Now that I’ve made My Decision on Retirement the next step is to make a plan for the next 30 years. One of the emerging management practices companies use to address skill shortages is to provide A Broad Range of Flexible Retirement Arrangements. At http://www.aarp.org you will find a ton of articles on phased retirement and other flexible retirement options.

If you’ve been to my blog before I apologize for repeating myself. But for new readers I’m past the “traditional” retirement age of 65. I don’t want to retire nor do I intend to retire for several years. One word describes why I continue to work. FEAR. I’m afraid of living too long and outliving my savings. I am petrified of leaving the workforce and no longer having an earned income stream. Living on a fixed income when the cost of everything keeps going higher scares the shit out of me.

Amidst my fear and anxiety the Social Security Administration approved my application for retirement benefits. When I looked at my monthly benefit I was pleasantly surprised. I then added up our future income sources and calculated that our fixed income from social security plus a small defined benefit pension plan will cover 82.5% of our current monthly expenses. Add in future annual withdrawals from savings and investments The Boss and I are financially OK until our nineties.

My fears are overblown. Check this out:

Conventional financial planning also overstates the income seniors need. That owes partly to planners assuming that seniors require the same amount of money throughout retirement. Yet as economists Michael Hurd and Susanne Rohwedder of the Rand Corp. have shown, average household spending drops by roughly 40% from age 65 to 90. Seniors aren’t running out of money—spending on gifts and donations increases with age. Retirees simply spend less on themselves than financial planners assume.

Planners likewise forget that much of adults’ pre-retirement income is spent on their children. The U.S. estimates that a couple earning roughly $83,000 with two children spends more than $26,000 annually providing food, housing, healthcare and other needs for their children. That’s money parents can’t spend on themselves. Of the income they could devote to their own needs, Social Security will replace around 60%. The upshot is that parents need less savings on top of Social Security than one might think. You Don’t Need to Be a Millionaire to Retire By Andrew G. Biggs https://www.aei.org/op-eds/you-dont-need-to-be-a-millionaire-to-retire/

“I faced a painful reality: I didn’t know anything about anything….”

Andy Clarke – financial writer and editor, a retired CFA dispensing advice to retirees on investing and savings.

A 2021 survey by Pew Research looked at the question another way: It asked people from around the world what made their lives meaningful. In countries such as Italy, Spain, and Sweden, work ranked highly as a source of meaning. In Italy, work was the No. 1 source of meaning, with 43% saying they drew meaning from work. Spaniards ranked work higher than family. But in the US, only 17% mentioned work as a source of meaning. That was a sharp decline from when Pew asked the same question four years prior — a full one-third of Americans mentioned their jobs as a source of meaning in 2017, double the 2021 rate. Increasingly, it seems that more people feel like their jobs don’t matter. Why so many Americans hate their jobs — https://www.businessinsider.com/american-employees-disengaged-work-meaningless-fake-email-jobs-2024-6

Here are some of the biggest reasons some people don’t have enough money saved for retirement:

You don’t make enough money. This is likely the biggest reason most households don’t have enough retirement savings. Some people simply don’t earn a high enough income to have any money left over.

There are personal finance people who would like you to believe it’s all bad habits that cause people to under-fund their retirement.

Many people don’t have any excess remaining after paying for necessities.

Why People Don’t Save Enough For Retirement – https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/08/why-people-dont-save-enough-for-retirement/

We saved as much as we could and if I work a few more years we can plump up our financial cushion. Our expenses will likely be less in the years to come (except someone’s clothing/shoe/Tiny Human budget and that someone is not me). So with a willing employer and continued good health I plan to work full time for a few more years and then ease into retirement by continuing to work part time.

The first five years of my 30 Year Plan is complete. Now I need to work on what to do for the 25 years afterwards.