LumberJocks Woodworking Forum banner

Another great post from DKV

2K views 20 replies 14 participants last post by  Woodbum 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
Someone once said that they were able to "retire comfortable". Just exactly what does comfortable mean? To me it means one thing to the next person it could mean something else. To me it means being able to, within reason, buy anything that strikes my fancy. Whether that be something to do with woodworking, a trip or a car. It also means reliable healthcare at a fair price.
What does it mean to you. Are you ready to retire? Will you be ready? People talk about working past 65. Not being ready or not having saved long enough. Are you retired and happy? Are you nearing retirement and scared? What's your situation?
 
#2 ·
I could hardly wait to.retire. I wanted.to go.out.at 55 but the company renegotiated my contract to coax me to stay. I retired on my 62nd birthday. I am not able to do whatever I want. Money is a little tight but no tighter than when I was working. My week is full. I am.able to fish a couple days a week, play in the shop a couple days a week volunteer my time a couple day a week. I guess I am able to do whatever I want. I do not regret my decision and would do it the same if I had it to do over again.
 
#3 ·
I just retired at 62 after 40 yrs. of teaching. I can live in comfort ,buy and do things I want. The biggest drawback to my finances is the 1700 dollars a month for family health insurance. I have saved enough plus no house payment make it possible to pay the insurance. The high insurance payment will drop when Medicare kicks in 27 months.
 
#5 ·
I'm probably 25-30 years away from retirement and lucky enough that my wife and I can both save 5% of our income along with 401k matching. My very rough estimates puts that a bit below where we should be but, as you are asking, that all depends on what 'comfortable' is for the individual. One big aspect for me is not depending on payments from the government. Regardless of anyone's opinions about whether the programs are right or wrong, I would not be comfortable if I knew that I needed that income to pay my bills. Certainly, having that view is a privilege that not all are lucky enough to have. Perhaps more in-line with what you expected to be mentioned, I would expect an increase in travel and hobby time and the corresponding increased costs. When developing my long-term budget I looked at all the costs and income that would go away around retirement (house paid off, kids gone, paycheck gone :] ) and used the remaining costs that I presently have as a model for how much it would take to maintain the lifestyle I am accustomed to now.

I think that is the biggest contributor to the variation in the meaning of 'comfortable'. If you are comfortable with your life now and can add a some more not-too-costly activities to fill your time then you will likely be comfortable in retirement as well.
 
#6 · (Edited by Moderator)
I have been retired a couple of years now and my wife and I are comfortable where we are at.

Planning is a key to being comfortable. You need to save all your working life and understand or estimate where you will be when you retire. Tracking your expenses before you retire and understand what and how you spend is a great help.

We found a great financial planner and he has been great. There are just so many things that we did not know. So many things that needed to be taken into account.

You need to plan for medical costs. We found someone to help with Medicare and learned what we did not know.

You need to REALLY plan what you are going to do in retirement.

Plan…plan….plan and have some good luck
 
#7 ·
I'm still probably 30 years away from retirement. "Comfortably" to me means being able to do the things I love (woodworking, golfing and camping), while being able afford food, insurance, etc. My wife is a teacher and is vested in the state's retirement system. I got hired 2 years before they discontinued the company's pension plan, so I have that. If it still exists in 30 years, which it won't. If it did, it'd probably buy me a few board feet of lumber per month. Since I started working, I've been putting 12% into my 401k, and my company matches 100% of the first 4%. Things are a bit tight right now with one and three year-olds in day care (costs more than our mortgage). But, I'd rather have pinch a few pennies now and save them for later.
 
#8 · (Edited by Moderator)
I was all ready to retire until my father got sick. Spent just about every dime I had to take care of him before he died.

I will never be able to retire now comfortably and not sure what I will do if my mother has a long, drawn out, health care issue, much less, myself.

Do not count on Medicaid or HealthCare to take care of you. What a nightmare in itself.
 
#9 ·
jumbojack pretty much wrote my story. Retired last August when I turned 62 and I was ABSOLUTELY ready for it! Unfortunately we went thru bankruptcy a few years back due to medical bills and it pretty much wiped us out financially .

My income now is pretty much the same as my last job was paying. I looked into a part-time job and found one where I could make $500 - 600 a month but if I took it my insurance cost (Obamacare) will increase dramatically and I'd really only see less than $100 of that in my pocket. So it's not worth it for me to take a PT job.

Money is pretty tight but no more so then when I worked last. Luckily the house and our vehicles are paid for.
Vacation trips? nope
New car? nope
 
#11 ·
I retired at 60 and the Mrs the same. She has a good pension /medical plan (Gov. health care worker). I don't
Aside from that, we enlisted a financial planner 30+ yrs ago and laid out our plan. We figured out what we needed to retire and maintain the same standard of living. No use retiring if you're going to be be living on cat food. We stuck to the plan religiously. Part of the plan was the boss matching my RRSP contributions and that helped a lot. The bottom line is You have to have a plan laid out ahead of time, don't wait till yer 50+. Redoak pretty much nailed it.
Having said all that. We live pretty comfortably, but I wish I had started saving earlier. Like my dad told me.
 
#14 · (Edited by Moderator)
I submitted retirement papers three times before I finally got out. I let them lure me back twice and one Wednesday afternoon I called the wife and told her I was done. Thursday morning I pulled a Johnny Paycheck and told them to take the job and shove it. Think somebody made me mad? We had already moved from the highly taxed big city to a rural area, built a new home and paid it off. New car and truck with no notes and no other debt. You bet we planned and we stuck to it. Comfortable? I am not sure what that means. Could we use more money? Sure we could, but we can eat and pay the few bills we have, i.e. taxes, insurance, utilities, medical and etc. We still eat out and travel. I still spend money in the shop, probably more than I should.

Retirement should be a well executed plan and not something that sneaks up on you and the forced upon you.
 
#15 ·
I have always put 10-12% of my income into a 401K and my company matches about half of it. When I hit my mid 40s, my finances improved so I could add the maximum allowed into the 401K. After 50, you get another 6K catch-up limit, so that gets saved also. My plan is to have the house paid off and retire when I am 58. I will need to have enough cash saved to pay for medical expenses until Medicare kicks in. I also plan on using my 401K so I can delay collecting social security as long as possible.

I feel sorry for the younger generation. Even though I don't have a pension, my job pays well and I think I will be OK to retire. I don't expect many people starting work today can expect the same pension benefits as people that are near retirement.
 
#19 ·
Woodmaster1 my hat is off to you for being a teacher. I am not sure I could have ever done that job. I spent 44 years in my profession and my employer had the same problem in replacing me as they could not easily find someone with the knowledge and experience that I had as there was not a large labor pool to pull from. I was 68 when I finally had enough and I knew the moment that it happened. I haven't missed one day of it as I had planned what I was going to do in my retirement. I work just as hard every day as I did when someone else was writing the check. I just enjoy it a lot more now.
 
#21 · (Edited by Moderator)
I have about 15 months to get to my 66th birthday, but I plan to work 4 more months after that to maximize my SS, savings schedule and 401(k) plan benefits. I WILL take my full SS benefits at that time because I paid into the system since I was very young, and I'm not about to leave that money/income laying on the table. For me retirement will be a "three legged stool": SS, retirement savings and some part-time work. I like to work, but enough is enough; and after 50+ years in the workforce, with 36 of those in a high stress job, I am ready to relax a bit. Can I retire "comfortably"? The simple answer is: it depends. We have lived for the last 37 years on one income, and were pretty poor when we started out, so I think we can figure out how to handle it. I have planned for this, and we will have no debt, a nice house that has recently been remodeled, two fairly new vehicles, we are relatively healthy and have invested in our hobbies and our "wants" while I am still working. Will we be able to live like we do today? Probably not, but we will have everything we need and most of what we want, and our wants are not that many. We're tough and can cope with most anything that life throws at us. Like others, I am looking forward to doing what I want, when I want, without a lot of pressure to do what I no longer give a ******************** about.
It is a little scary, but overall I am looking forward to it. I just hope that I can live many more years to be able to get maximum enjoyment out of retirement. Like so many other wild assed guys that grew up in the 50's 60's and 70's, I really never thought that I would live long enough to be able to retire and collect Medicare and SS. I guess you never know what the future will bring. Good luck to all of my fellow geezers out there.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top