Having some place to go has to be good for relationships. To the office is ok. Or to the country club for some golf. Fishing? Coffee shop for morning coffee. Volunteer work works to.
Lots of this is social. Getting out of the house with people is good for your mental health.
She is as bad as one of my clients that doesn’t believe me when I tell them that they have enough.
I asked her tonight on the way home from dinner what she thought we would make per month in retirement, just from investments, and the amount was it was 1.5% (annualized) of our investment assets. The actual amount is of course 3x more (i.e. 4%) - and that doesn’t count pensions or SS.
She said, “that means we will make more in retirement than we do now?!?” And I said, “yes!” thinking she finally gets it.
Now she is trying to arbitrarily move the goal post by facetiously saying we need more due to inflation over the last year.
Fear.
But math and science should trump fear.
Jealous as … because she wants to work longer for a larger pension. Takes a pretty health hit to her pension if she retires early.
I’ve got a friend here in Jackson Hole who works in a family office. The family’s worth is in the hundreds of millions, and the patriarch (who earned it all) shows up every day at the office. He’s in his 90s.
My wife is the same way. Our annual expenses come to about 2.2% of our investment assets. And I’m putting off SS until age 70 (only 64 now). She frets about running out of money.
I’m aware of people who set up a consulting business. They could probably do most of it from home. But rent an office where they can meet with clients. And get out of the house once in a while.
I get it. 1poorlady is still afraid we’ll run out of money. A few times a year (so far) she asks “are you sure”, especially when something happens (like tariffs) that can affect the economy. I can run the numbers again, but she’s of the mindset of “you never know what will happen”.
I think if it wasn’t for our health scares (it was a one-two punch within 3 months), I probably couldn’t have convinced her to retire yet. But first I had one, and then she had the “big C”. She tried to go back to work after that, but didn’t feel she was 100%. She retired about 6 months after finishing chemo. I was going to also, but they asked me to stay a few more months to help train a small team on what I did.
It’s three years ago this month.
In my experience CPA’s do taxes and not planning. I would be immediately skeptical of someone bashing others for being fee based. I am in the process of building a self-directed portfolio. I just don’t have any trust in advisors.
An observation: You folks with spouses who are afraid of running out of money…that’s why you have money! Versus those with spouses who are “spenders”. This is such a good problem to have.
I too have done my own for years often using what I learned on TMF. Everything changes when you cross the estate tax exemption line. The tax man is behind every decision you make. Not much detail is published. You probably do need advisors.
Point taken. 1poorlady is very frugal. I was once told I was “tight” by a coworker, but she makes me look like a spendthrift. Between the two of us, we are moderately frugal, and don’t really waste a lot of money. But I’m more prone to “if we need it, just buy it” than she is. She likes to improvise, but I shattered my calcaneus doing that. Would have been cheaper to buy the pole saw than to pay those medical bills (just as an example).
I am very glad she doesn’t want to redecorate every couple of years, replacing furniture, etc. In fact, I can’t get her to get rid of the older furniture we can’t use any more (and have replaced). I use stuff till is dies, but then I toss it. She doesn’t.