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I hope that retirement planner lowers his own future goals. Treating a prospective client condescendingly won’t likely be the path to a good retirement for him. What a turn off. You are wise to travel now while you are younger. Tomorrow isn’t promised.
DH’s company has recently hired a second company to help employees with their financial planning. We listened to the first one’s recommendations, but declined signing over a percentage to them for managing our portfolio. The second one’s letter of introduction we threw in the recycling bin last week. Both, the one with more info and the other with less, let us know we were on a good financial path, but could use a little tweaking to maximize our investments. We agreed and decided they were the ones that needed to be tweaked.
It's fine that your goals right now are a bit nebulous. You're far enough away from retirement (from the sounds of it) that it would be difficult to get into specifics. My only recommendation would be to add a couple of items that really are dreams rather than reality. You pretty much can't save too much and adding a dream or two will give you a larger savings goal.
I think as long as you remain open to new ideas and opportunities, your goals sound like an excellent foundation. For example, if you are healthy and active, you may want to travel some - to take the grandkids places and get to experience or re-experience things through their eyes. It doesn't mean you have to specifically make plans to have that kind of income in retirement, but since you are looking at 3 or so decades down the road, it certainly can't hurt to try to increase your income stream in retirement so that you have as many options as possible.
For me, the biggest issue has been balancing enjoying life now and not being so strict financially that I don't get to enjoy my life now, with my kid who is still in high school vs. wanting to have enough to be comfortable in retirement. But I know that I'll never get this time with my son back and I don't want to waste that precious commodity, while still planning for the future.
Hello
I'm asking this question as in the last yr I met twice with a "retirement planner" ( which was offered through my job) and apart from the usual investing/stocks talk they kept asking me about retirement goals.
When stated my goals are like follows
1-be in the best health i can be so i can take care of my grandkids
2-live close to my kid and siblings
3-maintain a modest house and have a paid off car
4-Maximize my SS benefits
The financial planner got condescending and tried to make me feel guilty for aiming too low and not enjoying my "golden years" and was really surprised that I did not want to travel and see the world.
Now I'm 40 and So I'm assuming ( if I'm healthy enough ) I will work full time till 65 yrs of age. I travelled a bit in my younger yrs and still I have a couple of places I want see in my life ( but Ive already saved for it and have a definite timeline when to visit them and it will be well before I'm 55).
I feel like not everyone had a wanderlust and not everybody wants to hang out in a beach resort with a margarita all day and go gambling
Your right about the wanderlust, a minority do it, but most don’t. Beach resorts are boring after a week and expensive. I think that advisor deals in old stereotypes. Your goal of living close to your kid: chances are you will be moving every three to five years as kid follows career. That’s not something everyone would want to do
Hello
I'm asking this question as in the last yr I met twice with a "retirement planner" ( which was offered through my job) and apart from the usual investing/stocks talk they kept asking me about retirement goals.
When stated my goals are like follows
1-be in the best health i can be so i can take care of my grandkids
2-live close to my kid and siblings
3-maintain a modest house and have a paid off car
4-Maximize my SS benefits
The financial planner got condescending and tried to make me feel guilty for aiming too low and not enjoying my "golden years" and was really surprised that I did not want to travel and see the world.
Now I'm 40 and So I'm assuming ( if I'm healthy enough ) I will work full time till 65 yrs of age. I travelled a bit in my younger yrs and still I have a couple of places I want see in my life ( but Ive already saved for it and have a definite timeline when to visit them and it will be well before I'm 55).
I feel like not everyone had a wanderlust and not everybody wants to hang out in a beach resort with a margarita all day and go gambling.It seems to me that the planner was about to pitch me some unscrupulous retirement plan /managed funds, and was wooing me by presenting this rosy picture of retirement .So I got a little snippy and left.
But it got me thinking am I underestimating or not anticipating a mid-life crisis or retirement blues that seniors face and that is why they travel so much ? or is it just highly variable ? And thoughts , ideas appreciated
p.s My parents unfortunately did not save much for retirement but they put 3 of their kids to college w/o loans so it turned out to be an excellent retirement plan for them as they lived with us until they passed.So their example is of not much help
I think everything you have said is fine. If you don't want to travel and are fine working until age 65 than more power to you.
The only thing I would say is this: You shouldn't assume job security.
I don't know what you do for a living. However, many employers will find ways to eliminate your job or get rid of you and the older you are, the less likely you may be to find a reasonable replacement job.
It happened to my wife. We had a plan where she was going to work until age 60 at her government job. She had been there for twenty-five years receiving consistent annual performance reviews in the "good to excellent" range. Suddenly, she had a supervisor that took a profound dislike to her. She was written up twice in a three month period of time (after never having been written up before) on what I regard as trumped up, or made up charges. Fortunately, she had twenty-five years service in and we had substantial savings. She was allowed to buy out a five year service credit and retire on a full thirty year pension.
What occurs to me though is that if this had happened to her one year earlier, we would have been in a profoundly bad situation. She could have lost her entire pension because twenty-five years was the minimal time allowed to purchase service credits towards a full retirement.
I emphasize this was a government job. It is presumably about the most secure employment available. Yet, it turned out not to be secure for her at all. If her job was not secure is yours?
The lesson we drew out of this was that you need to have a lot of savings. Because we did we could pay for a service credit. However, its expensive. It cost almost 200K.
The issue about preparing for retirement is that we are all inclined to indulge in the best assumptions for ourselves. But, what if we get sick and can't work? What if we lose the job we felt was secure? What if we have a family crisis and cannot work the same hours because we need to support a family member?
Good retirement planning needs to take things like these into account.
I feel like not everyone had a wanderlust and not everybody wants to hang out in a beach resort with a margarita all day and go gambling.It seems to me that the planner was about to pitch me some unscrupulous retirement plan /managed funds, and was wooing me by presenting this rosy picture of retirement .So I got a little snippy and left.
But it got me thinking am I underestimating or not anticipating a mid-life crisis or retirement blues that seniors face and that is why they travel so much ? or is it just highly variable ? And thoughts , ideas appreciated
Not all seniors like to travel. It's such a cliche that you "have to" travel when you retire. I despise travel, and my husband traveled all his life and wants nothing to do with it now in his retirement years.
As for hanging out at a beach resort, drinking and gambling, nah. Also, moving to Florida or AZ. No thanks to all that.
Don't let anyone tell you what your retirement goals should be...they're whatever you want them to be.
Hello
I'm asking this question as in the last yr I met twice with a "retirement planner" ( which was offered through my job) and apart from the usual investing/stocks talk they kept asking me about retirement goals.
When stated my goals are like follows
1-be in the best health i can be so i can take care of my grandkids
2-live close to my kid and siblings
3-maintain a modest house and have a paid off car
4-Maximize my SS benefits
The financial planner got condescending and tried to make me feel guilty for aiming too low and not enjoying my "golden years" and was really surprised that I did not want to travel and see the world.
Now I'm 40 and So I'm assuming ( if I'm healthy enough ) I will work full time till 65 yrs of age. I travelled a bit in my younger yrs and still I have a couple of places I want see in my life ( but Ive already saved for it and have a definite timeline when to visit them and it will be well before I'm 55).
I feel like not everyone had a wanderlust and not everybody wants to hang out in a beach resort with a margarita all day and go gambling.It seems to me that the planner was about to pitch me some unscrupulous retirement plan /managed funds, and was wooing me by presenting this rosy picture of retirement .So I got a little snippy and left.
But it got me thinking am I underestimating or not anticipating a mid-life crisis or retirement blues that seniors face and that is why they travel so much ? or is it just highly variable ? And thoughts , ideas appreciated
p.s My parents unfortunately did not save much for retirement but they put 3 of their kids to college w/o loans so it turned out to be an excellent retirement plan for them as they lived with us until they passed.So their example is of not much help
Expect to not travel far from home in retirement except for extended trips. I use the term extended trips because they can last longer and cover a larger geographical area. European trips for example.
But the list you have above is spot on. The key is good health and that good health early on. Later when you begin to look like a prune not so much. So usually though if you didn't travel a lot in your family years then you have amassed a large must see list so do that early while you can enjoy it.
Ask him how you can plan to retire at 45.
Now, THAT would be nice.
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