Category: Retirement Planning

I turned 64 today! My favorite cake is the cheap stuff from the supermarket with buttercream frosting, buttercream between layers and big fat roses. I haven’t had a cake in several years, but this time I said yes. Dale and I went to Safeway together to order the cake, because sometimes they screw it up, and after waiting all this time, I didn’t want that to happen.

One year they put red roses on it. Their mistake. Dale knows better. I believe other icing freaks will agree with me – never red. There’s just something about the taste of red icing. Plus, the telltale residue on your tongue …

Another year the roses were flat, presumably because the decorators don’t know how to make the puffy ones. This time I took visual aids. I had a picture of plump roses on my cellphone and asked them if they could replicate. The answer was yes, and I’m super-pleased with the results.

I usually eat a slice or two and freeze the rest in individual pieces, which are gone before spring. Sometimes before Christmas, if it has been a rough year.

Applying the rough year scale, I’m thinking this cake might last until summer. My birthday also marks two years of retirement, and it has been fantastic. Now that I’ve settled into a simple lifestyle focused mostly on exercise, cooking, reading and writing, I find it hard to believe I thought everyone was supposed to reinvent themselves once they retired.

It seems to me there’s a bias for work, as though work is inherently better than leisure, and unless we figure out some sort of livelihood after we retire, we’re headed toward doom and demise. The headlines are all about having no time to retire or reinventing oneself for your next act. I’ve used some of those words in the past. But now I think it’s more complicated than that and have been thinking about different type of people and their relationship to work as they age.

True Believers

They love their jobs and can’t wait to tell you about it.

Worker Bees

People who simply want to work, even at what many of us would call crappy jobs, but they are still jobs that matter, and these dedicated souls are proud to do them without much fanfare.

The Walking Wounded

Maybe they like their jobs OK, but maybe they don’t. Either way, they aren’t particularly happy or unhappy, but they can’t quite let go. What else is there? They will be there to turn off the lights.

Endurance Athletes

Those who keep working partially because their careers are gratifying but partly because they don’t have the financial resources to survive without a job. They do what they have to do.

Happy Retirees

We left the workforce hopefully on our terms and hopefully with enough money to make it to the end. Some of us will find other work because we want to or because we need supplemental income, but some of us are done with paying gigs.

While these archetypes are just simple generalizations, and I don’t claim to have captured everyone’s relationship to work, there’s a broad spectrum of people getting older and thinking about retirement. We all have different resources, different expectations and different personal demands. There’s no magic bullet.

And that is my long way of saying how much it annoys me when people proselytize about working or staying busy or whatever it is they think we need to do with our time.

Busy is not the gold standard of retirement happiness. As an official ambassador for the Happy Retirees, I enjoy a peaceful pace of life that engages my brain and body without a boatload of stress.

I win! No reinvention required.

I am in awe of retirees with monthly goals and quarterly accomplishments, but all that sounds too much like work to me. I’m more of a slacker.

Goals and accomplishments lead to performance appraisals, which nearly always pissed me off. In my experience, the powers that be are compelled to find some sort of flaw, because after all, no one is perfect, but they never actually picked a valid criticism. It was like a grab bag. Oh, look! Here’s something she’s good at. Let’s call it a development area!

The best advice I ever got was no matter what they said … good, bad or indifferent … just act earnest and say thank you so much. I love this job. I’ll work hard to improve. Then go home and brood.

My goal in retirement is to lighten up. So far so good. I keep a little note card on my desk to remind me of the general stuff I try to do on a semi-regular basis. I don’t do everything every day, but I check it out and go, oh, I forgot to do weights or oops, the kitty needs a brushing. Better get on it.

You can tell by my list I’m the planner slash social director. Dale just won’t do it, so it falls into my court. Exercise takes up a significant chunk of time … especially golf, the ultimate sink hole.

Everything on the list should be self-explanatory, with the possible exception of the rebounder. That’s a mini-trampoline, and I try to do a couple of hundred jumps when I think about it. Astronauts use them to improve bone density after space flight. Since my estrogen was strip mined 20 years ago with my first cancer, I have bone density issues and do what I can to help out.

Although I don’t want to over-orchestrate my life, I do keep a separate list of specific short-term actions, most of which relate to home improvement. And although we don’t have a big travel Jones, I keep a spreadsheet of ideas for local road trips and other potential adventures.

Everyone is different, but I had a couple of readers ask about my planning. This is really the extent of it. I’m pretty happy with how it’s working out. Yes, some things slip through the cracks, but I try not to fret. I will eventually get to it.

We paid off our mortgage this week. I confess, I shed a tear. It has been a long journey.

I have some angst about sharing, wondering if it’s too personal a topic, but this is a retirement blog after all, and paying off a mortgage is a big decision for retirees and aspiring retirees. In case you are wondering, you can start late or go slow and still get to the finish line.

As an Army family, we rented or lived in apartments furnished by the military. We saved some money on a tour of duty in Egypt and used that for a down payment on our first house. By that time, I was in my late 30s, and Dale was in his 40s. We’d been married 13 years.  

Dale and I moved more than 20 times for jobs. There would be five more houses in our future, including the one we live in now. Two houses ago, we lived in Texas, I had a good job and we were planning to stay there. We made extra payments on the house and were close to paying it off when my company “encouraged” me to transfer to California.

Even though I’m a California native, and Dale loves this state as much as I do, we did not want to go. Already well past 50, this was the opposite direction of travel if solvency is your goal. But I didn’t have a lot of options, so we said OK, let’s do this thing. We had two ground rules. We won’t live like college students, and we won’t touch the retirement money.

My work location was in the Bay Area, specifically Silicon Valley, which is ridiculously expensive. But we wanted a house, so we made a decision to live further out, where still, we could barely afford a starter home. We bought a house we could never pay off in our lifetime, assuming we would eventually move again. Thankfully, my income was sufficient to make the payments.

To get back and forth from the hinterlands to work, I rode a commuter bus for two or more hours a day, depending on traffic. But it was pretty nice, saving me money and stress, and I am forever grateful for the bus, the 121.

Once I decided it was time to retire, we wanted to stay in California but in a less expensive area. We found the spot where we live now and bought the home while I was still working. It was easier to get a loan while I had a job. However, I found it exceedingly stressful to owe money on two homes.

Plan A was to sell the Bay Area house as soon as I retired and use the equity to pay off the retirement house. However, we didn’t get as much for the house as we had hoped, and that meant we didn’t have enough to pay off the new house. Instead, we went to Plan B and used the equity to recast the loan … the bank applied proceeds from the old house to the principal on the new house and adjusted the payments accordingly. At least we wouldn’t start retirement with a huge monthly bite.

The first year of retirement was stressful enough, so we didn’t mess with anything, even though we could have dipped into our savings to pay off the mortgage. We were still finding our retirement legs. This year, feeling more comfortable with the new normal, I talked with our accountant and our financial planner, and they both agreed. Pay it off.

Although I am excited, I did grumble about always being the sensible ones. Why not do something crazy with the money? But, of course, being sensible is the key to our whole lives.

We’re not superstars of the retire young and achieve financial independence movement. We both came from low-income families and both served in the military, which helped to pay for education and jump start our lives. And then we kept our heads down. Sure, we had fun and took some nice vacations along the way, but it was mostly work, save … work, save. I’ll be 64 this year, and Dale just turned 70.

This is not a financial blog. Everyone has to figure it out, but reading how other people manage retirement finances hopefully contributes to the body of knowledge that will help you make good decisions. In my quest to learn, I read advice from many professionals recommending you pay off the mortgage before you retire. If we could have, we would have.

While ours is not a textbook approach to retirement finances, it worked out fine and feels pretty awesome.

Everybody has an opinion, but I was shocked to see retirement advice stating it’s important to establish a routine by getting up with an alarm every morning and filling your day with activity. I was going to leave a comment, but this particular site doesn’t enable comments. Here’s my comment:

Are you smoking crack?

Seriously, that is the dumbest advice I’ve ever heard. Dumber than even the new Abby, who hardly ever gets it right, in my opinion. The old Abby had her act together.

Back to the subject of sleep. The author says once you’re retired and don’t use an alarm, your whole day might be spent in bed or on the couch watching TV or on the porch watching the world go by.

I imagine there are retirees who might spend 30 or 40 years working their butts off and then suddenly decide to squander the rest of their lives doing nothing, but no, I really can’t imagine that. Even in my quest to be less productive, I have many interests, and well, shit must be done.

My body wakes up naturally around 6:30 a.m. I read the news and do the NY Times mini puzzle from under the covers, which by the way, is an art form. Bad things happen if you press too hard on the back of the phone. Most mornings I choose not to get up until around 7 a.m. I pack a lot into my days, but I go for the late start and ease in slowly.

The blur of breakfast and lunch can be problematic if you’re not careful, but retirement meal clash can be avoided with proper management.

Waking up without an alarm is one of the greatest joys retirement brings. I waited my whole life for this. While there’s no shame in getting up early to be productive if that’s how you roll, I’m here to say you can ignore all the advice if you like. Not everyone needs a routine. You don’t have to be productive. You can do what you want. You can sleep in.

During my last few years on the job, I had a long commute and got up every morning at 4 a.m. I don’t miss it. In fact, I was thinking the other day about what I do miss from work, and it was hard to even make a list.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

Room service! A tiny moment of pure joy after a long day of business travel and painful encounters with disagreeable executives. So, yeah, I miss room service, but I could probably get Dale to pretend.

I only set an alarm if I absolutely positively have to be somewhere early, and these days, that usually means golf. Alarm clocks are also good to make sure you don’t overdo it on a nap. 

Unlike Individual 1, I love the failing New York Times and have a digital subscription to the tune of $15 a month. If I had to be super-frugal, I probably wouldn’t subscribe, but my retirement goal was more about being moderately frugal. So far, so good.

Aside from all the news and opinion I can possibly digest, I love the daily mini-crossword and try to do it in under five minutes before I even get out of bed. It’s going to be a great day when I do it in under a minute.

By the way, I know this is not normal. 

NYT Cooking, which is excellent, is another favorite section of the paper. It used to be included with the basic subscription. I could save recipes to my recipe box, but suddenly most of them are grayed out. That’s because there’s now a fee, and I must upgrade my subscription for full access.

This bugs me. I try to be smart about how I spend money in retirement, and I’m reluctant to shell out more for something that used to be free. But they do provide a service I enjoy very much, and I suppose it’s not unreasonable to pay for it.

I finally looked it up. It’s another $5 a month. Food and cooking is a big part of our lives, even more so in retirement. I like to cook, and I like to read about food almost as much as I like to eat it. We don’t go out to restaurants often, so think of all the money we are saving! And who doesn’t need a little culinary inspiration? 

Obviously, I’m trying to talk myself into it. But $5 is $5.  I know there are retirees who can’t or won’t have cable or Netflix because of the expense, and certainly I would cut back if I had to, but I’m hoping that will not happen until they pull the remote out of my cold dead hands. 

When you are planning for retirement, you tend to think about the big expenses such as healthcare, transportation, etc. But little things add up, and you do have to be prepared. I had cable before I retired, and I had a digital subscription to the New York Times before I retired. My preference was keep them in my life once the paychecks stopped. 

Sure, I read all the retirement advice about maintaining your standard of living … multiply your current salary by some astronomical number and that’s what you’ll need to live on. We were actually living on a good bit less than we made, hence the retirement savings, so it was a gross exaggeration to assume we’d need the same income in our later years. 

But the basics of our pre-retirement lifestyle have not changed. Decent cars, good quality sheets, great food, wine and beer, cable, Netflix and the New York Times. I’ll pass on the exotic travel, but when we had enough in savings to keep the creature comforts, I knew retirement could work.

So, $5 for NYT Cooking? Maybe. Probably. 

I’m an avid golfer, usually playing two or three days a week. I sometimes play well, and sometimes I suck. That’s the way golf go.

However, I’ve been taking lessons (sadly, not the first, second or third time) and have seen marked improvement. Something clicked. My teacher gave me a free lesson when his other student canceled, and toward the end of the freebie, he mentioned he was writing a book. I’m grateful to him for helping me with my game, so I said if you need someone to edit a draft, I’d be happy to. Editing is a large part of what I did for a living.

He said yes and offered to pay me, but I said, no, consider this an act of kindness. Also, there’s less pressure on me if you don’t like my changes – not like you got ripped off! It’s a fabulous book, but it needed lots of editing. Some writers have solid concepts but don’t know the first thing about punctuation or how to be consistent with capitalization and other style/formatting issues.

I enjoyed editing his book and have been wondering if that’s what I should do for my retirement side hustle. Editing can be aggravating … so much to fix and so hard to catch everything. I must have gone through it three times and still found stuff I missed. In the end, I’m proud of the work I did, but I’m not sure I would do it again. Not a 175-page book anyway.

Today’s golf got rained out – just as I played one of my best front nine holes in ages. My teacher was in the clubhouse, so we met briefly to discuss the edits. The track changes feature in Word was driving him nuts, as it often does if you aren’t used to it. I schooled him a bit on that. For the most part, he’s on board with my edits, although like many corporate executives I used to support, he loves capitalizing anything he thinks is important. I called it visual clutter, and he looked sad.

Which reminds me – The New York Times featured an editorial on Trump’s communiqué about the Saudi mess, and they wrote, “The president made clear his commitment to the use of the exclamation point, if not to truth and justice.” I texted it to my friend from work who also cares about grammarly matters. We used to joke if someone pissed us off, we would deny them the exclamation point at the end of an email. The one that says:

Thanks!

You misbehave, and all you get is thanks. Period. The power of punctuation.

We had another pet peeve about names. It’s polite to start an email with the person’s name, whether you add hi, hello, dear or whatever. But use their name. We worked closely with someone who never used your name, ever. Just jumped right into whatever she wanted, and it came across as a giant bark.

But I digress. As for retirement side hustles, I could see taking on smaller editing jobs. Although I will not be penning the great American novel, I do know how to write and edit, which I don’t think robots have figured out just yet. I also like the way this opportunity emerged out of something I was doing anyway. That seems like a good way to find your retirement side hustle.

I’m going to let this one simmer for awhile. As you know, I’m kind of busy having fun. I’ll have to figure out if I can do both.

I’m 63 and have not applied for social security benefits yet. I will probably hold out for my full retirement age, which is 66 and two months. Before I retired, I tried to create a My Social Security account, but the system didn’t recognize me. I called the social security office, and they said it was probably due to LifeLock, which we have for identity theft protection. The person on the phone said I would have to come to an office for them to resolve my issue.

A year goes by, and my dream of going to the social security office did not materialize. After reading this post about stolen social security benefits by Bob Lowry at Satisfying Retirement, I had additional motivation. I decided to bite the bullet and go today. It wasn’t a horrible experience. They are much more efficient than the DMV, but things didn’t go as planned.

The representative who helped me couldn’t get my account to line up either. He finally figured out the social security system has my birthday wrong. He told me to log in with the wrong birthday, and they could fix it later. I would need to return with my birth certificate.

He did assure me everything else looked fine. Having the wrong birthday in the system only affects me when I apply for benefits.

I mumbled the whole way home about whether or not to log in with the wrong birthday. That idea seems fraught with peril to me. I concluded it was a no-go, but I decided to get this business done and go back today with my birth certificate … which I could not find.

We keep legal documents in a fire-proof safe. Everything else important is in there. I did find a photocopy with my late mother’s handwriting.

Dear Mrs. P,

In the safety deposit box at the bank, was a note that you were given the certified copy on 10/3/77. Where the hell is it?

That made me laugh. I’m certain I must have had it at one time. Surely I needed it for my first passport. To get married? I don’t know. I’ve searched everywhere, and there’s no sign of it. I guess I will have to request a new one. I looked it up online, and the process doesn’t sound too terrible.

At least I have time to sort this out. Even if you aren’t ready to apply for benefits, I urge you to get the account so there are no surprises later.

Subscriptions

A few readers told me they were dropped off the subscription list for Retirement Confidential. Most people receive an email from SpecificFeeds. I haven’t changed that. If you are happy with what you get, everything will remain as is.

But if you don’t like SpecificFeeds or you want to subscribe for the first time, there’s a new subscription box on the sidebar. I like this one because the email goes out as soon as I publish, while the SpecificFeeds goes out once a day at a predesignated time. I also like it because I haven’t had any complaints yet!

All that to say it’s your choice. But if you’ve had issues, I recommend the new service. Then you can unsubscribe from the other. I’ll keep both active indefinitely so it’s as easy as possible for you.