Ramstad: How Jeff McComas, engineer, investment DIYer and pickleball fiend, learned to live extraordinarily

A few weeks into his first job, Jeff McComas wound up working a lot of overtime, leading to a paycheck that was bigger than he knew what to do with.

He picked up a copy of Money magazine looking for investing tips. It was the early 1990s, he was 22, the internet was new and people were starting to share interests online. McComas soon began learning from electronic chats.

“I gravitated towards the philosophy of do it yourself, don’t pay an adviser, keep costs low, save what you can, figure out your risk,” McComas told me over a lunch this month.

He got swept up in a corner of Morningstar’s nascent website called “Vanguard Diehards,” where people discussed the keep-it-simple investing ideas of Vanguard Group founder John C. “Jack” Bogle.

One day, McComas invited Minnesotans in the online discussion for a real-life meeting at a bar on St. Paul’s Grand Avenue. Eight people showed up.

Eventually, their informal meetings grew to become the Twin Cities chapter of Bogleheads, a nationwide movement of people who invest patiently using 10 principles put forth by Bogle. They include living below your means, investing in both good times and bad, and using index funds to save costs.

Today, quarterly meetings of Bogleheads attract hundreds of people around the Twin Cities. The national convention for Bogleheads drew thousands of fans and investors to Minneapolis last fall.

“I hear all the buzz going on,” McComas said, describing Boglehead meetings. “People talking and sharing asset allocations and, ‘Oh, here’s a good tip,’ and ‘What’s that website?’ I just love, love, love that. I get so enthused knowing people are giving disinterested advice, that they’re just sharing and not making a profit out of what they say, and therefore you trust them.”

For a 2009 book called "The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning," McComas wrote the chapter on early retirement. Then in 2017, he took his own advice, retiring at age 47 from a career as a chemical engineer, confident in the nest egg he and his wife, Rebecca, had built.

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “Because in your mind you’re thinking 65 is when you retire. But I’m a spreadsheeter, and I ran scenarios. ... It looked pretty good.”

Until the future disappeared.

In January 2023, McComas was diagnosed with intestinal cancer and given less than a year to live. He taught his wife and their two children everything he knew about their finances and lives, from passwords to taxes.

“I’m an engineer, so I have lists I went through, and we did training and I got really prepared,” McComas said. “And then a year comes and goes, and it’s like, I’m still here. Well, I told Rebecca, let’s do tax prep again. She said, ‘No, you just do it.’”

His six older siblings rallied around him; they’d grown up in Faribault and migrated to the metro area. He chronicled it all on a personal CaringBridge website and tracked every piece of health data on spreadsheets.

“Maybe my way of dealing with it is I have nothing to hide and so I share my experience and learn from it,” he said.

On June 17, in an email to Twin Cities Bogleheads, McComas wrote, “I don’t have many Boglehead meetings left in me.”

He added he had no plans for a departure “but medically it’s just math.”

McComas, who is 55, told me he expects to soon reach a decision point about quality vs. quantity of life. For instance, he now gets chemotherapy every other week and doesn’t want it weekly. “That would not give me any quality of life,” he said.

On chemo weeks, the drugs leave McComas tired and off-balance. By Saturday, though, he’s ready to get back to his favorite thing about life after retirement — pickleball. He and Rebecca play three or four times on nonchemo weeks, mainly with the Woodbury Pickleball Club.

“I think there’s actually a big overlap between pickleball players and Bogleheads,” McComas said, when we met later at one of the couple’s outings with the Woodbury club. “It’s active people who enjoy each other’s company and like to help each other out.”

After a particularly rough patch last year that kept him away from the pickleball routine, he returned to the courts at Shawnee Park to find the pickleballers wearing T-shirts that said “Team Jeff.”

Another way McComas stayed busy in retirement was teaching English as a second language to adult immigrants and refugees. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, McComas helped a Ukrainian family move to Minnesota.

Rebecca first noticed the way Jeff brought people together when they were students at Iowa State University, and half of his dorm floor was filled with international students.

“He befriended them and helped them out. Like, ‘Hey, you guys are part of the group,’” she said. “He was 18 doing that. Maybe it’s just kind of cooked in.”

This spring, McComas joined a lawsuit against the state of Colorado seeking nonresident access to medical aid in dying. If allowed, McComas would drive to Colorado, pick up the prescription and have it on hand for when he nears the end. Last year, he lobbied the Minnesota Legislature to legalize medically assisted end-of-life options.

“It’s 2025,” he said. “Why can’t we do that here? It’s 12 states that allow medical aid in dying, but nowhere in the Midwest.”

On the sideline at pickleball, one of the Woodbury club members asks McComas about the Colorado suit. She expressed her fear that suicides would rise, or chronically ill people would make other mistakes, if they had greater access to drugs to kill themselves.

“I know exactly what you’re saying,” he told her. “It’s a good argument against the idea.”

This week was a chemo week for McComas. I checked in with him as I wrote this column. He texted back that a five-hour nap helped through a rough day.

“Glad you’re still pounding out the story,” he added. “My summary? Life is all about human connections.”

For him, it’s also been about helping out and having fun — and being smart about his health, time and money.

“You know those Boglehead principles?” McComas asked as our first lunch ended. “I can take those 10 ideas and turn them into ‘Here’s how I do cancer.’

“Minimize your risks. Stay the course with your chemo. Don’t change everything willy-nilly. Don’t try to time your drug. A lot of these principles, I think I inherently applied to my cancer battle.”