Retirement
My current project is with a Fortune 100 financial institution. I have a policy about never talking about my clients but I do have this to say; my current client is a financial company but has a very different “brand” in the marketplace and does wonderful things in the markets they serve. I truly believe in this client, they are good people, have been around for almost 100 years serving a market that gives more to society than people give credit, and it operates with a high degree of ethics and moral principles.
But that’s besides the point. This client specializes in retirement and helping people plan for retirement as well as living in retirement. Part of what I do for work is talk to executives in the company, managers who run the different parts of the company, line employees who make up the rank and file, and the end clients or customers. For the past 9 weeks I have been immersed in “retirement”. And for me, personally, retirement is so far away I might as well as be talking to people about building a space ship to take tourists to the far side of the moon. But for a huge percentage of baby boomers in this country, retirement will be happening in the next zero to 10 years. And while talking about the process of accumulating wealth to preserving it, to living off of retirement has got me thinking about my own retirement. And it makes me so very very sad. Because I know that retirement is realistically 30 or so years away. Not 5 like some of the people I have talked to. Or 2 years. Or 4 months away. I am not about to pull the trigger and start collecting on the money I have been accumulating over my lifetime. I am about 360 months away from that. And the thought of being at the point where I can start planning for permanent time off makes me anxious. Not because I fear that I won’t have enough, even that is a legitimate fear, but because I want to retire right now. Right freakin’ now. Tomorrow.
But truth be told, I think retirement is a scary thing. My father retired about 3 years ago and I never really talked to him about it. He has worked extremely hard, (never took a sick day), for over 41 years and I think he was ready to retire. For him, which will probably be the case for me, he found himself more busy in retirement than he did when he was working full time. Just like when I have a few days off I find my days packed with things to do, he finds himself running around all day. Imagine if me, with my two kids, and my sister Lori with her two kids, lived near him. He would have to add baby sitting to his project list. But getting back to my point. Retirement is, I think, in part pretty scary. You spend decades working, getting a paycheck, 10% taken out to a 401K, a pension plan building if you are lucky, working toward the one day when you don’t have to go to work on Monday morning. But there is the reality that you now have to live off a different amount of money that you have in the past. And that you have to now deal directly with the carrier, like Fidelity or Vanguard, instead of the company you have been getting your paycheck from.
Anyway, I want to retire soon. I like my job and like my company, it’s nothing personal against them, but I like the idea of finally getting something back from the years that you put in. Unfortunately I have about 30 more years of giving in before I can do that. But when I talk to my client’s customers who are about to retire, or when I talk to people who manage the retirement products and services at my client, I can live through them and pretend, even for a moment, that I am the one who is nearing the golden age of permanent days off.
Just thought I’d share.