Can we talk about retirement?

One piece of advise I gave my wife when I "retired" was, DO NOT come home and ask "Well what did you do all day while I was at work." I then reminded her of Jackie Gleason, and Alice, something about straight to the moon. All in fun of course.... :grin: OK back to finances.
 
To toss in a different perspective, as I am involved with interviews and hiring.... HR is terrified right now across almost all industries. The silver tsunami (also known as grey tsunami), has many people in HR wondering how they will compensate. When a 60+ year old person walks out the door, a wealth of corporate knowledge and skill sets vanish from the workplace. Most businesses are either changing business processes, or in some cases accepting the business will perform at a lower overall standard. I have already seen departments set on their ear from the loss of a few key people. For years accountants pushed "reduced staffing", this resulted in more unique knowledge being distilled into a shrinking work-pool. This method worked OKay when the loss of employees was at a small trickle. Mentoring programs where a junior employee was "spun up" for a couple years was considered "expensive, and wasted money" by HR. It was like they were unaware of what was about to happen. The remaining employees had the obligation to absorb and distribute the job skills which had been uniquely held by the departing employees. Some of these skills took decades for the retiring employee to master. Now the "boom" in the baby boomers is the sound of the door closing behind them, with the remaining employees wondering who will fill "Bob's" shoes. The accountants are pleased that Bob was replaced by a lower tier and lower paid body. Generally, HR has no skin in the game, so whatever happens is that department's issue. It should be interesting to see how things are in 3-5 years.
 
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addertooth said:
To toss in a different perspective, as I am involved with interviews and hiring.... HR is terrified right now across almost all industries. The silver tsunami (also known as grey tsunami), has many people in HR wondering how they will compensate. When a 60+ year old person walks out the door, a wealth of corporate knowledge and skill sets vanish from the workplace. Most businesses are either changing business processes, or in some cases accepting the business will perform at a lower overall standard. I have already seen departments set on their ear from the loss of a few key people. For years accountants pushed "reduced staffing", this resulted in more unique knowledge being distilled into a shrinking work-pool. This method worked OKay when the loss of employees was at a small trickle. Mentoring programs where a junior employee was "spun up" for a couple years was considered "expensive, and wasted money" by HR. It was like they were unaware of what was about to happen. The remaining employees had the obligation to absorb and distribute the job skills which had been uniquely held by the departing employees. Some of these skills took decades for the retiring employee to master. Now the "boom" in the baby boomers is the sound of the door closing behind them, with the remaining employees wondering who will fill "Bob's" shoes. The accountants are pleased that Bob was replaced by a lower tier and lower paid body. Generally, HR has no skin in the game, so whatever happens is that department's issue. It should be interesting to see how things are in 3-5 years.
Click to expand...
This has got to be the best summation of the world I just retired from that I have ever heard.
HR falls back to their degrees in 'people', without an accurate assessment to the people in their charge. Does that sound like current politics?
Does that notion scare you a little?
 
My retirement had to be all on me. I was always self employed. I purchased real estate as I went as a retirement plan. There are risks in that! But it has the effect of compounding. Easiest to manage is farm land. Next is commercial property but the risks are higher. Worst are apartments or single family houses. Too many turnover costs. Rather late in life I started buying dividend paying stocks as I got tired of dealing with renters. Someone on here said they lost their retirement in the 2008 crash. How? You don't loose if you don't sell at the low point! Don't go into equities if you are someone that runs from fear. Markets go up & down. Ride the waves. The very best time to buy is when the market crashes. The only purchases I've made this year were in March, have done nicely. On average the S&P has grown about 10%/year for a long time. But it has fallen some years. Still way better than any savings acct, CD, or bonds. If you don't want to manage your account just buy ETFs. I wouldn't let a broker manage my account because their fees eat a big hole in the compounding. Above all, diversify. BTW I'm 78 took SS @ 70 because I didn't need the $ to live on. I made sure everything was paid for before retirement. I won't live forever so I give my kids and G-kids $ every year. I have Schwab accounts for the G-kids. There should be enough $ by the time they reach college age to do whatever education they want. Or to save it for the future. Or buy fast cars and women.
 
westerner said:
This has got to be the best summation of the world I just retired from that I have ever heard.
HR falls back to their degrees in 'people', without an accurate assessment to the people in their charge. Does that sound like current politics?
Does that notion scare you a little?
Click to expand...


Considering the quote came from a fellow Arizonan, it is not surprising we are of similar minds.
Keep up the good fight.

Addertooth
 
There is a Jewish saying: Man plans and God laughs. Been on this fairly new job the last couple years and all ready to send in the health insurance paperwork. Then I woke up from a three day coma in the hospital. When something like this happens, it makes a guy think. Lost my job and got to deal with this diabetes the rest of my life. Good thing, every thing paid for and the VA took care of the medical. Did not want to touch the savings yet so to the Social Security office and found out that I even have a military pension. That surprise me since I was only in for four years. but I get an extra 2 bucks a month. Whoopy! That was 12 years ago. Here is what I learned. One: health is a constant issue. Two: we had to down size somewhat on living expenses. Three: keep busy on worthwhile projects. One big plus on working on a project, not Clickspring quality but I can take the time to put out some decent nice looking work.
 
I agree with Larry, in 2008, I had a mix of mutual funds and a few stocks. When the crash happened, I converted everything to dividend paying stocks only and not looked back. More than a double for anybody who stepped in at that point. Yes I had that drop of 30% before the switch, but made that up fairly quickly. With the increase in stock prices and subsequent increase in the dividend to maintain the yield percentage, the ROR is very nice. I currently hold only equities no funds or CD or bonds, and all were paying between 3-5% at time of purchase. All are paying at least that and most are 2-3 times that today. This is Dividend growth.

Dividend growth is something that many people don’t understand. Companies would prefer to not lose the money that investors have put in, therefore they maintain the yield percentage as the share price moves higher because there are other companies that have similar yields and people can move, thus causing a share price drop.
Example Bank of Montreal was around $35 and paying a dividend of $1.40 for about 4% in 2008/2009. Now it is paying $4.20 per share which works out to 12% on my $35 share cost. At today’s share price they are still about 4% yield.

I plan on living off the dividends that my account is currently reinvesting and buying more stocks to rebalance back to 5% per company for 20 companies.
With 20 stocks I have my own mutual fund at minimal cost. I get to keep that 2-3% management fee for myself!
Pierre
 
I'm 61 and plan on working until just past 62. I'm a salaried engineer at General Motors and have the option of a lump sum pension payment or a monthly pension. Most take the lump sum (I will also). My current plan is to wait until 66 yrs. 10 months for my SS, but that's still up in the air. Payments for me are around $2100 per month at 62 or $3200 per month at 66/10.

There's no good "cookie cutter" answer as everyone's age, health, expenses, finances, etc. are different. For us, we're in really good shape. When asked at work when I plan on retiring, I say on 3/1/2022 or tomorrow if they p*ss me off. I enjoy what I do and work with a lot of good people. If work was a drudgery every day, I'd already be gone.

A rough rule of thumb for retirement savings is having 10 years of salary in your 401K. We're thankfully way beyond that. House has been paid off for ~10 years, daughter through law school 3 years ago, son has one semester of college left (only 2 classes) to get a degree in Computer Engineering. My line at work is "one of the few good things about getting old is you get your debt paid off".

Other variables to consider are health and your bucket list. The line we use around work is "you can always make more money, but you can't make more time". My wife is 3+ years younger than me, works as a Unigraphics designer for a defense contractor. She likes what she does and plans on working until 62. I'm encouraging her to go sooner per the line around my work place. She'd like to travel Europe, Australia, New Zealand and see the western USA after she retires. I've learned after ~30 years of marriage that telling her to do something doesn't end well for me. My tact is "Honey, we're a partnership so maybe you should consider my age when you want to retire. When you hit 62, I'm already well into 65 and by that summer when you'd like to start travelling, I'll be close to 66. Sure hope I still feeling like walking around all day at that age."

Bruce
 
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