How are you planning for your retirement?

Many things. I put a shit load of my pay into superannuation. I’m badgering my husband to do the same (and winning). We are investing money elsewhere. We are currently discussing other investment options. My husband, who has his own business, is taking steps (and has been for quite a while), to make it as saleable as possible since the resulting profits will be part of our retirement funds. We have discussed our future plans with our children. We have discussed how we might manage and fund our care and living arrangements. It’s something that’s very much on my mind as I like to feel secure.

What are you doing @Rarebear?

I spent my last two years before retirement shoveling as much into savings as I could.

How I regret not having started doing that the FIRST two years of employment 48 years earlier.

I’ve hired a financial planner to work on thing for me. But basically I have a pension, qualified accounts, and several non-qualified accounts.

Mainly, for over 20 years putting in from 3 to 10% into 403b. I have some other stuff socked away here and there.

I’m not.

I failed to save in those early employment years, which was a bad mistake. Saving $100 a month early would equal saving $1000 late in your career.
I saved 16% over the last 25 years of my employment.
When I retired, my home loans were paid off, as were my cars. I knew how much I spent every month, and was able to budget accordingly.
I strongly recommend you spend time with a retirement planner. I met with one once a year for 10 years before retirement.

I also have a financial adviser. It’s an important investment.

retirement? Wasn’t there a question here earlier about vows of poverty?

No other retirement except SS so I’m working until I’m 70 to get the max amount of $$ I can from SS.

I am planning on being dead.

Do you have long to go @rojo? Before you expir…I mean retire?

I didn’t aggressively plan financially. I worked for many years in the States and Sweden, so I have subsistence pensions from both countries. I had a small 401k in the last ten years. I had some savings and the equity in my last home.

Alternatively, I purposely developed skills that both amused me and could make me small money, subsistence money. I also developed survival skills, like cooking and cheap ways of doing things, making necessary things for myself—skills that save an enormous amount of money. I think they call that hacking today.

My boat pays for itself, provides a home when needed, provides mobility and makes me money. I love to sail, so I don’t consider that work. I could substist on my pension if I had to. When I get too feeble to sail, I could still sit in a wheelchair on Mallory Pier in Key West and sketch for the tourists in the afternoons for extra money, like a busker. I still have some social credit there. It wouldn’t be a bad life.

One of the reasons I didn’t aggressively plan for retirement was that I never had children and therefore never had the urge to leave anything behind. This instinct drives a lot of people to plan aggressively. I also had a heart attack at forty-two and never figured retirement would be a problem, so I lived pretty well while I worked. I experienced the bear markets of the early 70’s, sudden crash of 1987, the dot-com crash of 2001 and and the implosion of 2008, so my faith in investing was a bit shakey anyway.

Also, from the time I was a kid, I was surrounded by retirees in Florida. Then later, as a nurse, many of my patients were geriatric. Their biggest problems were isolation and boredom and money won’t necessarily take care of those things. I developed skills to avoid most of that.

If we live long enough, we’re all going to end up in the nursing home one day. Mine just won’t be as nice and pretty as many others. But I’ve already had nice and pretty when I was still young enough to enjoy it fully. As long as I stay curious and have a library nearby, or the net, I’ll be OK.

401k. Low-fee index mutual funds and saving regularly. Also I try hard to live within my means. I’m lucky to have a reasonable mortgage, because I bought it after the ‘08 housing crash at a time when interest rates were very low.

Cranking as much as I can into my 401K, I have a retirement both from my current job and my previous job that will be paying me, my wife has a retirement from her previous job that will pay us, we are paying off all our bills including our home (or at least trying to pay it off prior to retiring). We are also looking at our lifestyle and figuring out where we can cut if we need to.

I have now retired on a company pension and a small state pension. I am still paying a mortgage but feel I am reasonably well off and secure. I live quite frugally apart from travel.

I have been investing in my 401k since I was 23 and a Roth even before that. I also have a pension that I’m vested in. I met with a financial advisor a month or two ago and I’m on track to retire when I’m planning to.

It used to surprise me when I’d talk to people about stocks and stuff and get a deer in the headlights look, not so much anymore. Funny thing is that anyone can invest, it just takes planning. I had a roth ira when I was making $5.50/hr. There is really no excuse not to.

Apologies if I’ve posted this before. I’ve been here a long time, and sometimes I forget what I may have shared – or even sometimes what I should share, so…

I have had a five-part retirement plan for a number of years. I figure that between:
1. My IRAs,
2. My 401(k),
3. My company pension (we still have one, though it’s not like the old days),
4. The equity in my house (mortgage payoff next month!) and additional savings,
5. Social Security

I can retire within five years after I die.

——

I have since modified that plan to an even simpler one:

1. Sell the house,
2. Move a few miles south into North Hartford, CT,
3. Plan to be murdered in no time at all.

Honestly I don’t necessarily plan on living long enough to have need of retirement.

I should have added I’d be getting a pension from the state, too.

I spend six hours a day stock trading. It has been going well for me. We paid cash for our home and car also. We began that in 1992. We have never carried a balance on a credit card.
I love stocks but today the 29th they’re dreadful. Yesterday was great.
So we have not worked in fifteen years. I shouldn’t say this but he is no good with stocks. So I help a lot financially. Someday we may be forced to sell this house for long term care. Depends on if some investments sell or not.

I had investments and Social Security and we sold a business that I had a quarter interest in. Pending a cataclysm, I should be comfortable.

Meant to say “barring a cataclysm”; knew I wasn’t happy with the word I chose.

Putting as much as we can into our RRSP’s(very similar to your 401k’s) staying out of debt broke that bond a few years ago, and that’s about it.

I’m a millennial with student loans. My retirement plan is suicide.