Retirement planning

[rbryan4]

Wow, it's already been a year Donna? Where does the time go?

[Donna D.]

Originally Posted by rbryan4

Wow, it's already been a year Donna? Where does the time go?

My mother has told me that as I age.. life becomes like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes!

I'm so very glad I followed Alf's advice, don't wait until retirement until you get the ETI build you want. Buy it as soon as you can and enjoy every single moment... then RETIRE. Great advice.

Going out in Ten Forward in a week... already looking forward to it! AND, I'm still 2 years, 5 months and 20 days from retirement

[OneOleMan]

Originally Posted by Donna D.

Going out in Ten Forward in a week... already looking forward to it! AND, I'm still 2 years, 5 months and 20 days from retirement

But who's counting?

[Mary F]

Originally Posted by Donna D.

I'm so very glad I followed Alf's advice, don't wait until retirement until you get the ETI build you want. Buy it as soon as you can and enjoy every single moment... then RETIRE. Great advice.

Going out in Ten Forward in a week... already looking forward to it! AND, I'm still 2 years, 5 months and 20 days from retirement

I'm glad you took Alf's advice, too - although it's working out well for us to have "waited" to realize that moving up to a 21 ft. is the thing to do. For us. Retired 5 months, 9 days ago. Two months, 5 days 'til our Escape is ready.

[Jim Bennett]

I wish I had a definite time line for retirement. I'll go when I am sure the bucket is full enough.

Hopefully not too far out , shooting for 60 at the most. I'll begin retiring part time soon though.

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by Jim Bennett

I wish I had a definite time line for retirement. I'll go when I am sure the bucket is full enough.

Hopefully not too far out , shooting for 60 at the most. I'll begin retiring part time soon though.

Sorry, Jim, but here's some cold water into your bucket to think about:
Once you retire, you're on fixed income, AND, you have more free time to spend money. So, plan the size of your bucket well.

(This kind of thinking has caused me to keep on past 65, but next year: I'm out of here.)

[Jim Bennett]

Originally Posted by dfandrews

So, plan the size of your bucket well.

This for me (and I imagine many others) is my biggest dilemma. How big, and just how full, does this bucket need be? I fear I may be worrying about it too much though.

[gbaglo]

Well, let's see.
This month ( couple days ) daughter is getting married ( $10,000 to me ). Went in to Moore's to buy a pair of slacks for wedding and ended up spending $335. Hosting BBQ for wedding party ( $$ I don't want to know ). RAV4 required new rotors and pads about $1,200, property taxes came due, even with dental plan, I dropped $1,100 on teeth. Spent $400 on trailer tires and bearing repack etc. $350 for license and insurance.

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by gbaglo

Well, let's see.
This month ( couple days ) daughter is getting married ( $10,000 to me ). Went in to Moore's to buy a pair of slacks for wedding and ended up spending $335. Hosting BBQ for wedding party ( $$ I don't want to know ). RAV4 required new rotors and pads about $1,200, property taxes came due, even with dental plan, I dropped $1,100 on teeth. Spent $400 on trailer tires and bearing repack etc. $350 for license and insurance.

ouch! Yeah, those things too.
That's why I'm still in the driveway on Saturdays. Last Sat.,
changed rear shocks on the tow; did the front brakes 2 months ago. It's just harder to straighten up after bending over so much, that's all.


Edit: oops, hi-jacked the thread. Sorry about that.

[sallemann]

Originally Posted by Jim Bennett

This for me (and I imagine many others) is my biggest dilemma. How big, and just how full, does this bucket need be? I fear I may be worrying about it too much though.

Yup. I worry about this too... a lot.

Do you guys have a Canadian version of Social Security? I'll be working until I'm 70.5 (12 more years), when my SS income maxes out. But in the meantime, I can work from the road as long as I have internet... so we'll be traveling 2 to 4 months each winter/spring.

[gbaglo]

We pay into Canada Pension Plan. I maxed out the contribution you could make for 45 years. My wife worked retail and also was a stay-at-home mom so her CPP benefit is considerably less than mine. We split CPP for tax purposes at about $710 each.
Then there is Old Age Security ( which everybody gets at age 67 ( used to be 65 ). That is $564 each.
And then there is my company pension ( wife has none ). We split that too for tax purposes.
Doing fine for now, but I wonder how our kids will make out with no company pension, killer mortgage payments, day-care expenses, etc.

[cpaharley2008]

Worrying is what shortens your life span......?

[Zardoz]

Originally Posted by Jim Bennett

This for me (and I imagine many others) is my biggest dilemma. How big, and just how full, does this bucket need be? I fear I may be worrying about it too much though.

Right before I retired almost two years ago, a friend told me to google the, "4% retirement withdrawal plan." After you do that, use a retirement withdrawal calculator to figure out how much you'll have in the end. Really put things into perspective for us and gives us the best degree of certainty you can get (which isn't necessarily a lot, but best you can do).

[padlin]

Originally Posted by Jim Bennett

This for me (and I imagine many others) is my biggest dilemma. How big, and just how full, does this bucket need be? I fear I may be worrying about it too much though.

I'm sure there are dozens of ways of doing this, most figured out by people a lot brighter then me. Maybe some will speak up.

For us...
Spent a year tracking how much you spent while working, I used Quicken but you could do it on a spreadsheet too. From there worked out a need and a want figure.

Made an educated guess as to my wife's and my life expectancy. Many tables and calculators for such along with looking at your lifestyle and family history.

In my case I'll have social security as a fixed income, no pension. Using a number of online calculators as well as an excel spreadsheet I came up with how much I needed to get to the end, with a safety margin. Being there are so many unknowns, you do have to make educated guesses in certain areas, longevity being just one. Others are inflation, future of SS, portfolio gain, and so forth.

Is it rock solid? no. But as long as we have fixed income sources, like annuities, pensions, social security, that covers at least the need portion adjusted for expected inflation, we won't be eating dog food. The portion between need and want is flexible for us, in bad years we can pare back spending as needed, in very good years we can spend more.

Retired 2 years ago at 56 when the company I worked for offered an early retirement package. You can ask me in about 20 years if I guessed right.

[Jim Bennett]

First off, I gotta say I like the idea of this thread, and the possibility of garnering ideas from others, to maybe help de-muddle me wee brane.

Originally Posted by gbaglo

Well, let's see.
This month ( couple days ) daughter is getting married ( $10,000 to me ). Went in to Moore's to buy a pair of slacks for wedding and ended up spending $335. Hosting BBQ for wedding party ( $$ I don't want to know ). RAV4 required new rotors and pads about $1,200, property taxes came due, even with dental plan, I dropped $1,100 on teeth. Spent $400 on trailer tires and bearing repack etc. $350 for license and insurance.

After footing lots of the bill for my daughters wedding, I need to work at least 3 months just to cover that, let alone all the other bills that come in during that 3 month span. Oh well, two daughters married off, just my son left, and who knows if he will even get married.

Originally Posted by gbaglo

Doing fine for now, but I wonder how our kids will make out with no company pension, killer mortgage payments, day-care expenses, etc.

Like most people, I have never had a company pension. Had to save for myself.

Originally Posted by Zardoz

Right before I retired almost two years ago, a friend told me to google the, "4% retirement withdrawal plan." After you do that, use a retirement withdrawal calculator to figure out how much you'll have in the end. Really put things into perspective for us and gives us the best degree of certainty you can get (which isn't necessarily a lot, but best you can do).

I will look at that.

I did go in to talk to our money managers a couple months ago, and they did up a forecast of income base on our current savings. This number was fairly short, at least for the short term, until our Canada Pension Plan, and Old Age Security kicks in. This means some work for the next few years. This schedule only used the money the bank sees, and not our real estate holdings. We can get a HUGE chunk out of our house when we sell and downsize which will help a lot, and with my brothers own 3 revenue properties (which only one is fully paid for), and one 65 acre recreational property, which we somehow hope to set up something for all our kids to keep using, so no cash available there. There is likely some inheritance money coming in some day, but we would like to be able to just pass that off to our kids, and give them a boost.

Plus many, many more factors I have to consider. Too confusing. Maybe I should just retire, and when the money runs out, live in assisted living and play cards until I die.

[Jim Bennett]

Originally Posted by padlin

I'm sure there are dozens of ways of doing this, most figured out by people a lot brighter then me. Maybe some will speak up.

For us...
Spent a year tracking how much you spent while working, I used Quicken but you could do it on a spreadsheet too. From there worked out a need and a want figure.

Made an educated guess as to my wife's and my life expectancy. Many tables and calculators for such along with looking at your lifestyle and family history.

In my case I'll have social security as a fixed income, no pension. Using a number of online calculators as well as an excel spreadsheet I came up with how much I needed to get to the end, with a safety margin. Being there are so many unknowns, you do have to make educated guesses in certain areas, longevity being just one. Others are inflation, future of SS, portfolio gain, and so forth.

Is it rock solid? no. But as long as we have fixed income sources, like annuities, pensions, social security, that covers at least the need portion adjusted for expected inflation, we won't be eating dog food. The portion between need and want is flexible for us, in bad years we can pare back spending as needed, in very good years we can spend more.

Retired 2 years ago at 56 when the company I worked for offered an early retirement package. You can ask me in about 20 years if I guessed right.

Sounds a lot like some of the things we have been doing too, Bob.

My wife has always kept track of our expenses, for the last 25 years using Quicken. Some of our expenses will increase though, when I no longer have a business, as it covers the costs of two of our 3 vehicles, though once retired we will have two at the most, and looking to go down to one if possible.

I haven't looked at life expectancy, as much as how much usable life I have left. Still, a really tough call. I am using 85 as an age I plan to be active until. Hopefully that is safe.

My dog is raw feed, and I can only hope to eat as good as him when I retire.

So Bob, are you a '57 baby then? I just snuck into that year near the end.

[padlin]

December 56. FWIW, I'm using 82 for me, men in our family don't last terribly long and I've had my share of issues, I do however stay fit. Deb is just the opposite, family wise, I'm using 95+ for her. We started a family early so got college, weddings, and so forth out of the way.

Deb works for herself, will be cutting back to seasonal after this winter. Almost time to be a rolling snowbird far a while.

[Zardoz]

We did our financial planning backwards from many folks. Instead of figuring out what we spend where and why, and how much we needed, we just picked an income number that we agreed we'd have to live off of. I'm not very smart so we never had any debt except for the house, but we're pretty good about saying "no" to stuff we simply can't afford at the moment. I had a bad experience with an overly optimistic financial planner who said, "heck, how hard can it be to expect to earn a measly 6%?" Well, when I learned about the "4% Withdrawal Plan," I learned why 6% is unrealistic (but if it happens, it means we'll have more than anticipated - in my dreams!). All the info you need is on the web. Just gotta find time to study it.

[kstock11]

A great resource for those in the states is SSAnalyze - Bedrock Capital Management You can plug in various scenarios as to when and how to apply for SS. Many think that retirement & collecting SS are one and the same as to timing. That's not necessarily true. I retired last year just before turning 63. I'm not planning on applying for SS until it maxes out for me at 70. The important thing for me was to have a good understanding of my cost of living (after using Quicken for 25+ years). Now in retirement, I look at how I spend money carefully and try to get the most bang for the buck spent. (Like buying an Escape!)

[J Mac]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

Worrying is what shortens your life span......?

So does poverty.