Here’s hopin’!
Ok , that particular post of yours quoted me so I thought you were replying to me.
That’s my plan too for sure.
Heh. Some time ago, because I had the time and Excel skills (and also because I have no life), I create a spreadsheet that will do exactly that–track my IRA as I take out RMDs. I created it so that I can easily change the yearly ROI. If I can attain a yearly investment rate of 5.6%, and only take out the RMD, I will indeed have more money at age 90 than I will have next year when I start my RMDs.
The reality is that retirement asset outcomes are highly bimodal.
Some fraction of people run out of savings and die broke or functionally so. The remaining fraction ends up richer at their own funeral than on any other day of their life. Rather few percentagewise end up in the intermediate case of a slow steady drawdown followed by death before the dwindling money runs out.
It goes almost without saying that the next 20 years of US financial and tax history may bear rather little resemblance to the last 20. Past performance has never been a guarantee of future outcomes, but the predictive value of past precedent is at an especially low level right now. And may be declining further rapidly.
What, me worry?
So I expect to retire between 55 and 60, depending on a few factors. Obviously, I’ll either need my wife to keep working to provide the insurance (she says she wants to) or buy it on an exchange. I’m 52 now.
I’ve paid a lot of attention to my retirement savings, and I’m in good shape there. I haven’t paid much attention to Medicare, and was thinking it’s time to start educating myself.
Anyone want to share their thoughts and experiences with Medicare? What’s covered, what’s not, what supplemental plans one should consider, what they cost, etc?
I’m sure there’s lots of good info online, and I’ll look into that as well, but I also value the collective wisdom of the Dope.
I have bookmarked this thread:
Get this book, whether dead tree or e-.
You can probably find older versions at libraries or whatever, and if you’re still a few years from retirement, the nuance differences between the e.g. 2020 and 2025 versions will be fine.
@Maserschmidt’s thread cite is the other great online asset. I found that reading the book first gave me a solid framework to drop JohnT’s many tidbits of wisdom into.
I’ve heard other people say this and it baffles me completely.
IMO/IME the absolute worst scenario for a couple is when one is retired and the other is not. The couple has all the restrictions on their joint activities that a job entails. But has reduced income. And the retired person is stymied in many of the things a retired person might want to do with their spouse.
If spouse has a flexible enough job working few enough hours it can be force-fit. But the idea you might be retired for 10 or 15 years before she does is a recipe IMO for you two to grow apart, develop resentments, etc. Sometimes economic or medical necessity forces one’s hands. But if not, it sounds like a set-up for strife and failure.
YMMV of course, but I wonder how you two (any you two, but @OldOlds in particular) would square that circle of two utterly incompatible lives and schedules under one roof.
First, thanks to all to the links. That old @JohnT thread’s first post was very interesting, but it’s quite a long thread and I should be working…
Regarding the retirement: I’ve lost any interest in what I do for a living. It’s a shame, because I used to love it. Now it’s just a slog. I managed to advance to a level where I’m just a stuffed shirt, and no longer doing the work I actually loved, which was managing drug development programs and then later leading business development. Now the most important thing I do is sign shit, because I have the signing authority. And I’m finding it impossible to go back, even though the pay hit would be fine.
We are a childless couple, and work is my wife’s hobby.
All rhetorical questions for you to consider in your own mind, not justify to me …
So what are your hobbies? What do you propose to do with your days? For me, retirement is about the freedom to do extended travel in the relatively few remaining vigorous years I can count on. Or to stay up late, or get up early, or whatever. But the nature of my relationships has always been I’d rather spend 20 hours a day with my wife than see her only once a week. Whatever I/we choose to do, I want to do jointly.
My own married history is kinda complicated and special-cased, but what killed my second marriage was “No dear, I can’t travel with you for even 3 days because I have a nil-wage job that matters more to me than you do”. So that left me with: go spend 3 weeks in Europe alone, or sit around the house waiting for her to be available for a few hours.
So I apologize if I’m coming on a bit strong, but your plans were triggering major alarm bells and flashbacks for me. You certainly aren’t me, but I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least throw out a well-intentioned caution flag.
Good luck. Seriously, not snarkily.
Thanks for the link to that book, which I will likely buy soon. I’m maybe 8-10 years from retirement yet, but I’m starting to think about it.
Question: is the information about government pensions limited to federal pensions, such as FERS and military pensions? I have a government pension coming, but it’s a state government pension, being a public employee. I wonder how transferrable the pension information is. There seems to be less information about pensions in a lot of retirement resources, since so few people have them these days.
Yes it is. As the blurb says: “Learn all about maximizing your Social Security, Medicare, SSI, Veterans, FERS and CSRS benefits.”
The version I have is about 4 years old. There is some discussion about the interaction of SS and those state or local government pensions that included not being part of SS. But they certainly did not (do not?) go into the details about each of the individual state’s various pension schemes.
Thanks. I didn’t think so, but I thought I’d ask. I’m going to buy the book anyway, and try to figure out my pension stuff on my own. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it–my state has some pretty good instructional videos about it–but it’s the kind of thing you want to be sure you understand before you make an irrevocable decision.
Everyone situation is going to be different. I retired three years before my husband did and I wasn’t thrilled about it because of the restrictions - but the truth is, it wasn’t that much different than when I was working. I always had more time off than he did and our income didn’t go down that much. ( between my pension and not saving for retirement and lowered expenses, I think I actually had more money post-retirement) But I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a recipe to grow apart. I will say however, that I’d be annoyed if my husband had retired and expected me to keep working because of the insurance.
I didn’t really have any hobbies, exactly, when I retired. But there were things I had always wanted to do/learn that I never had time for before.
This is an important flag. By the time I’d retired, my wife and I had talked at length about post-retirement life - what we’d want to do (and wouldn’t want to do), how we’d carve out personal space, etc. - and had landed on something we both liked. The personal side of retirement definitely requires planning.
This.
When I was working, I had cultivated a lot of friendships with fellow employees that extended beyond working hours…lunches, drinks after work, getting together to play poker, etc. When I retired, those activities mostly ceased, which is not what I had expected. I had to initiate any get-together with ex-fellow-employees, and eventually I got tired of doing so. Fortunately, I still have two groups of now-retired folks that I still see on a semi-regular basis.
Also, when I retired, most of my friends were still working. While I had no trouble filling my days with things to do, my social life wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be.
But, again, almost all of my friends have now retired, and I get together with them a couple of times each month.
Our planner at Fidelity claims that if market conditions are decent, we’ll have more in our accounts when we shuffle off this mortal coil, than we do right now. Obviously that is based on a lot of assumptions, like we need to replace our current take-home pay entirely, the market doesn’t entirely crash, SS doesn’t get slashed too badly, we don’t need to make any really big withdrawals, and so on. Supposedly there will be money left over even if the market goes badly. Me, I say “just tell me when I need to die”.
Of course we have been relatively high earners and have been saving to the point of pain (not much “ready cash” because everything goes into the 401(k), so we’ve managed to build up a lot.
My daughter, who is quite low income but has okay cash flow (lives in a cheap town, and we are helping with the rent) REFUSES to put anything aside because “I’ll never be able to afford to retire”. Well, sure, not with THAT attitude!!! 10% of her pay wouldn’t be that much given the cash flow, and she’s got nearly 40 years ahead of her.
It’s similar to when you’re a young single - then you have kids and suddenly your social life takes a complete 180 turn.
My in-laws moved to Florida when they retired. Knew almost nobody down there, but they moved into a 55+ community and made a whole new circle of friends.
Of course over the years, those friends tended to die or be “moved back home” as their health failed. Toward the end, they saw one other couple, and that only rarely.
An early comment, from a couple years back, mentioned employers calling for help with stuff.
I’m already forcing mine to learn to live without me at least some of the time - between various surgeries, I’ll have been out of pocket for several significant chunks of time this year, and a significant chunk next year. They’re always grateful to have me back, so I’m not too worried that they’ll think they can do without me long term, LOL. But I’m in the odd position of not entirely caring. I hit FRA in less than a year. If this project says they don’t need me any more, I’ll stick a fork in it and call it done.
It’s one of the most difficult thing about gaining perspective in life as you age. Seeing the lack of it in many younger relatives and figuring out how to convey it with seeming condescending/patronizing. I knew some young folks that had their act together, but I sure didn’t. I didn’t give a shit about retirement in my twenties and also thought owning a home was for suckers (grew up in a family of renters).
The ONLY reason I am financially semi-secure now (barring assorted disasters) and newly retired in my late fifties, is that I was lucky enough to get a job with a quality pension plan at a relatively young age. One of my siblings was neither thoughtful (as I wasn’t) nor as lucky as me and will probably be working until 67-70 if SS is still there, until he drops otherwise.