As a mid-career doctor, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about retirement. 100 years ago, retirement basically didn't exist. You worked until you couldn't work any longer and then your family took care of you for a year or two before you died. 50 years ago, there was this idea of retirement where you worked for the company for 30 or 40 years, then one day you went from full-time to not working at all, you got the gold watch, and you started golfing every day. These days, when people hear the word retirement, I think that second image is what usually pops into their minds.
However, over the last decade or two, the concept of retirement has become much more amorphous. It means different things to different people. It is no longer a date, or a day you go from full-time work to not working at all, or even the end of work. It's squishy, and it's getting squishier all the time. Let me give you some examples of the ways it has become squishy.
The New Look of Retirement
Part-time
The first concept to consider in a discussion of “what retirement is” is the fact that you don't have to work full-time for 30-40 years straight before retiring. Especially when you are a high-income professional, cutting back to 3/4 time or half time is a very reasonable thing to do. Regular readers will recall I moved from full-time clinical work to 3/4 time clinical work (16 shifts to 12 shifts a month) September 2016. In June 2017, I dropped the overnight shift (10 pm to 6 am, although I still work until 2 am a few times a month.
[Update 2020: This post was originally written in December 2016. In 2018, I cut my clinical time back further from 3/4 time to 1/2 time. WCI had grown too much to be neglected as much as I was neglecting it and I had simply run out of hours in the week. I'm still searching for that elusive balance, but if I had never cut back on hours there would be no podcast, no WCI financial boot camp, no online courses, no WCICONs, etc.]
Now, I know many of you work FAR more hours than I ever did as an emergency doc, but given the high pace of work and the rotating shifts, full-time in emergency medicine is generally considered anything more than 15 eight hour shifts or 12 twelve hour shifts a month. So 12 eights is 3/4 time. I knew it would be nice to cut back, but I had no idea all of the benefits I would see from doing it in just the last three months (I wrote this in December.) Here is a list:
- I now look forward to going into work
- I actually get bored. Not very often, but every now and then. I hadn't been bored in years previous to cutting back.
- I can take a week-long trip and not have the rest of the month feel like it is punishing me for doing it.
- I have lost 10 lbs.
- I am in far better cardiovascular shape. Working nights is a cardiac risk factor. I literally feel like I will live longer for making this change.
- I often wake up at 6 or 7 in the morning naturally energized and ready to take on the day rather than feeling like I go to Europe once a month.
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Your kids won't be 7 forever, don't miss it!
I have the time and energy to help the kids with their homework, take them to practices/games, and discipline them.
- I am much more organized at home.
- Our home is cleaner and less cluttered now that I can contribute more time toward taking care of it.
- I have more time to work on my side business and more time to travel.
Some work situations, professions, and specialties lend themselves better to part-time work than others, but most doctors who are willing to take the hit in income can work less, especially if they're creative. This might be a new parent who wants to spend more time with pre-school children, or a mid-career doc with kids in “the fun ages” of 5-10. It might be a parent who needs to be there when the struggling teenager comes in the door from school. Or perhaps take care of an aging parent. Maybe it is someone who wants to go back to school for another degree, explore another career, or follow an entrepreneurial pursuit. Maybe they're just feeling burned out and need to spend more time skiing. Who knows? But this idea that you have to work full-time for decades before you can cut back at all is totally false.
Intermittent Careers
Not only can you cut back, but you can stop working altogether for a period of time. Maybe it is just a one-year sabbatical. Maybe it is quitting for five years until the kiddo gets into kindergarten. Maybe it is busting your butt in your 30s, “retiring” to travel the world in your 40s and then returning to paid work at 50. Maybe it's a 1-3 year “mission” in a foreign country. You don't have to work full-time and you don't have to work every month, year, or even decade.
A doctor going part-time or taking serious time off will have to deal with the twin issues of licensure and competency. While you aren't working, you may have to figure out a way to maintain licensure, do CME, stay credentialed at a hospital, maintain board certification, cover tail insurance, etc. That is difficult in and of itself. But when you combine “showing people you're competent” with “actually staying competent” (and we all know those are two different things), it gets really tricky.
When I've been gone 10 days without working a shift I feel like I've lost a step. I can't imagine what it is like after a year. Medicine is something that you practice — it is difficult, requires continuous education and learning, and is constantly changing. I have no doubt that doing it intermittently or only part-time affects your cognitive and procedural skills. Obviously, getting burned out early doesn't do your patients any good either, but you've got to strike a balance there. I think it is particularly dangerous to take significant time off or go part-time in your first five years out of training (which is often precisely the time newborns show up in physician families.)
Second Careers
Practically nobody “goes to the factory” at 18 and stays there for 50 years anymore. Outside of the professions, the average worker stays with the same job for just 4.6 years. That's not terribly new (it was 3.7 in the 1980s,) but it illustrates the fact that a career is not just one thing. It might be a long string of a lot of different things. Some of those might be an employed situation and there may be other times when you are self-employed. Maybe your first career is in tech and your second one in medicine. Perhaps your first career is medicine and your second one is a rafting guide or some other type of “encore” career. The better you manage your finances in the first career, the more options you'll have in your second one. But there's no reason you have to stay in the same job or even profession for your entire life.
Working In Retirement
In fact, there is nothing that says you have to stop working at 65 or 70 anyway. Does retirement really have to mean you stop working for pay at all? I think it's squishier than that now. Mr. Money Mustache discovered this when he ran into the Internet Retirement Police. Some people have even tried to define the term “retirement.” I think, “Why bother?” It's just life and what you do with it. In fact, some very early retirees are scared to admit they're not actually working for pay because others look down on them. They prefer to say they're “between jobs” or “a consultant” at least until they get into their 50s!
Financial Independence is Squishy Too
The Financial Blogosphere has tried to get around this issue by substituting the term “financially independent” for “retired.” That helps some, but “financially independent” is squishy too, as I wrote about previously. You see, if I'm willing to spend less (about $60K a year, more than the average household grosses) I'm financially independent now. But I'm actually spending two or three times that much because I prefer to and actually enjoy my jobs. In addition, an amount that makes you financially independent at 65 may not make you financially independent at 45 (due to lack of Social Security Income or to impending expenses like college). You don't have to be completely financially independent to cut back, take serious time off, or change careers either.
In conclusion, realize that while it is important to “save for retirement,” what that retirement actually looks like is highly variable and personalized and that's a good thing.
What do you think? Why do you think retirement is such a squishy term these days? Which of these “retirement-like” changes have you done or plan to do in your life? Comment below!
This didn’t go where I expected based on my assumptions from the title, but it’s a great post. Yes, I agree it’s “squishy”.
I wonder why we came to such a different understanding of ‘retirement’ from just not being able to work (50 years ago) to deserving something and purposefully doing nothing now in our 60s?
To me retirement and FI are one and the same. It’s “independence” and not *having to* work to make ends meet. It very often means still working though. 60, or even 70, is really too young to sit around doing nothing.
My father lasted about two years of retirement before he went and got a part time job – because he liked working, not because he needed the money.
I early-retired a few years ago but still do small amounts of work (consulting and coaching – beyond my blogging) not because I have to, but because I’m mid-40s and still have a lot to contribute to this world.
I totally agree that putting a concrete definition on these terms is pointless.
I’ve never seen why someone would retire to the point of playing golf everyday or sitting in a room just to read or watch Netflix.
I would love to eventually change things up but maintaining competency would be the most difficult part for me. About the best way I can think to accomplish this would be to do a week or two here and there as locums work. Then I could tailor travel around the locums work and hopefully maintain competency by only putting a month or so between clinical work.
With the multitude of CME travel opportunities, I don’t think that would be difficult. Of course, maintaining licensure in several states complicates matters as well.
I’m the “mid-career doc with kids in “the fun ages” of 5-10”. I might be closer to the tail-end of my career, but the term career is probably squishy, too, so I won’t worry too much about it.
I’m implementing the changes of going part time (0.6 FTE) this October and taking an extended and possibly permanent sabbatical from anesthesia a year or two later. If I see half the benefits you did from dropping my workload, I’ll be a very happy man.
Cheers!
-PoF
Squishy! Yes, I like it. Creative description.
I realized this a few years ago when I wrote a blog post about retirement and the comments were all over the map. I think there is a generational difference. The retirement of olden days is definitely different from that in the 20 something mind.
I do think FI is a little better defined though. A lot of people think of it as a nest egg of 25x expenses for example. But then again some consider FI to be enough to cover basic necessities without working. With that definition you are already FI. Especially if you sold your “doctor house” and business the income stream would support you without ever working again. OK. Maybe even FI is more squishy then I realized.
At any rate, I love this topic and this post. We could all use a lot more information, discussion, and options around part-time work or being “semi-retired.”
I am 0.7 FTE clinical and 0.3 Admin. I enjoy all of the work but would like to reduce the volume somehow. I may follow in your footsteps. It will be helpful to see how things go after October with PoF.
I guess I am a late career doc now. I always took a full day off when I was still doing OB. When you factor in the night call it is hard to come up with a FTE ratio. At 52 I went to 3.5 days in the office and I quit OB at 56. I am working 3days /week with no call now. I really feel retired. Positive things about part-time no call life.
1. I have not had to make a middle of the night trip to the hospital.
2. No middle of the night phone calls.
3. Time to grocery shop.
4. Time to donate items to charity.
5. Stable weight.
6. Time to read and write blog posts.
7. More time with my husband.
I worked 40 years full-time emergency medicine, the last three years as 3/4 time. We have a lot of women working 3/4 time from the start of their careers, but I was the only man. A lot more should consider this; it’s invigorating, a great burnout-preventer, generates adequate income, and allows more family time. Competency is easily maintained (our group generally agreed 32 clinical hours/month was the minimum to maintain competency. I would worry about maintaining true competency with more than 3 months off; a year is concerning.
I retired cold-turkey at age 65. After two divorces and the Great Recession, the financial hit was significant but manageable, having sold a life-long book collection for 6 figures to cover traveling. While I miss the people, I don’t miss the job. My time is filled with all the things I ever wanted to do but had no time for. It is rich and fulfilling. How did I find time to work? On to the next chapter!
You are so, so lucky. I am an employed EM doc, and they have absolutely no interest in letting us work less than 130 a month. So jealous- you are really lucky to have had such a career!
This is a great point! Retirement has so many meanings, although we’re still battling against the mainstream idea of elderly people retiring in Florida to play bridge. We’re still young and working our way out of debt, so we haven’t implemented any form of retirement just yet. But I would be interested in a part-time arrangement. It’s much easier to be satisfied about work if you don’t spend most of your daylight hours there.
Squishy indeed! I will be going part time this fall, at age 52. working every other week (26 weeks per year, full time is 44 weeks). Interestingly, I am already looking at locums gigs to fill some of the extra time, but I am not sure why I am drawn to do so.
I could easily retire an live comfortably off of my wife’s salary or we both could retire, but I am concerned about not having enough to do and hope to use the part time schedule to transition to what comes next. I have already started a paid consulting gig that is a lot of fun and good for about $25k per year, not a fortune, but better than a sharp stick in the eye.
So five years down the road, I could be completely retired, working part time, working locums only, consulting, some combination of these, or, more likely, doing something that I have not mentioned or thought of yet. No matter which path, the choice will not be guided by what pays or earns more, but how I want to be spending my time.
Locums? Give yourself a chance to see whether or not you look forward to your weeks off before you start to fill them up with additional work for money you clearly won’t need.
If, after a couple months of working every other week, you feel compelled to fill some of that time, by all means go for it! But I would advise against lining anything up at this point.
Cheers!
-PoF
I know, it’s crazy, and you are 110% right. (Nature abhors a vacuum, and all that.)
There are three reasons that I am pursuing the locums angle at the moment:
1. My part time deal has not been finalized, just a handshake agreement, and until it is, I want to have a Plan B in place.
2. I am not sure that I am discontent with my field or my practice, and perhaps by checking out what is going on elsewhere, I can answer the question more definitively.
3. The locums opportunities are in locations that are aspirational for the future life, and if I decide to stay in the field, getting my foot in the door while there is an opportunity seems slightly logical (but still mostly nuts 😉 ).
I have been contemplating these exact issues (as you saw in a recent post). For the moment I remain full-time, but my practice (radiology) has quite a few part-timers, and I see myself joining their ranks in the next 5-8 years.
The primary impetus will be family: more time spent with kids during the “fun ages”, as you put it (i like that). Maintenance of employer health insurance, extra financial security, and concerns about boredom may keep me from retiring fully for a while. However, I am a different person compared to 5 years ago, and I’ll be different again 5 years from now, so who knows.
Congrats on the lost weight and lost “jet” lag!
Dr. C
I do like to be in the same place for extended periods of time. I was at one job for 8 years and have been at my current one for 17 and will probably finish out my working life here. Which for me, is not a bad thing. FI is the new retirement like Ranch Dressing was the new Ketchup. The only rule really is that your bills get paid. How you do that is up to you. Having flexibility is awesome. My job requires 40-hours a week, but it is also early morning to early afternoon. That has given me the ability to be home, be a coach, be a dad, when it is most needed.
cd :O)
Regarding this: ” I can’t imagine what it is like after a year. Medicine is something that you practice– it is difficult, requires continuous education and learning, and is constantly changing. I have no doubt that doing it intermittently or only part-time affects your cognitive and procedural skills.”
This was one factor in my (JD) quitting to raise the kids, rather than my wife (OBG). We figured that it would be relatively easier for me to come back in after a few years, albeit without realistic chance to get back on the escalator on the same trajectory. Turned out to be more than a few years, but worked out well.
Other than my 15 years as “Dad,” we are definitely going the traditional retirement route. She has been full-time private practice, max three weeks vacation a year since 1990 (with one 6 week “vacation” post-c-section.). In 49 days, we both are out cold turkey to travel and don’t expect to look back. At least for her, given her field and size of group (and love of OB, rather than Gyn), cutting hours back wasn’t much of an option….
Despite the lack of flexibility, she loved the ride she chose. But, others would see it differently.
Some may say I already don’t work “full time” at 4 equiv days a week, but really looking forward to 3 days a week consistently – should get there in 10 yrs or less. Kiddo will be around 9 or 10 then, so works out nicely.
Great post retirement does have a lot of different meanings nowadays. And contrary to what most bloggers say, there is no right answer. Working for 40 hours at a job you like and stopping at age 60 is just fine. Early retirement is just fine too. It’s all about what you want your life to look like and what you’re willing to do to get it.
I have been inspired by reading about WCI’s changes and am starting to cut back on hours worked. I am taking more vacation this summer (scattered days here and there), leaving work earlier, and will go from 5 days per week to 4 in the fall. This obviously means that I will have less money to save, but I am near FI (does this mean I am late career?) and would like to ‘smell the roses’ more. After many years of striving to increase my income, it is surprisingly difficult to feel entirely comfortable with this plan. Reducing work hours also seems to require some adjustments at home – spouse is not used to having me around so much, and it seems I will have to perform more of the annoying little tasks that pop up! OTOH, we are doing more fun things that were hard to plan when I was working more, and I am getting more exercise.
Definitely plan on doing more of the “annoying little tasks.”
You’re right that it was easier for me to cut back on clinical shifts since I have another significant source of income. Hard to see income go down, isn’t it, even though you can afford for it to do so.
Interesting thoughts. Could work well for ER doc, rads, anesthesia ,path who can do shift. Much harder to do if you have built up a private practice with leases , equipment and staff and patients who depend on you.
Your best bet if you were truly interested in cutting back might be to hire locums or hire someone part-time. You might even find a way to continue earning money from the practice with very little clinical work (if that’s what you want). It sounds like that’s what Zaphod’s boss has done and it can be quite lucrative.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/forums/topic/what-kind-of-physician-makes-this-kind-of-money/page/2/
For sure. Most of those issues are solvable with a big dose of creativity, of course.
As a patient, I would be less than happy to find that some unknown person was sitting where my long time MD was supposed to be. I find it hard to believe that the practice wouldn’t suffer for it.
Why not just find someone junior who would like to take over the practice and bring them in several years before you plan to retire? That way, the senior MD creates a glide path to retirement and the patients have a smooth transition to the new MD.
I know a dentist who did this and it seems to have worked out well.
I took a year between college and med school to perform with a small jazz company, and it was the best decision that I ever made. Most of the fun that I had over the next 10 years was a direct or indirect result of that experience.
I sold my critical care staffing company at 34 and took a year to travel, write, study, surf, ski, and dive before starting fellowship. My skills were still sharp when I started fellowship, including procedural skills (e.g., PA cath, transvenous pacer placement, art line placement, etc.).
I burned out at 42 and left medicine to manage my portfolio. Spent 2 1/2 years in bookstores teaching myself finance and accounting, and then worked as a healthcare equity analyst while earning CFA designation and MBA.
Much later, a serious illness piqued my interest in medicine again, so I earned over 800 hours of CME credits and scored in the top decile on board re-certification and returned to practice after a 13 year absence. It was like riding a bike (albeit without invasive work this time around).
If I could start over, I would choose a lifestyle-friendly specialty, but I didn’t understand the importance of that in my early 20s.
That’s our major problem: We only get one attempt at life.
Wow, what an amazing story and life! Kudos for all that you have accomplished. Good lesson in the end. It might be worth a blog post here or elsewhere.
Words have meanings. Imitation isn’t the real thing, as we see in PU leather, MDF wood, or “I can’t believe it’s not butter.”
By the invented squishy logic all homeless are retired. Their passive income covers their expenses. They have an absolutely safe very low withdrawal rate. Because living on the street is always an option, everyone working is financially independent. They can retire like the homeless but they just choose not to.
Switching to self-employment isn’t retirement. It’s called switching to self-employment. Changing jobs isn’t retirement. It’s called changing jobs. Going from a two-earner household to a one-earner household isn’t retirement. It’s just how the household makes its living arrangement. Otherwise I just realized my grandmother retired at the age of 18. Someone always tries to muddy the water when they sell you something fake and convince you it’s the real thing, as in PU leather, MDF wood, or “I can’t believe it’s not butter.”
Working less is still working – nothing wrong with that. However, for many Physicians, it “feels” like retirement.
I have mostly worked 3-4 days a week in my career. It keeps life easy. But I am not retired. Declaring that you are financially free and still working is still not retirement.
Totally agree.
I went part time (professional non-doc) working 3 days per week at 43 and never called myself retired. It was either working part time or semi-retired.
At 53 I am now retired. I do not work for money and never expect to again. I do what I want, when I want, where I want and how I want. I answer to no one (well except the DW).
To me this is retired. Anyone who has left their full time job and continues to work part time for money is still working (maybe part time or working for themselves or semi-retired). But they are not retired.
Harry Sit: Thanks for the laugh. I agree – it ain’t over ’til it’s over. My only caveat would be that if you are a doctor, dentist, lawyer, etc. and you do volunteer work in your field, you are still retired. As long as there is no financial reward/compensation, I think you are retired whether your volunteer work is digging wells in Africa with the Peace Corps or doing pro bono legal work in the inner city.
What a timely post. I’m currently in the process of hashing out a plan with HR to go 80%. Sure l’ll have to pay 20% of my medical and malpractice, but I anticipate the benefits you mentioned will make that very much worth it. Radiology in private practice is taking its toll at the age of 42. Some groups have a 4 day workweek but mine doesn’t. Since I’m a partner, it’s doesn’t make sense to leave and start from square one. I’m just getting sick of my young kids saying “daddy has to work again?!”
Good article. Judging by the number of comments following this post, it seems to have accomplished his mission of generating cloud dialogue.
The only counterpoint I would offer is that I believe the trend in medicine is for retirement, at least from clinical activities, to be getting less squishy all the time. And what with maintenance of certification, The specter of competency testing, and so forth, I think we, as physicians need to be honest with ourselves that when we reach a certain point, typically in our early 60s, we just don’t have the mental or physical stamina to be at the top of our game clinically, and hopefully we have all planned accordingly- whether that planting beans we retire our licenses, restrict ourselves to less complex cases and procedures, or diversify by going with a more part-time, non-clinical -based gig.
Interesting article. There is the assumption that the nest egg is sufficient. I would only suggest to plan for the “unexpected” as well.
1) kids in “the fun ages” of 5-10”
What happens is Jack AND Jill want to be physicians?
Four years of college, four years of med school, 4-6 years of residency, 1 or 2 years of fellowship and the potential of a single payor health care model.
Now multiply time 2 and forecast the next 10 years until they start college. It is not only squishy, its a little bit foggy too!
2) After two divorces and the Great Recession. So start with $10,000,000 in the bank and you can have a tax bill as well. So you are down to $1,500,000 and two kids in medical school. Now the squishy and foggy has turned to a dense fog with a rainstorm.
3) Now remarry with a wonderful new wife with 2 wonderful kids. Start at phase 1) and repeat.
Not a realistic scenario, but plan for contingencies.
Rule #1 Be happy with your life and make your personal, family and professional life enjoyable.
Rule #2 Professional career is important both from a satisfaction and monetary standpoint.
You will never have “enough”, but you can change your career and satisfaction. Long hours and compensation are not enough. You can change the focus of your efforts to take advantage of the skills and education to make a satisfying difference. Making money is noble, practicing medicine can be satisfying and noble too.
I think “enough” can be an amount lower than infinity. Too many people worry about these crazy scenarios and it causes them to do things that make them less happy. There are other options in your disaster scenario. For example, the kids can be told you’re not paying for their medical school. I’m amazed how many physicians who figured out their own way to pay for medical school plan to make sure their kids don’t have to contribute a dime to their own extended educations.
So true. In the end, we can only spend what we have. The problem is being “happy” and how much is enough considering the time lag and market for investments. My point is pretty simple, work one more year and when you pass your kids will receive a belated “reimbursement” if things go well. If not, you can always splurge on the grand kids and pop for family vacations, help with residency and fellowship interview trips and flights home for vacation or holidays. Work two years in your prime, and save it. The last thing you want is to burden them with taking care of their parents. Huge difference when considering being free before the kids even reach high school.
I was not talking about “one dime”. They will not make it if they do not earn it. As you know, the delay in earnings is huge. Two years is a rainy day fund. It may not rain.
Squishy… great way to put it, and a great post about priorities and health. This is all different for everyone, and it’s not all black and white, or “on” or “off”. The point is for many of us, there is a middle, and we have to remember that!
Thanks for the great reminder.
There is a way to ballpark your “number” of course. Many financial professionals are well versed in this calculation. We recently (within the last 10 years) changed our partnership to allow part time partners. My experience with physician colleagues is that many get only part way to their number and then go part time quite early. Their attitude changes too. The part timers are not more relaxed at work. In our group, they complain the most about workloads and having to do “extra”. This is much different than their behavior when they were full time.
They also begrudge the full timers for their high income (which gets published for all to see in our partnership), but don’t step up to do anything more than their part time workload.
I would have expected the opposite, more like how WCI describes, but that is not the case, in general.
I think some of the bitterness comes from going part time too early and still having a ways to go, but dreading the thought of going back to a heavier workload to get there in a reasonable amount of time. Also, it doesn’t help that our fees have been reduced by the government reducing our pay from the golden years of past. Our time is not remunerated as it once was. There is some risk of going part time in this sense that was not foreseeable by those going part time. They assumed the gravy train would run forever and forwent substantial income during those golden years.
My suggestion? Think carefully about work-life balance and your life goals. If your current situation demands it for family reasons or other, then you must go part time. However if you want to enjoy part time work early purely for yourself, realize that it is a one way road for the most part. It may be prudent to make sure you are most of the way to your New York number with some contingency built in, or be prepared to work a lot longer than you otherwise would have.
Or have a side gig like WCI. That takes some of the pressure off for sure 🙂
I agree it is a one way road for almost everyone to cut back. Hard to go the other way.
One point I forgot to make:
I think many physicians grossly underestimate how much they want to spend in retirement. Hence their nestegg calculation ends up too small.
Why do I think this? Because most retired physicians I know spend carefully in retirement. They talk about wanting to travel more but can only afford one trip/year. They talk about how nice it would be to get that place on the golf course in AZ, but instead settle for a trailer park with other retirees. They wish they could fly their kids and grandkids out to Hawaii for a trip, but the cost is prohibitive.
I think most people retire with an amount that seems like a lot, but when they get there, they realize that it is not as much as they hoped and adjust their lifestyle and dreams downward to something that matches their savings. What other choice do they have?
I spend like WCI spends. 200k/year for sure. More some years. We are still careful with our money, but we like to do fun things around the world with our kids and that costs money. We have some expensive hobbies like kite surfing, biking, travel etc. We spend that much with full time jobs. Most of our spending happens when we are on our 12 weeks of vacation a year. If we had 52 weeks off, we would certainly want to spend a LOT more.
Something to consider before telling the college that you are not going to renew your license next year.
Financial Professional can run numbers for you and save you time. One risk they cannot really help with is Sequence Risk, that is the performance of your nest egg in the first ten years of retirement. Ashley has many astute observations.
Please note, virtually the “best financial planners or advisors” run numbers based upon assumptions.
1)Nest Egg
2)Spending
The first 10 years you nest egg doubles as opposed to level or dropping produces a tremendous different behavioral psychological outlook regardless of the size of the nest egg. It is human nature.
No matter what you do, switching from watching the nestegg grow to shrinking will be unpleasant.
Novel idea, try actually making any retirement changes for one year before you quit. Including downsizing or whatever. The cost of a comparable rental for one year will easily be less than if you make a retirement mistake.
Bank the pay in a different account, spend out of the savings. The emotional adjustment will be huge. Most likely you will migrate to one of two camps. Uncomfortable spending or finding you budget works out fine.
Life is sqishy and unpredictable. The concept or spectrum of retirement is a human’s attempt to control the pure vulnerability of the chaotic unknown.
Sometimes retirement is unplanned. Last weekend an private practice ortho-spine doctor was in an auto accident. Severe facial and brain trauma. Take care of the disability insurance and plan for the unlikely and unexpected. Wife and two kids under 5.
Say a prayer and enjoy each day to its fullest.