11–14 of 14 posts
Do you mean how to manage the retirement from a financial perspective or in general, how to spend one's retirement?
From a financial perspective, in general. I've come to realize in researching the issue that there are several options and in asking this question I am hoping to get a sense for popular strategies. I am uncertain how it is possible to retire at all at this point (even though I've still got a few decades if I'm lucky).
Most people in technology are earning significantly more than the median income in their region. If you can learn to keep your spending near median, you end up with a sizable cushion.
If you can save 1/3 of your income and earn a 4% real rate of return on your savings, in about 8 years you have 5 years worth of living expenses in the bank. That gives you a lot of flexibility for taking risks that can earn big payouts.
Or if you keep doing it for 30 years, you end up with enough savings to live off the investment income alone. This is the slow, reliable way to get rich.
Been there, done that ... I was laid off by an AI research company in 2006 at age 55, where I was a programmer - I have been a programmer or project manager since 1976. My wife and I have been frugal our entire lives and are very aggressive savers. When I was laid off, I persuaded my wife that if I accepted one of several job offers it would just put more money in our retirement accounts and investment real estate. F…
Your advice sounds very good. I'm looking at the situation from the other end of the tunnel. One point I would add is that you have to be very careful in finding a financial adviser. A large portion of people that work under that title are actually just commission based "whole life" insurance salesman. It took me and my wife quite a while to find a person we felt comfortable with and that was 100% fee based.
Stick with "Term" [2] life insurance (good coverage, cheap, but only for a fixed number of years), invest the difference, and plan to self insure after the term is up. Good financial planning makes this approach much more cost effective.
I've recently had the experience of a friend going into the life insurance business, and it's been painful to observe how sleazy the life insurance "products" that they try to sell you are. We sat down to discuss my savings/insurance plans, and when it became clear that I was not interested in starting his "Cash Value Life Insurance" plan, he resorted to pitching the product to me with the desperation of a Quickstar/Amway[4] representative. It was a very off-putting experience, but it makes sense now that I know his only compensation comes from commission.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_life_insurance
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_insurance#Permanent_life_i...
Been there, done that ... I was laid off by an AI research company in 2006 at age 55, where I was a programmer - I have been a programmer or project manager since 1976. My wife and I have been frugal our entire lives and are very aggressive savers. When I was laid off, I persuaded my wife that if I accepted one of several job offers it would just put more money in our retirement accounts and investment real estate. F…