens to be extremely flammable. For this reason I always keep a couple in my wallet as emergency firestarter. They will ignite when exposed to an open flame such as that from a disposable lighter or match.

However, you can also ignite them with just a spark. Start by carving a small divot in a piece of wood or stick about half an inch in from the end. Then, split the stick on that end, all the way into the divot. Next, using your knife, fill the divot with shavings from the guitar pick, which you make by scraping your knife at a 90-degree angle against the pick. Finally, slide the pick into the split until the edge of it is buried in the shaving-filled divot. Now you can ignite the small shavings using a spark from a flint rock or ferro rod (a manmade, flint-like metal), and they will in turn ignite the pick. Voilà — fire with a guitar pick!

Gum Wrapper Fire

A foil-backed gum wrapper (or any foil-backed paper candy wrapper) can be used to start a fire if you have a battery source, such as a AA battery from a flashlight or remote control. Start by trimming the wrapper to an hourglass shape. Simultaneously touch the positive and negative terminals of the battery with the foil side of the wrapper. The electrical current will converge on the thinnest part of the hourglass shape and ignite the wrapper to flame. If the battery is too weak to bring the wrapper to flame, consider adding a second battery for more electrical current. Be sure to have a good tinder bundle ready because you’ll only have about 3 seconds of flame!

Ramen Noodle Stove

I love items that do double duty. Ramen noodles are not only a lightweight pack food, but they can also serve as a great little cooking stove in a pinch. All you have to do is saturate the dried brick of ramen with a flammable liquid such as alcohol or HEET brand antifreeze and it will burn like a solid fuel puck for up to 20 minutes per side. The dried ramen noodles help to control the rate of fuel vaporization. Build a makeshift frame to balance a pot and cook away!

It helps to soak the ramen brick in one of the fuels mentioned above for a while before use, but it isn’t necessary. A standard yellow kitchen sponge also works in nearly the same way and makes a handy little impromptu stove when soaked with alcohol or HEET.

Paracord Fishing Fly

One of my students showed me this hack several years ago, and I’ve tested it time and time again in the fishing pond at Willow Haven. Slide a 1″ section of paracord over a bare fishing hook to make a very appealing fishing fly lure. Fluff up the end over the hook for disguise and then heat the other end with an open flame to melt and weld it just below the eye where the line attaches. Live bait is always best, but when live bait isn’t available you’ll never miss an inch of paracord from your shoelaces or bracelet. This improvised fly lure also floats very well for top-water bluegill and bream fishing.

Spoon Broadhead

Whether you’re hunting with bow and arrow or a spear, it’s always better for it to be tipped with a sharp metal broadhead. Believe it or not, you can use something to kill your food that most people use to eat their food — a spoon! As you can see in the illustration, the evolution of a regular spoon to a killer broadhead is a simple process. Pound the spoon flat with a rock or hammer. Next, file the edges down to a point, using a standard metal file that can be found in almost any auto repair shop or garage. Finally, snap off the handle at the base with repeated bending, and lash the finished point into a split at the end of an arrow with any kind of cordage.

Slingshot Whisker Biscuit

Any slingshot can quickly be converted into an arrow-shooting sling bow with one very simple addition — a paintbrush. Cut a .5″-wide depression from the bristles of a 2″-wide paintbrush to create a perfect whisker biscuit cradle for a full-sized hunting arrow. The cut notch in the paintbrush bristles will create an arrow rest, and the arrow fletching will slide through the bristles without hesitation. Pinch the arrow nock in the slingshot pouch, pull back, aim, and fire. Although the brush can easily be taped in place, a Velcro strap makes putting it on and taking it back off a breeze in the field.

Bra Cup Debris Mask

Toxic ash and debris can be a serious problem during natural or manmade disasters. Breathing in ash, pulverized concrete, and debris particles can slow you down as well as result in severe long-term conditions such as asthma and lung cancer.

Most women carry two emergency debris masks on their person at all times — a bra! The padded cups of most bras fit perfectly over the mouth and nose and can act as a crude debris filter in an emergency. The combination of foam, padding, and two layers of fabric is much better than most store-bought masks. You can even rework bra straps and ties to hold the mask securely on your face for hands-free travel.

Makeshift Butterfly Bandage

I learned this particular hack from an Army field medic while taking a wilderness first-aid class a few years back and thought it was great. Bandages are a luxury in a survival scenario, and you want to make the best possible use of them when necessary. And especially on the hands, fingers, and knuckles, traditional bandages just don’t work that well. To make them more flexible and adaptable, cut a center slice through each of the adhesive strips long-ways, from the ends up to the bandage portion. Now, with four adhesive strips instead of two, you can apply the bandage more effectively to stubborn body parts.

A Not-So-StrAWEful Tick Puller

Ticks are nasty critters and the bane of many a woodsman. The best way to rid yourself of ticks is to pinch the head with tweezers and pull upward with steady, even pressure. In the absence of suitable tweezers, make a tick puller from a plastic drinking straw. Using a knife or scissors, cut an eye-shaped hole toward the end of the straw, large enough to fit over the tick’s body. The outside tip of the eye cut (the side closest to the edge of the straw) should come to a very fine point. Slide the eye over the tick and pull from the side, wedging the tick’s head and neck in the corner of this fine-cut point. Steadily pull until the tick detaches, and then wash the affected area with soap and water.

Bullet Casing Whistle

Using just an empty bullet casing, a file (or sharp corner of concrete), and a branch, you can make one of the best makeshift rescue whistles in the world. File a groove .5″ from the opening of the bullet casing as shown in the illustration. Be sure that there is a flat 90-degree portion toward the open end. Next, carve off the top fifth or so of a branch that is the same diameter as the inside diameter of the bullet casing. Cut this piece so that it is the exact length from the opening to the 90-degree, flat-filed edge and insert it into the end of the casing as shown. This bullet will now produce a piercing whistle to signal for rescue.

Conclusion

Your imagination is your only limit when it comes to emergency survival scenarios. I am amazed every day at the creative survival solutions and ideas that I see from friends, students, survival enthusiasts, and fellow instructors. Remember, it’s not IF but WHEN.

With our archives now 4,000+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in June 2016.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

MET-Rx Big 100. These are one of my four favorite protein bars, and my go-to when I’m on a road trip. I told Michael Easter about them, and they became his go-to on an 850-mile hike. Vitamin-fortified and hefty in size — they come in at 410 calories and 32 grams of protein — they’re more of a meal replacement than a snack. They’re pretty cheap, and for a protein bar, they taste good. My favorite flavor is the cookies and cream. Peanut butter pretzel is becoming a new favorite of mine. You can find them at most gas stations. 

Dad Brain by Darby Saxbe. Saxbe is a USC psychologist who’s spent more than twenty years studying fathers and families, from hunter-gatherers in the Congo to suburban dads at Little League baseball games. Her research shows that men’s physiology significantly changes when they become fathers. Your brain rewires and even your testosterone drops so you become more nurturing and better able to take care of little humans. The relationship with your kids becomes a two-way street: you have a huge impact on the well-being of your children, and your kids help you maintain a more youthful brain later in life. A great Father’s Day read to help you appreciate the joys and pleasures of being a dear old dad. For more about the unique nature of dads and their influence on kids, check out Podcast #998: Dad’s Essential Role in Making Kids Awesome and “The Importance of Fathers (According to Science).”

You’re probably taking the wrong painkiller. I’ve always been leery of Tylenol because of what it can do to your liver. OD on Tylenol, and you’re cooked. Advil? I’ve popped that stuff like candy during bad tendonitis flare-ups, figuring it was the safer and gentler option. This piece makes the case that maybe I’ve got it backward. Used as directed, acetaminophen is safer than ibuprofen for most people in most situations. That’s because ibuprofen acts on the whole body and can be rough on the stomach, kidneys, and heart, while acetaminophen has an overall gentler effect. It’s only dangerous if you take too much. Give it a read. It’s meticulously researched and provides some food for thought. Obligatory disclaimer: This isn’t medical advice. Talk to your doctor. 

“Rayando el Sol” by Maná. I’ve talked before about my love for rock en español. One of my favorite bands in this genre is Maná, out of Guadalajara, Mexico (they opened this year’s World Cup). They’ve been at it four decades and are huge across the Spanish-speaking world. They’re like Mexican U2. My favorite song of theirs is “Rayando el Sol,” their first hit, from 1990’s Falta Amor. It’s a love song about a guy whose girl won’t call him back. He looks for her everywhere (en el parque y el cine, for example) and can’t find her. Finally he gives up. It’s easier to reach the sun, he sings, than her heart. If you don’t speak Spanish, it sounds a lot like The Police. Think “Every Breath You Take.” 

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published DB Dialogues: The Friendships, Rivalries, and Extraordinary Minds of the Emerson Circle and Sunday Firesides: In Your Element. 

Quote of the Week

The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.

—Johann Paul Friedrich Richter

Looking for more quotes on dads and fatherhood? Check out our collection of them.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

One of the 18 things every man should do in the summer is spend time in a hammock. On a warm, breezy, blue-sky day, hammocks are an incomparably relaxing place to read, nap, or just daydream. 

Initiating these idylls by hanging up a hammock is a fairly simple task. But it does require a little know-how. The right setup improves comfort, protects your equipment, and makes getting in and out much easier.

The guide above covers the fundamentals of an ideal hammock hang, including tree selection, strap placement, suspension angle, and height. Master these basics, and you’ll be ready to enjoy everything from spending a lazy afternoon at the park to sleeping out under the stars.

Illustrated by Ted Slampyak

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

We all want two things that can seem at odds with each other: to be our own person and to belong. We want to stand apart from the crowd, but we also want to be connected to it. When that balance gets out of whack, we either lose ourselves in tribalism or drift into isolation.

My guest today says many of the problems in modern life stem from our inability to hold these two impulses in tension. His name is Luke Burgis, and he’s the author of The One and the 99: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. Today on the show, Luke explains how becoming a true individual can give you the strength to be a part of a community. We discuss the difference between a solid self and a pseudo self — and what role families and rites of passage can play in moving us toward one or the other — why modern politics feels like a dysfunctional family, the dangers of performative religion, and much more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Luke’s previous appearances on the AoM podcast:
  • Episode #714: Why Do We Want What We Want?
  • Episode #910: Thick Desires, Political Atheism, and Living an Anti-Mimetic Life
• The True Believer by Eric Hoffer
• Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour
• AoM Podcast #1,025: The Life and Legacy of Louis L’Amour
• AoM article with L’Amour’s weekly to-do lists
• AoM article and podcast about C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man and the idea of objective value
• The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
• The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet
• AoM Podcast #847: Overdoing Democracy
• AoM Podcast #1,010: How to Resist Group Anxiety and Become a Differentiated Self
• AoM Article: Becoming a Well-Differentiated Leader
• Dying Breed article: A New Kind of Monasticism — The Power of Community to Shape the Soul
• The Rule of St. Benedict

Connect With Luke Burgis

• Luke’s website

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

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Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Transcript Coming Soon

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Ask any marriage counselor what couples fight about most, and money will be at or near the top of the list. Research backs up clinical experience: disagreements over finances are one of the strongest predictors of marital conflict, chronic stress, and divorce.

Now take that already-volatile subject and add this to the mix: it pains one spouse to open their wallet, while the other spends with reckless abandon. One’s a tightwad; the other’s a spendthrift.

How do you handle a marriage where one of you hates spending money, while the other loves to splurge?

Scott Rick, a behavioral scientist, has spent his career studying this dynamic, and in his book Tightwads and Spendthrifts, he shares research-backed advice on how to navigate this relational rift.

The Spendthrift-Tightwad Scale

Rick’s developed something he calls the Spendthrift-Tightwad scale. It’s a spectrum, and where you land on it depends on how much spending money pains you.

Based on his studies, Rick estimates that about half of people reside in what he calls the “unconflicted middle.” Spending pains them enough to keep them from buying random stuff they see on Instagram, but not so much that their toes are poking through worn-out shoes. These folks don’t have much problem being too tight or too loose with the purse strings. If that describes both you and your spouse, count your blessings, stop reading, and go enjoy your reasonably priced lives.

But as to the other half of the population, about 25% land on the tightwad side of the scale, and 25% on the spendthrift side. Let’s take a look at what’s going on with these folks.

Tightwads: Spending Money Hurts

For tightwads, shelling out money for an optional purchase hurts. Literally. In fMRI studies, when shoppers saw a price their brain judged as too high, their insula lit up — the same patch of cortex that fires when you stub your toe. Buying plane tickets and stepping on a Lego run on some of the same neural circuitry for tightwads, which is why they’re so tightfisted. Spending feels bad. They don’t want to feel bad. So they don’t spend.

Sometimes tightwads gussy up their tightwadness by saying they’re just frugal. But Rick’s research shows there’s a difference between frugality and tightwadness. Frugal people get a kick out of saving — a little glow of satisfaction when they make their resources stretch and find new uses for old paper towel tubes. Tightwads don’t enjoy saving money. They just hate spending.

“Well,” they’ll say, “I’ve just got a lot of self-control.” Rick actually classifies extreme tightwaddery as a failure of self-control: the tightwad can’t override an irrational feeling of distress in order to make a purchase that would objectively improve their life.

So what turns someone into a tightwad?

It’s not about how much money is in their bank account. Rick has found plenty of incredibly rich people who can’t bring themselves to spend because it pains them so much.

Some tightwads are born — they just have a natural disposition to find spending unpleasant. Thank your ancestors for that. But many are made. Rick finds the disposition is common among people who grew up poor or in financially unstable circumstances. Because of their upbringing, they got keyed in early to the dangers of spending. They eventually get to a better place financially, but their brains don’t get the memo. They keep living as if they were poor, convinced their stable finances could collapse next Tuesday. Rick calls this “post-broke-ness stress disorder.”

On paper, tightwads look great. High savings, no consumer debt, good credit. But Rick’s research finds they’re measurably less happy than people in the middle of the spectrum, because all that security gets purchased with deprivation. The tightwad skips the family vacation because airfare hurts too much, never goes out to eat or to the movies, and takes cold showers because it’s too expensive to get the boiler fixed. 

Spendthrifts: Spending Money Doesn’t Hurt

Spendthrifts have the opposite problem: they don’t feel enough pain when they spend. Their psychological alarm over spending too much either goes off too quietly or too late. While the tightwad’s spending brake is stuck on, somebody cut the spendthrift’s brake lines entirely.

And the modern retail environment couldn’t be better designed to take advantage of someone without brakes. Spending used to take effort — you had to drive to the store, stand in a checkout line, and hand a cashier actual bills. Now Shopify keeps your card on file so buying a kayak takes about as much effort as liking a TikTok video, and if the kayak feels a little pricey, a Buy Now, Pay Later service will helpfully chop it into four installments so small you barely register them. Spendthrifts can do their damage from the couch, the carpool line, or even the toilet.

How do people become spendthrifts? Women are statistically a little more likely to be spendthrifts, but it’s a disposition that can be found in either sex. And like with tightwads, income isn’t the determining factor — plenty of broke people spend money they don’t have via credit cards and Buy Now, Pay Later services.

It seems some people are just wired this way; it’s a personality thing. But upbringing plays a role too. Rick finds spendthrifts often grew up in households where the parents spent freely and never set limits. Nobody ever told them “we can’t afford that,” so they never developed the sense that money runs out.

Being a spendthrift has its perks. Spendthrifts say yes to the last-minute lake trip, pick up the check at dinner, and buy the good seats instead of the nosebleeds. While the tightwad sits at home in their hole-ridden sweater, the spendthrift is out making memories. Yet Rick’s research finds they aren’t any happier. They carry a lot of credit card debt, save next to nothing for retirement, and feel plenty of pain about their spending — it just shows up after the purchase instead of before it. The spendthrift knows they have a problem and hates that they can’t get a handle on it. That makes them feel bad, so they buy something to cheer themselves up. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Why Tightwads and Spendthrifts Usually End Up Together

You’d think tightwads would marry tightwads and spendthrifts would marry spendthrifts. They don’t. Rick found that tightwads and spendthrifts are actually more likely to marry their opposites.

The reason is that neither type likes their own tendency.

Tightwads are wound tight by their inability to enjoy themselves, so when, say, a guy meets a lady who orders the appetizer and the dessert without a second thought, he finds it exciting. This gal knows how to live! The spendthrift, meanwhile, is stressed by her own spending chaos, so the tightwad’s stability is appealing. During courtship, each one is the other’s comforting counterbalance.

But then they get married, buy a house, and have to decide whether the Fast Pass at Disneyland is worth it. The traits that drew them together start to grate. His “stability” becomes controlling and joyless. Her “spontaneity” becomes reckless and irresponsible. And because every major life decision — housing, kids, retirement — runs through money, they end up having the same fight over and over.

But there is hope! Tightwads and spendthrifts can have a more harmonious marital money life if they do a few research-backed things. Here’s what Rick recommends.

Set Up “Translucent” Finances

Most financial advice for married couples recommends complete transparency. Both spouses should see exactly what the other spends. Anything less is “financial infidelity.”

Rick says that for a tightwad-spendthrift couple, this is terrible advice. The tightwad gets a line-by-line readout of every latte, every throw pillow, every scented candle his wife buys, and he’s going to have a discussion about it. She starts to feel like she’s living with an auditor. Pretty soon you’re having your fourth argument of the month over a $7 purchase, and the marriage feels less like a romance and more like the relationship you have with Bill in accounting going over your expenses.

Rick recommends something he calls, only half-jokingly, a “money-laundering device.” All income goes into a joint account. Everything that keeps the household afloat comes out of it: the mortgage, the utilities, the insurance, the kids’ braces, the food. Then every month, a fixed, equal chunk of fun money gets automatically dropped into each spouse’s own account, theirs to spend however they want. No questions asked, no receipts required. One spouse can blow their whole allowance on a new wardrobe; the other can let theirs pile up to be swum around in like Scrooge McDuck.

Rick calls this “translucency”: transparency where it matters, privacy where it doesn’t. The spendthrift gets to splurge without the fights; the tightwad has fewer accounting audits eating up their bandwidth.

What About Big Financial Decisions?

The allowance handles the day-to-day piddly stuff, but marriage still serves up big-ticket decisions you have to make together. New car or keep nursing the ’07 Honda Element along? Staycation or take the family to Yosemite?

Rick says the answer to these kinds of questions should be determined by what kind of purchase is being decided on.

With material stuff — a new car, a kitchen remodel — he recommends having the tightwad’s vote carry more weight. Happiness research shows that material upgrades don’t always deliver lasting satisfaction, thanks to a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation. The remodeled kitchen thrills you for about six months, and then the new granite countertops are just . . . the countertops. The tightwad’s reluctance, irrational as it can be, happens to point in the right direction here, so let his foot stay on the brake.

With experiences — vacations, concerts, and the like — let the spendthrift take the wheel. The joy of these doesn’t wear off the way material purchases do, because they turn into memories and stories the family draws on for decades. The spendthrift will book the trip the tightwad would’ve talked himself out of. Twenty years from now, nobody will remember what it cost. They’ll just remember the time Dad laughed like a little kid going down a snow-covered mountain on an inner tube.

If you’re the tightwad, here’s a trick for actually enjoying the trips your spouse springs for: pre-pay everything you can. Book the all-inclusive. When the whole thing is paid off in one lump sum before you leave, you take your hit once, instead of wincing through every menu and excursion price for a week.

Nudge Yourself Toward the Middle

You can also work to move toward the middle of the scale.

If you’re a spendthrift, add friction back into your spending. Rick suggests deleting your saved card info from Amazon and other retail sites. Having to get up and find the physical card every time you want to buy something can squelch the impulse-buy itch. Creating a “short budget” helps too; instead of a monthly budget, create a weekly one. Having a cap on your spending in the short term can make economic trade-offs feel more concrete.

If you’re a tightwad, take friction out. Reframing expenditures as investments seems to blunt the pain of spending. A vacation becomes an investment in your family, a good mattress an investment in your health, an upgraded wardrobe an investment in your career.

Accepting Who You Are and Working With What You’ve Got

It helps to remember that your wife isn’t splurging out of malice, and you aren’t pinching pennies out of selfishness. You’re just two people with differently wired brains bumping up against each other. Rick’s research suggests that while you can nudge yourself closer to the middle, you probably can’t turn your spouse into a different kind of spender, and you can’t fully rewire yourself either. So work with what you’ve got. Set up your accounts and your decision-making so your differences stop colliding every day.

And when her spending does drive you crazy, remember that her spontaneity, her free and easy way with money, was part of what attracted you to her in the first place; it’s just one side of the same coin of character, and the other side still delights you.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

At AoM, we’re champions of the lost art of letter writing. Emails, texting, and the wide variety of other digital mediums available to us in the modern age are convenient and efficient, but they can’t hold a candle to the warm, tangible, classy nature of handwritten correspondence. Letters are the next best thing to showing up personally at someone’s door.

Of course, snail mail doesn’t need to replace our digital messaging — it’s just a satisfying activity to take part in from time to time. 

It’s hard to get letters of correspondence going these days — you can write to people, but they may not write back (this makes postcards a nice option, as the one-way intention is built-in). 

But there are 7 other types of letters we suggest every man write at least once before he turns 70. Each kind of letter described below covers a different part of the human experience, and provides a benefit to both the writer and the recipient (though you don’t have to send them all). The former gets to participate in the exercise of putting words to feelings, a process that can hone gratitude, humility, and perspective on life. The latter gets to open an envelope filled with comfort and encouragement. It’s win-win.

With most of these types of letters, doing it once is definitely just the minimum goal. Making their writing a regular habit will keep the benefits flowing to you and the lucky recipients of your notes — until you’re 70 and beyond.

7 Letters to Write Before You Turn 70

1. A Letter of Congratulations

The personal pride one feels from reaching a goal is certainly satisfying. But having others recognize the accomplishment definitely makes it all the sweeter. We want others to see in us, what we see in ourselves.

Acknowledging the milestones of others with a letter of congratulations warms the heart of the recipient, and helps keep us humble as well. Watching for and describing the achievements of those around us not only serves as an antidote to narcissism, but inspires us to keep striving for our own goals.

Congratulatory notes can strengthen both personal and professional relationships, and regularly sending them to loved ones and colleagues is a great idea. But you should also consider occasionally writing a longer letter of congratulations when someone close to you reaches an important milestone, makes a particularly positive decision, or achieves a goal that leaves you especially impressed. Such a letter provides both the writer and the recipient the opportunity to reflect on how far they’ve come, the setbacks they’ve surmounted, and the positive attributes that helped them reach their goal and will continue to serve them well in the future. Maybe your brother just joined the Marines. Maybe your friend set a new record in the 400-meter dash. Maybe your daughter is about to become the first person in your family to graduate college. Let them know that you’re proud of them — that you see them.

For tips on how to write a letter of congratulations, check out this guide.

2. A Letter to Your Father

No figure looms larger in a man’s psyche than his father. For better and for worse, our dads are our first models for manhood.

Every boy hopes for the “perfect dad.” Our fathers sometimes fall so short of this model that we ache in disappointment for what might have been. Or they may be so close to the ideal that we worry we’ll never live up to the example they set. Either way, our relationship with our father shaped us as no other, and our feelings about that relationship run deep, whether we can even acknowledge them or not.

Most of us have never taken the time to really thank our dads for everything they’ve done for us, or on the flip side, fully faced the painful realization of how much they’ve hurt us. Yet if we don’t understand how we feel about our dads, we can’t understand how they shaped us, and we can’t understand ourselves and why we turned out the way we did.

Writing a letter to your father is an excellent way to reflect on these questions. You don’t have to send this letter if you don’t want to — it can be an exercise you do just for yourself. The purpose is simply to articulate, and thus better understand, your feelings about your dad.

For some ideas on what to write about and how to structure your letter to your father, see this article.

3. A Letter of Condolence/Sympathy

Of all the letters you will write during your life, the sympathy note is arguably the hardest to pen. It can be very difficult to find the right words, or any words really, to say. We worry about saying the wrong thing, or we feel awkward talking about such a serious matter. It’s thus often tempting not to dabble in this correspondence category at all. We tell ourselves that the grieving person knows we love and support them anyway.

And they probably do. But everyone would rather hear it from you themselves. They want a tangible reminder that you are thinking about them during their hard time. Your words can bring a brief, but very real moment of comfort. I can tell you that it really does mean a lot when someone takes the time to say, “I know you’re in pain and I hurt that you’re hurting.”

The sympathy letter is not only one of the hardest on this list to write, it’s one you should work the hardest to make a recurring habit rather than a one-time event. Whenever a friend or loved one loses someone close to them, take the time to pen them a note. Whether you live close to the person or far away, whether you knew the person they lost well or not at all, make it a priority.

For a full guide on how to word a sympathy note, see this article.

4. A Letter to Your Future Self

At a certain point in your life — if you’re like me, it will happen in your late twenties — the person you were as a young man will begin to seem like another individual, someone separate from your grown-up self. It’s a strange thing to experience. It’s not that you lose memories of your past, or change so radically from your younger self you don’t recognize him (though that might be the case), but simply that your boyhood self and your current self come to seem like two distinct individuals. Almost like the younger is an ancestor of the older; the child is truly the father of the man.

Because of this cleaving between our past and present, we are able to fairly objectively reflect on and examine who we were as a young man. But what would that young man say if the tables were turned and he was sizing up your current self?

Writing a letter to your future self gives you a chance to find out. Pen a letter that you don’t intend to open for a period of years or decades. Express your hopes for the man you will be when that envelope is finally ripped open. What do you hope your future self is doing for work? Does he have a wife and kids? Is he still active in his faith? What ideals do you hope your future self hasn’t given up on? You may find when you eventually read the letter many years hence that your goals and ideals have changed a great deal, but that you actually don’t mind, because you traded them in for better ones. The naiveté and earnestness of your youthful voice may cause you to smile and chuckle. Alternatively, the passion of the younger you may create a great sinking feeling, as you realize how far you have strayed from how you once hoped to turn out. Perhaps you have become a man that your younger self would be ashamed of. His time-traveling entreaties may bring you to your senses, revive your old dreams, and inspire you to change the course you’re then taking.

5. A Love Letter

It’s not always easy to express our feelings to our significant others. We’d rather show our love through our actions. While women definitely appreciate these concrete manifestations of our commitment, their brains are often more language oriented than ours. They want to hear the words behind the actions. They want to know exactly what’s in our hearts.

Yet it’s hard to not only find the right words to express how we feel about someone, but to also make it flow and sound real purty. It’s especially difficult when you’re sitting down with someone and trying to remember exactly what you wanted to say. Enter the love letter.

We often associate love letters with days gone by — the eras past when men went off to war and left on journeys that took them away from their loved ones for months or even years at a time. In reading biographies of great men, I’ve been continually impressed with the passionate love letters they penned to their wives; while we often think of men of the past as being more stoic than us, some of them definitely had us moderns beat in the romance department.

Yet your sweetheart doesn’t have to be far away for you to write a love letter to her. A love letter is appropriate even when you’re sleeping alongside her every night. It’s a chance to express your feelings in a more ardent way than you do on a day-to-day basis.

A fervently romantic letter (or a whole year of them) becomes a testament in the history of your love. Such a letter constitutes a record of your relationship that she’ll hold onto for the rest of her life, and that your grandchildren will read and “awwww” over.

For tips on how to write a love letter that’ll make her swoon, check out this guide.

6. A Letter of Encouragement

We’ve all had times where we’ve struggled mightily with setbacks and doubt, times when we were tempted to abandon our path and beat a retreat. If we were lucky, someone we trusted stepped in at the right moment to offer us some words of encouragement — a shot in the arm that helped us gain perspective on our challenges, see a vision of the light at the end of the tunnel, and gain the strength to keep journeying on.

Receiving such reassurance face-to-face is always quite effective and desirable. Nothing like a literal arm around the shoulder. But in many ways, it’s even better to have such encouragement delivered via letter. Not simply because being physically present with someone is not always possible, but because a letter offers the struggler a permanent record to which they can return again and again for succor. In the midst of a pep talk from a friend or parent, our spirits soar, but when we’re back alone their words become fuzzy and our hearts sink. A letter can be read and re-read during times when the sojourner once again falters; it serves as a prick to his memory — something to which he can hold fast and renew his confidence.

A letter of encouragement tells someone in the midst of a hard time that you’ve got their back and have faith in their ability to continue on or find a way out. Perhaps your niece has gone away to college but is feeling depressed and thinking of dropping out — you had a similar experience and can share some advice on how to cope. Perhaps your son has broken up with his first love and thinks it’s the end of the world, and you can offer your assurance that it’s decidedly not and there are plenty of fish in the sea. Or maybe your friend has been hit with a wave of homesickness while at boot camp; you were part of the process he used to make the decision to join the military, and you can remind him of how he arrived at that choice.

7. A Letter of Gratitude

Gratitude is one of the hallmarks of a life well lived. It is a virtue that we intuitively know profoundly impacts our personal happiness and the quality of our relationships. And research has repeatedly proven the validity of this viscerally understood truth.

Nothing else can buoy up both our personal and professional relationships quite like gratitude. A warm word of appreciation can instantly thaw the ice between people, and strengthen an already solid bond.

Taking the time to articulate our gratitude humbles us with the realization of how dependent we are on the kindness and help of others, and how lucky we are to have them in our lives. Expressing our gratitude also helps us put the not-so-good things in our lives in proper perspective by showing us that even in tough times, we still have a lot to be thankful for.

Write thank you notes early and often, for things both big and small. While it’s often tempting to send a message of gratitude via email (and it’s certainly better than nothing), it’s incredibly heartwarming to receive such a message inscribed with pen and paper. If something happens during the day that brings a smile to your face or warms your heart, jot off a quick note to the person responsible. If someone goes above and beyond at work, leave them a short note to let them know how much you appreciate and recognize their efforts.

In addition to these quick notes, at least once, hopefully several times, take the time to write a longer letter of gratitude to someone who’s had an especial influence in your life — your wife, your favorite teacher growing up, a best friend. Reflect on all they’ve done for you, and the difference it’s made in your life. Get as specific as you can as you recall these things — people’s hearts are truly warmed when they see that you noticed their attributes and efforts, and remember them well.

With our archives now 4,000+ articles deep, we’ve decided to republish a classic piece each Sunday to help our newer readers discover some of the best, evergreen gems from the past. This article was originally published in June 2014.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Your dad bod could raise your kids’ risk for obesity and disease. You’ve probably heard of the “dad bod.” It’s the body shape of a guy who’s not super fat, but not in particularly good shape, either. It’s gotten a friendly rebrand over the past decade with articles saying that some women prefer the soft dad bod over a super shredded physique. But a new review out of UC Irvine, published in Current Obesity Reports, complicates the dad bod’s innocuous reputation. We usually talk about a mom’s health before and during pregnancy shaping outcomes for her future kid, but researchers found that dad’s health plays a role too, and earlier than you’d think. A father’s weight and habits before conception can change his sperm quality and the epigenetic markers that switch on early in a child’s development and influence their metabolism, appetite, and disease risk down the road. Obesity, it turns out, is estimated to be 40 to 70 percent heritable. The encouraging part is that a lot of it looks reversible. Drop the weight, clean up your habits, and the markers you pass on improve. If you’re planning on becoming a dad soon, take this as a nudge to start eating better and hitting the gym. 

In Defense of Sunlight by Rowan Jacobsen. We had Rowan Jacobsen on the podcast two years ago to talk about the health benefits of sunlight, and his new book dives even deeper into the research-backed evidence of just how good it is for us. His argument is that we’ve spent decades living under what he calls a “zero-sun” policy: slather on sunscreen, dodge the sun whenever you can, and take a vitamin D pill to cover the difference. And he makes a strong case that we’ve got it mostly backwards. Yes, too much sun causes skin cancer, but skin cancer kills relatively few people, and the cost of avoiding the sun shows up everywhere else, like high blood pressure, depression, poor sleep, autoimmune disease, and even all-cause mortality. Ever since I went down this rabbit hole myself several summers ago, I’ve tried to get a little sun daily. It feels good, man. Jacobsen boils his advice down to seven words: Get sun. Not too much. Go outside. The book releases to the public next week.

Douk-Douk Folding Knife. I’ve had one of these in my pocket knife arsenal for years. It’s a simple folding knife with a single blade that tucks into a housing of stamped steel. The simplicity is exactly what I like about it. Douk-Douk has an interesting history. It’s been made by the Cognet family in Thiers, France, since 1929. Gaston Cognet designed it for France’s Pacific colonies. It didn’t take off there, but became the unofficial national pocketknife of Algeria instead. It’s a good beater knife to have around for everyday knife needs. 

The Endless Summer. My dad surfed in Corpus Christi as a teenager. The surfing isn’t great in the Gulf of Mexico, but it was a big part of his young life. He’d watch The Endless Summer from time to time when I was a kid to re-live his glory days. This 1966 Bruce Brown documentary is about two guys chasing summer around the world so they never run out of waves. It’s an incredibly relaxing movie to watch. I’ve never surfed, but I come back to this movie every few summers because it gives me a peek into a subculture — and a part of my dad’s life — that I don’t know much about.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published The Four Faces of Envy and Sunday Firesides: Exercise, Man’s Most Faithful Companion.

Quote of the Week

What is difficulty? Only a word indicating the degree of strength requisite for accomplishing particular objects; a mere notice of the necessity for exertion; a bugbear to children and fools; only a stimulus to men.

—Samuel Warren

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Every man needs a multitool or three stashed around the house or garage, or as a permanent part of his EDC. But how do you choose one in a multitool landscape that has hundreds of options, including for niche users like backcountry campers and first responders?

If you’re like many consumers, you start to do some research. But discussions and reviews of multitools can quickly become overwhelming and overly detailed. Most guys I know, myself included, are less interested in the sheer number of tools or the technical specs and more interested in one main thing: usefulness. How practical is this tool and how will it make my life easier? 

On your behalf, reader, I recently sought to cut through the noise to offer some clear advice on what multitools are worth picking up. I did a bunch of research, made some choices, and tested six of the most popular multitools on the market today. The options (and most recommended tools) remain dominated by three primary players: Leatherman, Gerber, and Victorinox (Swiss Army) — all of which you’ll see tested below. 

For size comparison. Starting on top and moving clockwise: Amazon Basics, Gerber Truss, Gerber Dime, Leatherman Skeletool, Victorinox, and Leatherman Free P2. 

It should be noted at the outset that these tools, with one glaring exception, did a pretty good job with the basics and would be perfectly serviceable for personal use or given as a present (a multitool is a classic gift). Most of my quibbles are fairly minor: I didn’t like the action of folding a tool out or putting it back into place, opening the pliers was a bit more awkward than it had to be, or it just didn’t feel right in the hand. When you’re spending good money on a tool, though, you want it to do exactly what it’s meant to do — and in a comfortable, easy-to-use manner, to boot. 

I’m not crowning a single winner here. Instead, here is a honest look at six popular options — and how to choose the right one for your specific needs.

Amazon Basics Multitool ($19)  

For the simple fact that this tool is sold under the Amazon Basics banner and is dirt cheap, it’s going to show up high on search results and sell a ton of units. Which is a real bummer, because this multitool blows. 

Verdict

From the start, this tool just did not feel very solid. Its two main pieces move laterally, giving it a cheap and clunky vibe. The implements do not open or close very easily, and accessing the pliers is a less-than-smooth experience. This review is short and sweet: do not buy the Amazon Basics multitool for yourself or your loved ones. 

Victorinox Swiss Tool X ($155) 

The maker of the original Swiss Army knife has been around for nearly 150 years. They’re best known for their red, pocket-sized tools that are centered around the knife and screwdriver bits, as opposed to today’s tools that are generally built around a hefty set of pliers. While I didn’t test one of the red classics, I did buy one of their modern options that is more like the standard modern multitool.

Verdict

The Victorinox was the longest tool I reviewed and among the top two heaviest. Bulky can be okay, if the benefits outweigh that downside, but that’s not quite the case here. A big part of the problem with this one is that it features a very polished mirror finish, making it slick to hold and use. When it comes to any tool, a good solid grip is critically important, and this multitool is lacking that in a big way.

And while opening and closing the integrated implements is generally smooth, the inner functions are not the easiest to access and required some fingernail fiddling that wasn’t very fun. Those downsides, along with the hefty price tag, mean that the Swiss Tool X is not one of my top choices. 

Leatherman Free P2 ($130)  

No multitool review would be complete without testing an American-made Leatherman or two. Since the 1980s, Leatherman has been the go-to brand for multitools — and for good reason. They’re generally reliable, durable, and can be passed down from grandfather to father to son. The only real problem is that there are so many Leathermans available. There are a few dozen options to choose from, which is rather paralyzing as a consumer trying to figure out what to buy — from the $250 ARC to $40 pocket-sized options and everything in between. 

Ultimately, I went with Leatherman’s “Free” system, which was appealing to try out because it touts one-handed opening and locking of tools, for those times where you just don’t have a second hand available. 

Verdict

The reality, for me at least, was that I could never quite figure out how the one-handed operation was supposed to work. It felt forced and awkward, even if technically doable. (Plus, I actually found one-handed use to be easier with the Gerber Truss and the Leatherman Skeletool.) 

The lever for closing tools was not very intuitive or easy to operate.

Opening and closing the pliers was slick — probably the best and smoothest of the bunch — but the inner tools were fairly hard to access without first opening the outer tools. The notches on the end are supposed to make it easier, but I didn’t find that to be the case in practice. 

I also didn’t like the mechanism for unlocking the tools for closing them. The lever was the hardest to use of all the tools I tested. Overall, it’s a fine multitool, it just doesn’t have the smoothest or easiest operation of the bunch.  

Leatherman Skeletool CX ($100) 

Leatherman’s pared down Skeletool has become very popular in recent years. Whereas many multitools have suffered from feature bloat (do I really need multiple blades? or a can opener?), the Skeletool offers users the few tools they use most: pliers, one quality blade, a couple of screwdriver bits, and a bottle opener. The stripped down tool therefore weighs less and carries a slimmer profile than its dozen-tool (or more) cousins. 

Verdict 

Somewhat surprisingly, the Skeletool has been the full-size multitool that I’ve reached for the most. I wasn’t sure if it actually had the features I would need, but turns out it’s popular for a reason — about 80% of what I need a multitool for is covered with a blade, pliers, and a screwdriver. Plus, I found one-handed operation of the knife to be the easiest of anything I tested. 

Given its weight and profile, I’ve come to think of the Skeletool almost as more of a pocketknife with a couple extra features. It carries a lot easier than the heavier tools listed here, and the clip lets you easily snap it onto a pocket, backpack, keychain, or tent. 

Gerber Truss ($55) 

For most of the 2000s, Gerber has been right behind Leatherman as a leading maker of multitools (as well as other heavier-duty outdoor blades, like survival knives and hatchets). Rather than being sleek and shiny, their style is decidedly rugged and tactical. Like Leatherman, Gerber offers plenty of options, but its smaller lineup makes choosing one a little easier. I went with the Truss, which is their middle-of-the-road, standard multitool. 

Verdict 

Overall, I really like this tool. It just feels sturdy in your hand. The implements are thick and solid, so you know they won’t bust if you put pressure or leverage on them. Opening every tool, including the inner ones, is a breeze — probably the easiest of what I tested. The pliers are spring-loaded once they’re fully in position, which is handy. And the mechanism for closing each locked tool is a simple, easy-to-operate pull-back slide. 

An easy sliding mechanism to close locked-in-place tools.

My only gripe is that it feels a bit bulky in your hand when using the fold-out tools. I wish the profile was a little sleeker, and I’m not entirely sure why one end is wider (which is indeed noticeable while in use). This isn’t a multitool that fits nicely in a pocket. That said, this is a great tool overall — at a great price — for your garage, toolbox, tacklebox, camping kit, etc. 

Gerber Dime ($35) 

A true mini-multitool option can come in surprisingly handy. But finding one that doesn’t feel flimsy or disposable is not easy. Enter the Gerber Dime. It’s just two inches long and is literally a quarter of the overall size of the Victorinox. Cool. 

Verdict 

I’m a bit shocked by how solid this tool feels for how small it is. With a pliers, scissors, knife blade, “retail package” blade (literally just for boxes and hard-to-open packaging), a couple screwdriver bits, and even tweezers, it really has everything you’d need in a multitool — just in a smaller size.

Smaller than my car key and incredibly rugged. Impressive!

Overall, this thing is cute as a button (sorry, I meant rugged as hell), easily fits on any key ring, and has been a lifesaver on multiple occasions in my couple months of testing. It shouldn’t be your only multitool, but I might say it’s the single option on this list that’s a must-have. Of all the multitools I’ve tested, the Dime is what I’ve actually used the most because it’s been easier to have on my person at all times. And that counts for a heck of a lot when it comes to judging the practicality and convenience of a multitool. 

Conclusion  

To be honest, I’m not the handiest guy. I don’t get super excited about tools in general and my DIY chops are pretty average. Given that context, it’s my opinion that there’s a place in your home and pocket for a few of these multitools. A keychain tool is underratedly clutch, and at just $35, you can’t go wrong with the Gerber Dime. A knife that can fit in your pocket and has a couple extra features, like the Skeletool, is nice to have along on day trips, picnics, and other less intense outings — or as something that lives in your junk drawer for easy tasks around the house. And a more intense multitool, like the Gerber Truss, is absolutely valuable in your toolbox for small jobs or to have along on tool-heavy outings like fishing or camping. 

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.