Pre-retirement Planning

As promised today is about retiring (again). I had a truly wonderful conversation with a nice lady named Dolores yesterday. We spent an hour on the phone where we first discussed my various scenarios for retiring; that is at age 65, 60, 62 or now! Then we took a look at my financials which I had sent her in advance. This spreadsheet had my current expenses, income, assets and liabilities which we reviewed to ensure that I hadn’t missed anything. My goodness but she was thorough.

One of the first things she said to me that I was very wise to be calling at age 57. She said most people don’t even think about things until AFTER they have retired. Can you imagine? I’ve already been researching for the past FIVE years! I didn’t tell her that. I know my friend Palo’s husband wondered how old I was when she mentioned my retiring research to him. He thought I was young. (I just adore him). The other interesting thing Dolores said was that most people generally low ball their expenses. I didn’t brag to her that I was spot on with my expenses. As I might have mentioned before when the Canadian researcher came to my house we spent more than two hours going over my income and expenses. She had about 500 questions (no kidding, it took forever and it was the night of the ER finale – but that’s another story) which encompassed minutiae like how much money I spent per year on shampoo! When we were done I was out about $3.00 and she was terribly impressed that I knew where all my money went. And this was all done just sitting in the living room and me giving verbally answers to her clipboard questions! Okay, so NOW I am bragging. The point is, Dolores didn’t need to worry, if anything I had overstated some expenses just so I wouldn’t appear too cheap. LOL

Finally I had to ask her “So can you tell me roughly what a person should be looking at for income when they retire, given my circumstances?” I could hear the smile in her voice as she said “When people ask for a ‘give me the bottom line’ answer we tell them a quarter of a million dollars, no debt, then with the CPP and Old Age we say withdraw 4% of that $250,000 which equals $10,000.” So that would be approximately $25,000 per year so I was spot on (again) in my estimating.

We went through a scenario where I would retire at 62, changing my expense figures to what I would spend after retiring. She congratulated me on being in such good financial shape and said if I wanted to I could retire at 60 and still have funds to last until 85 (without factoring in growth).

Let me tell you that it gives me a liberated feeling that I am “safe”.

We did discuss medical but this is not her area of expertise so she said “shop around” for a provider and then research whether I should just pay up as I go. It didn’t sound as though she was very fond of insurance companies, as who is? I believe they have the same reputation as lawyers; not good.

So I am dancing the Happy Dance.

And by the way, she said she hoped I would live it up a little even now and not leave a million dollars in an estate. She said it is surprising how many people want to factor that into their retirement planning. Why we both wondered? It was interesting that Dolores actually led us into this conversation but we had discussed this at our book club last Saturday. Don’t worry about it ladies, the kids will be alright without their inheritance!