Retirement: A Full-Time Job

Are You a Failure at Retirement?

 

Ok, now that we’ve talked about what literally gets us out of bed in the morning, alarms, annoying dogs, boot camp, and of course having to pee, let’s talk about what gets you out of bed in that way that RJ was referring to when he commented that “new challenges” get him out of bed.  Or as Steve, Suzanne, and the other Steve agreed, having control over their days, planning them out exactly as they want to live them.

It may be hard for some of us to understand why someone doesn’t really want to retire.  And it may be hard for others to understand why some of us do want to retire.  But the one I’m trying to reach right now, is the one that really does want to retire, but then doesn’t actually like it when he gets there. 

As I mentioned in my last post, most retirement planning literature focuses exclusively on the math part of the equation.  How much money do you need?  How should you invest it?  And then once you get to retirement, how much of it can you afford to spend?  But what about the how to live your life part?

I read a couple really good books on the subject before I retired, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free and What Color is your Parachute? For Retirement.  I made all the lists.  Lists of activities I would take up in retirement, tasks I wanted to accomplish, organizations I wanted to volunteer for, and ideas on how I might structure my days.

My list of activities included trying skiing again, making my own clothes, and playing the piano.  My to-do list included painting all the rooms of my house, cleaning out my closets, and finally getting some old photos in albums.  My volunteer calling would be with doggies. 

Now, five years later, I haven’t tried skiing, I’ve made only one skirt, and I finally just called a piano teacher yesterday to set up lessons.  I’ve made a very small dent in the painting, closets, and photo albums.  My current volunteer job has nothing to do with dogs, and I only started it a few months ago.  And I avoid structuring my days as much as possible.

So my point is, all is not lost if you failed to plan for this before you retired.  Chances are you’ll feel differently after you retire anyway.  And the good news is you have plenty of time to figure it out after you retire.  You may even want to enjoy a few months of just relishing the fact that you are not working anymore before you figure it out.  Go ahead and relish, like I said, you have plenty of time.

But eventually, you’re going to need some reason to get out of bed in the morning, and now I mean that in a way that means more than just to get your coffee.  I mean that in a “new challenges” kind of way, as our wise commenter RJ mentioned.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Take some classes.  When I retired five years ago, my going-away present was an Apple MacBook.  Up to that point I was a PC gal.  So I took weekly classes at the Apple store to learn how to use my new machine. 

After that, I took a memoir writing class, a magazine writing class, a blog writing class, and some creative non-fiction writing classes.  I took a class about angel investing and another on photography.  And as I mentioned, I’ll be starting piano lessons soon.  Explore as many topics as you might be interested in.

Try a new hobby.  I took all those writing classes because I started a blog after I retired.  I read Blogging for Dummies and then I set up a blog.  I barely knew what a blog was before I retired.  Now it’s my favorite way to spend time.

Return to some old hobbies.  It took me awhile, but I finally got back to yoga.  I join Doug on his bike rides from time to time.  And while I don't do much sewing, I found I loved knitting.  I can only make baby blankets so far, but luckily quite a few of my friends had babies over the last five years. 

Pick up a part-time or volunteer job.  I know it sounds counter-intuitive for retirement, but I really enjoyed my part-time retirement job.  Mine was in my old field, but maybe there’s something you’ve always wanted to try that wasn’t what you did for a living.  I’ve often thought it would be fun to work in the tasting room of a winery or in a doggy daycare.  I figure since the doggies there already have owners, it would be safer than volunteering at the shelter.  Too tempting, and I’m not ready for another dog quite yet!

Travel.  It doesn’t have to be expensive.  When you’re retired you can take advantage of last-minute deals you might not have had the flexibility for when you were working.  I save money by exchanging my home on vacations.  It’s a little more challenging to set up, but since I’m retired, I have the time to devote to it.  Kind of makes me feel like I have second homes all over the world.  And if you travel to another country, you can take on the challenge of brushing up on a foreign language before you go.

Train for a physical challenge.  Most of the year I get moderate exercise just about every day.  But every August, we bike in a community fund-raising ride.  It’s only 31 miles, but it gets me out on a bike pretty regularly before ride day to get ready. 

For you fitness junkies, maybe following Tamara’s lead training for marathons is more up your alley.  Having a physical goal not only gives you a challenge to wake up to, you’ll get healthier in the process.

I don't mean to minimize those wonderful retirement activities like napping, reading, and enjoying more time with friends and family.  But finding your own reason to jump, or meander, out of bed each morning is key to creating a retirement that you’ll love for decades to come.

 

Related Posts:

Retirement as a Balloon Animal

Planning for Retirement:  It’s Not All About the Money

Maybe Don’t Try So Hard

 

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What Gets You Out of Bed in the Morning?

For most working people, it’s the alarm clock that gets them out of bed in the morning.  For almost 14 years, it was my Beagle, Murphy Brown that got me out of bed.  At 5:30 on the dot, she was ready for breakfast, and she wasn’t going to take “go back to sleep” for an answer.  At least as dependable and certainly more persistent than an alarm clock, she got the job done.  We reverted to the clock after she was gone.   But in retirement, I can count the number of times I’ve set that alarm on one hand.    

One thing that gets me up in the morning is my curiosity of what the scale will say.  I know, some of you think it’s bad to weigh yourself every day.  In my defense, I will tell you that I’ve gained less than half a pound each year for the last 20 years, a feat I attribute in part to my daily weighing schedule.  (And for the record, since the beginning of this year, I’ve lost 12 years' worth of those half-pounds.  Two more and I’m back to my wedding-day weight.)

On days after I’ve written a blog post, I’m eager to get out of bed so I can get to my computer and read your comments.  Your comments are what makes blogging so fun, so that’s another thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.

Since my days are filled with mostly things I really want to be doing, it’s pretty easy to get up in the mornings in any case.

You’ve probably seen the headlines about a recently released Conference Board study finding that 62% of older workers are planning on delaying retirement.  No doubt scars from the Great Recession are the major factor in this finding.  But there also are some people that just plain don’t want to retire.

Last week I had lunch with one of my very first bosses.  I was a gopher at his law firm more than three decades ago.  Now in his 70’s, he’s still practicing law, with no desire to stop.  He told me he’s going to “cut back” a little by taking one afternoon off each week.  He likes what he does, and being his own boss, he and his wife have been able travel as much as they pleased over the years.  From where I sit, it looks like his life is exactly as he wants it to be.

Most retirement planning focuses exclusively on the math part of the equation.  Once you reach a certain number, you can retire.  But that doesn’t mean you’re actually ready to retire.  If you don’t feel like you are missing anything, if you love what you do, if you’re not yearning to do something else, why would you retire?  If you wake up in the morning and you are doing exactly what you want to do, then I say keep doing it.

 

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A Do-Over in the Stock Market

If you’ve been watching the U.S. stock market lately, you know that it’s hovering near all-time highs.  The Dow is within 2% of its October 2007 high, and the S&P 500 is not far behind that.  The S&P has bounced nearly 125% off its March 2009 low.  Investors holding bonds have done very well over the last 10 years, bonds are also at new highs.  And for the first time in years, money is flowing back into stock mutual funds.

All of this has some people worrying that we’re heading toward another pop of the stock bubble, although others see it as the beginning of a longer trend upward.  There seems to be a little more consensus on bonds, that they are poised for a fall as interest rates are expected to rise at some point; which would take a big bite out of the value of bond holdings, especially those with longer durations.

So if you think stocks are overpriced and you sell to beat a crash, how would you feel if next year finds the stock market even higher?  If you hold on to stock and bond funds and we do get a big tumble in both, how would you handle that?   And even if you sold everything now, where would you stash the proceeds?

I have no idea what’s going to happen.  But I read Jason Zweig’s piece in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago suggesting that we take this moment to design a portfolio that will make us happy (or at least less sad) under any market conditions.  Instead of trying to predict the future, the idea is to allocate your assets across “buckets” that diversify across various economic outcomes:

"Thinking about diversification in a different way—what we might call "differsification"—might change your views entirely. Instead of spreading your bets to protect against a plunge in the U.S. stock market, you should regard your portfolio as a set of bets on basic economic conditions and create one bucket for each: expansion, recession, inflation and deflation."

Read the full article for suggestions on how to design your own buckets.

This got me thinking abut what steps can I take now, now that I’m pretty much back where I started five years ago, to make sure I’m at least content no matter which way the winds blow.  Here's my plan:

Make sure my asset allocation is appropriate for my risk tolerance.

As I’ve lamented before, my asset allocation was a little equity heavy in 2007 for what I learned in 2008 was my actual tolerance for risk.  I’m shifting from a 70/30 allocation of equities to bonds and cash to a 60/40 allocation.  Sure, the market may go higher, but at these levels, basically where I was in 2007, I now get a chance for a do-over.  My allocation is now where I wished it had been in 2007.

Make sure my allocation is still where I designed it to be.

No matter what risk-appropriate allocation you designed for yourself, after January’s 6% rise in U.S. stocks, your intended allocation may be out of whack.  It’s hard to sell stock when they're high I know, but that’s the beauty of periodic rebalancing.  It forces you to do what you might not feel like doing.

I’m paying off the mortgage.

When I retired five years ago, I hadn’t paid off the mortgage.  I had the cash set aside in a CD that paid a higher rate than my mortgage rate.   And after the market tumbled non-stop, I was pretty happy I that didn’t use up that big chunk of cash.  As it turns out, I needed it to live on during that roller coaster time.  If I had paid off the mortgage, my only alternative would have been to sell stock at rock-bottom prices to fund living expenses over those years. 

Of course in retrospect, it would have been a better move to sell stocks on day one of retirement and pay off the mortgage.  That would have prevented that chunk of my portfolio from nose-diving, as it would have been safely stashed in my house.   

But now, just as then, I have no idea what direction the market is going.  But I lock in a 2.875% return on that money if I pay off the mortgage now.  It doesn't sound like much, but as opposed to 2008, that’s more than I'm earning in cash accounts now.  Who knows whether it’s better or worse than what I’ll earn in the stock and bond markets.  Which is why I’ll be taking the money from both sides of the equation in 60/40 proportion.  I’m not trying to time the individual markets, just take this moment to keep in balance.  I'm basically rebalancing into my house, something that will give me comfort no matter what happens with the markets.

Today the market shed the last two weeks of its gains.  With congress just about to head into another series of Washington-manufactured crises, it’s tempting to try and outsmart the market in advance.  But those investors that tried that during the European debt crisis or before last year’s fiscal cliff negotiations have missed out on some pretty nice returns.  I prefer to take a break from following what's going on in Washington for the time being.  I'll just take my do-over and hope for the best.  

 

Related Posts:

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A Note About “Losing” Money in the Stock Market

What About the Mortgage?

 

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Am I Retired Yet?

It’s official.  I’m old. 

The other day I attended my first finance committee meeting for the non-profit I volunteer for.  When I introduced myself and told the mostly silver-haired committee members that I retired five years ago, something happened that’s never happened before.  Or should I say something didn’t happen that always happens when I say I’m retired.  Not one of them said, “Retired?  You’re too young to be retired!”

So I guess it’s official, not only am I retired, I’m finally old enough for it to be considered legitimate in the eyes of the world.

At the end of this month I will celebrate my five-year anniversary of being retired.  As most of you know, for two of those years, I worked part-time in my old field.  That caused some people to say I wasn’t really retired during those years, and now am re-retired, or something like that.

So who gets to use the word “retired” anyway?

Case Study Number One

My husband Doug retired in 2003.  Well actually, he didn’t know he was retiring.  The company he worked for went bankrupt after the dot-com bust, so technically, he was unemployed.  It was a difficult experience, so we both thought it would be a good idea for him just to take a year off to enjoy himself before deciding what he wanted to do next. 

But as it happened, we both really loved that year.  He loved not working and I loved having a stay-at-home husband.  It was surprisingly easy to adjust to the loss of half of our income, so it turned out to be a win-win situation. 

So what’s the verdict on his retirement status?  At what point did he go from being unemployed to being retired?  Or, since we really still needed my income to survive, did that mean he wasn’t actually retired at all; rather should he be classified as a stay-at-home husband?

Case Study Number Two

I retired in 2008.  I think most people would agree that I’m allowed to call that retired.  I quit my job with enough money saved for us to live until we’re 100 without ever working again. 

But then in 2010 I picked up a little part-time job.  And worse yet, it was in the same field as I worked in before, so was I still allowed to call myself retired?   This situation appears to fall into the gray area.  While we didn’t technically need the money from that job to live, I did have bosses and deadlines and stress.  But now that I’m not doing that anymore, everyone agrees that I’m officially retired. 

But what about Doug?   If he wasn’t really retired before I retired, does he suddenly get to be called retired once I retired?  Even though he’s doing the exact same things now as he did before I retired?  Or maybe he was already retired the whole time?

Case Study Number Three

I have another friend who retired even before Doug and I did.  But she never called herself retired.  She never ruled out working again, although she didn’t rule it in either.  I guess she never felt she had to put a label on her non-working status.  And over the years, she did dabble in a couple of part-time jobs, nothing nearly as lucrative as her old career though.  Most people labeled her retired.

A few years ago, she had a baby and got married.  Her husband works.  So if she was indeed retired, does she now not get to use that designation anymore?  Does she go from being retired to now being a stay-at-home mom? 

Case Study Number Four

Some people like the words “financially independent” instead of “retired.”  This label allows for the retiree that works even when they could opt out of work.  They choose to work because it’s what they want to do, as opposed to working because they need to pay the bills.

For this example I will use a guy I call VCP (Venture Capital Partner).  VCP has more than enough money to meet all of his and his family’s needs if he quit his job tomorrow.  But he likes his job and would never consider not doing it.  Plus he gets to play as much golf as he wants and call it work, so what’s the point of quitting work?  Does this mean he’s really retired and just working in retirement? 

I would think most people would not view VCP as anything even closely resembling retired.  So I’m not sure the financially independent label works either.

I don’t really have a definitive answer here.

Mr. Money Mustache has some ideas.  He doesn’t want to replace the word retired with financially independent either:

“The perfect word has already been invented. Are you ready to hear it? Here it is:

Retired.

It’s perfect just as it is. It’s just like “Financially Independent”, but it sounds more amazing and it uses 75% fewer syllables.”

The Wall Street Journal has a great column called Second Acts.  It profiles retirees whose retirements look absolutely nothing like my own.  Consider these retirees:

• Jim Ferry who retired from his career as a management consultant and now works as an oyster farmer,
• Gerald Leener, retired CPA and now volunteer EMT,
• And Stephen Solosky, who turned a passion for travel into a business as a travel guide and writer after retiring from his 31-year career as a math teacher.

Some of them are earning money, some aren’t.   Are they really retired?  None of their retirements resemble mine.  

I have to agree with Mr. Money Moustache here, “Retired means different things to different people,” and also his advice, “If someone tells you they are retired, you do not question them.  You congratulate them.” 

And it wouldn’t hurt to tell them they look too young to be retired either.

Related Posts:

What is Retirement Anyway?

Am I Still Retired?

Will I Ever Work Again?

How Do You Know You're Retired if You're Still Working?

 

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Picturing Retirement: Fearless Photos

Photo Friday:  After I posted this post about my Vegas shoes, my step-mom sent me a bunch of great photos from their most recent trip to Las Vegas.  She basically did a photo survey of Vegas shoes while she was there.  There were some really lovely and wild shoes, but I chose this one as a good representation.  She is a fearless photographer and gets wonderful photos as a consequence.  Perhaps her retirement calling?  

And of course this one is just too cute to pass up:

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Am I Really Getting Older Like Everyone Else Is?

(Posted in Wellness Wednesdays)

I think it’s worse when you think you are so much healthier than everyone else, this whole getting older thing.  I’m a healthy weight.  I exercise about an hour most days.  My diet is relatively healthy.  Most of the time I don’t drink too much alcohol.  I’ve never smoked.  And I certainly don’t suffer much stress these days.

Except for when I’m in the doctor’s office apparently. 

I was at my annual OB/GYN appointment on Monday and my blood pressure was 145 over 90-something.  I assured the nurse that that is NOT my real blood pressure.   They had noticed a high reading on my last visit, but when I went home and obsessively took it two or three times a day for a week, I could never get a reading higher than 120/80.  I, of course, informed her of this, that I must have that white-coat syndrome or something.  My husband Doug has high blood pressure, that’s why we have the equipment at home.  And I know the equipment is accurate, as it has been tested at his (which is also my) primary care doctor’s office.

So I told them let’s take the blood pressure again at the end of the appointment.  I was sure the difficulty of parking, the 40-minute wait, and the dread of those stirrups were all to blame for my false reading. 

Except, at the end of the appointment my blood pressure was 163 over 100-something.  I can hardly focus on those bottom numbers when the top numbers are so insane.

So now my doctor is withholding sex.  Ok, not really sex, but birth control pills.  I’m cut off until a real doctor, my primary care physician, proves that I just have that white-coat problem.  Apparently, it’s not just good enough for me to tell them that’s what’s going on.

So today I went to my primary care physician.  I got there 20 minutes early, there was parking right in front, and the doctor was running right on time.  Not to mention there would be no stirrups at this exam.  All the stars were in alignment for a perfectly normal blood pressure reading.  The nurse said that she would let me relax for a moment, and that we would not talk during the test.  I decided to think of puppy dogs.

One-sixty-five over 90!

I was armed with data this time.  I brought my obsessive log of normal readings over the last few days.  I brought Doug’s blood pressure machine so they could see that it really was accurate.  Surely this travesty would be rectified now that I brought PROOF!

Dr. Primary Care Physician was unconvinced.  She agreed with the No Pills For You doctor, and I’m still cut off.  Well, except for the 3-month stash of pills I hoarded when I thought Rick Santorum might be president.  But I’m saving that for a real emergency.

So now they are using the M-word.  Both doctors agree that it’s best to stop the pill while we sort out this blood pressure thing, but also, it will give them a chance to see if perhaps I’m entertaining menopause. 

Menopause.  It seemed like they were calling me old.  I did remind them both that I’m only 49.  Both doctors informed me that the average age of menopause is 51.  I explained that that is two whole years away.  They explained what average means.

But I guess it’s true, no matter how healthy I am, I’m just like everyone else.  I’m getting older.  While I don’t know how the blood pressure thing is going to work out yet, the reality is, as you get older, “The parts, they break,” to quote another blogger’s dad.  But there is a silver lining.  If I really am in menopause, without the hostage of birth control pills, I could actually withhold doctors’ appointments.

I will use my power wisely.

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Walking a Mile in Her Shoes

Well, that title is misleading.  There is no way I could walk a mile in these shoes.  In fact, I only wear them for a few hours each year.  These are my Vegas shoes. 

Back home, I never wear these shoes.  For one thing, there’s no place to wear them here.  They don’t fit into my life in Suburbia, USA.  For another thing, I’m afraid I’m going to break something when I wear them.  If not an actual body part, then possibly a shattered ego in the event I spill onto my face.  It’s not a totally unfounded fear; did you read that article about how dangerous it is just to take your daily shower?  And remember that episode of Sex and the City when Carrie becomes “runway roadkill?”  How these ladies do a “Heel Hop” workout in stilettos I will never understand. 

But it is fun to shed my suburban persona for a few hours and teeter around the casino wearing a little glamor. 

When I retired five years ago, I was really excited to shed my CPA persona and get a whole new identity.  Losing your work identity is a struggle that some retirees have a hard time with.  I embraced it whole-heartedly.  I couldn’t wait to shed the buttoned-down accountant image and exchange it for a new one, something creative, fashionable, and hip.  I thought once I retired and started blogging I would get a whole new identity.

Well as it turns out, I may enjoy a new creative outlet in retirement, but I’m not really any more fashionable or hip.  In fact, I still enjoy creating spreadsheets for myself, managing my investments, and engaging in other accountant-like behavior.  While I may have shed my career identity, it’s not like retirement gave me a personality transplant.  I’m still the same person I was before I retired.

The truth is, I’m a sensible-shoe girl.  That’s what fills the majority of my closet.  So those Vegas shoes only transform my identity for a couple nights each year.  Just like retirement, it may not have given me a whole new identity, but it has ever so slightly improved the one I enjoy now.

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Reflections on My First Year of Retirement  (Part 2:  Loss of Identity)

Discovering Who I Am Without Work

It’s Not Losing an Identity, It’s Gaining a Chance to Create a New One!

 

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I'm Not Lazy, I Just Look Lazy

Ok, when I last left off, we were discussing laziness.  But now I want to point out that sometimes you just look lazy to the outside world, when in fact you’re totally engaged in something fun.  It just looks like you’re doing absolutely nothing.  So, if you leave the house in the morning to go biking with a friend and find your wife is in the exact same spot in front of her computer when you arrive home, a) it is not reasonable to assume that she has been in that exact position all day, and b) it does not mean she is lazy.

Case in point:  A couple weeks ago, Doug left for his bike ride, and I was in my pajamas at my computer eating breakfast.  I had three things I absolutely had to accomplish that day, all of which involved sitting at the computer.   I had to write a little tribute to a old friend that was retiring, make an email introduction to two people for the non-profit I volunteer for, and send an email to a friend that was going in for surgery the following day to offer my help.  These things I accomplished by lunchtime. 

I put in an hour on the elliptical machine, had lunch, and showered.  When I came back downstairs, a friend had emailed me an old work question and I tried to answer it by going through my emails from 2005.  Well, I couldn’t actually figure out the answer to her question but I became totally engrossed in reading old emails.  There were a bunch of fun photos of some office parties that I hadn’t seen in ages.  I relived my first month-long trip to Manhattan by reading all the emails I wrote to friends and family describing our adventures.  I recalled how frustrated I was during my last year of work, when I read all the emails about how long it was taking to find my replacement.  It reminded me how happy I am now to be retired, not just because I am done with all of the work angst, but also because I can now sit at my computer for hours reading old emails because really, I can do whatever I want.

Now I admit, this activity that doesn’t really look like an activity did derail my plans to mop the kitchen floor.  Because, as I explained in my last post, that is a not-very-fun task that can always be done tomorrow.  But if I had been mopping the floor instead of sitting at my computer when Doug arrived back home, it would have given him a totally different impression of how I spent my day.  Perhaps it was the clue that I was no longer in my pajamas that stopped him from asking, “Have you even moved from that position today?”

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