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Have you thought about running for political office?
I know the benefits have tightened... some were getting lifetime care and stipends for a few years of part-time work.
Local Hospital Districts voted that all members of the Board receive full medical coverage... the charter requires one meeting a month... they also receive $400 plus expenses per month.
Maybe the classic definition of retirement isn't in your future?
there are always work arounds for any scenerio.the trick is finding them and working with them.
I think the article is disingenuous... a lot of what you have in 2011 is based on how much you put in and WHEN you put it in... looking at investments I made in the past decade (10 years, NONE of them are back to the break even point)... NONE means it is currently at a loss AND all the extra gains it earned through the years (+20%) is also LOST...... now if you look at investments I made DURING the recession, they have all greatly increased in value... so much it it goes beyond what I lost during the last ten years but that is in NEW investments... the OLD investments still have substantial losses... investments made EARLIER then 10 years show gains because stocks were substantially cheaper back then and it didn't drop to those levels therefore they weren't total losses... so basically the recession WIPED OUT 6-8 years of gains that will never come back again... that is little to rejoice about...
You're right - and the article is kind of stupid when posted here (in the retirement forum - where many people have been investing for decades - not a couple of years). Many people who were 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 - and are now 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 - are looking at a lost decade.
So where do people go from here?
I have pretty much adopted what is now an emerging but still controversial view about managing pension and retirement accounts. You must plan for 20-30 years down the road based on what a safe 20-30 year investment will definitely pay you as of today. And plan accordingly. The 20-30 year treasury is the benchmark (if the US goes broke - we're all in trouble - so that thought is not a factor in my thinking). Which means a pre-tax pre-inflation return assumption today of about 4-4.5%. Doesn't mean I'd put all my money into 30 year treasuries today if I were 100% in cash. Because it's a moving target - and has to be adjusted at least once a year or so. Because I keep this number in the back of my head - I still save money every year - even though I am in my mid-60's and retired. Robyn
thats my benchmark as well ,the 30 year treasury. all my looking at risk vs income is based on comparison to the 30 year bond.
i look at the withdrawl rate i can have with that and compare it to my other choices.. i havent decided on a final plan yet and i most likely wont put the final portfolio into play until we actually retire.
im leaning towards maybe rolling the permanent portfolio i follow into the capital preservation and income portfolio i follow from fidelity insight and if we feel the need for more income i may go 75% the fidelity portfolio and 25% annuity. we have lots and lots to see and do in the early years of retiring so the demands on our income will be high early on. if things go as planned ill still be quite a few years away from social security and medicare so health insurance costs are another big issue for us. im a little worried about over spending in the early years and then having a run of bad markets and low interest rates so thats why i may look to buy an income stream , but we will see.
in the mean time more and more low cost insurance products are entering the market place with many spins,twists and perks to fit lots of different situations. so who knows i may have another view when its retirement time then i do now.
Last edited by mathjak107; 03-29-2011 at 05:31 PM..
I would really suggest doing at least a partial test drive before you "retire" (by which I mean cutting off income streams from jobs - not income from other assets). See how it goes. OTOH - would not draw money out of tax-advantaged retirement accounts (or similar assets - like I have a bunch of 30 year I-Bonds) to do a test drive. I don't plan to draw a penny out of those until I absolutely have to.
FWIW - my husband and I are kind of unusual. We retired about 25 years ago - when we were both about 40. We had some money - and thought if things didn't work out - we could always go back to work. The wind was at our backs in terms of investment returns in the 80's and 90's - and we weren't huge spenders - and kept saving - and now - in our mid-60's - we're still ok. But I think things are more precarious if you're older and retire and don't have the option of going back to work if you crash and burn. Or if investment returns are lower (which they definitely are today - by a bunch - than they were on average in the 80's and 90's).
And note that I don't regret what we did for 2 seconds. My husband was diagnosed with MS about 6 months after our initial "retirement". And I think our low key lifestyle moderated the course of his disease. Which was very mild for about 20 years. And now - at age 66 - he has his issues (with secondary progressive MS). And - if we had waited until age 65 to retire - we wouldn't be able to do 90% of the things we did in the last 20 years now. We'd probably have a bunch more money (not that we were ever lacking in the money department) - but we wouldn't be able to spend it on fun things. Robyn
i never knew anyone who retired early and on their death bed wished they spent more time at the office.
Not being cynical but how many death bed conversations have you had with folks about their decision when to retire? Is it really a representative sample? I didn't think you were in the health care field. Perhaps you do hospice work as a volunteer.
you got me there ha ha . but you get the point. i dont think most of us know many people who retired early and had regrets. im not counting those that mis-judged the amount of money they needed and ran short.
i think its mostley the other way round. those that could have wished they retired earlier
interesting enough dalbar research just completed an interesting 20 year study.
i like dalbar and find they are probley the best of the lot when it comes to financial studies.
anyway while markets recovered most investors did not. most listened to the talking heads, the predictors and their own fly by the seat of their own pants decisions and tried to beat the markets at their own game.
for the 20 year period ending 2010 doing absoluetly nothing with your funds would have grown you alot more money than you got trying to time things or bailing out...
For the twenty-year period, equity investors earned 3.83% and asset allocation fund investors
earned 2.56% compared to the S&P 500 return of 9.14%.
For the same period, fixed income investors earned 1.01% compared to the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index return of 6.89%.
if those investors simply did nothing they would have earned almost 6% more by just staying put in the funds .
other points were:
The average equity investor earned an annualized return that outpaced inflation for both the twenty-year and the one year time frames.
Fixed income and asset allocation investors continue to lose ground to inflation as their investments lag the cost of living in all but the exceptional one-year time frame..
All long-term mutual funds continue to be held for less than five years.
Last edited by mathjak107; 05-05-2011 at 02:42 AM..
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