I participated in a particularly interesting forum thread a while ago where a poster asked, “Did your retirement go as planned?” I think the poster thought they would hear primarily financial stories, about portfolios and asset allocations and running out of money and SPIAs and TIPS and such. That wasn't what happened at all. Let me give you a sample of the responses, illustrating a very important point about retirement.
The first response:
“Nope. Spouse died four years after I retired. That was not in the plan.”
Also, some comments illustrated how life gets in the way of that imagined retirement.
#1 “We feel pretty good about the financial side of it. I didn’t really make any plans for what I will do (wife still working) but between my young adult kids' issues and now my parents out of state and recent events, I will likely stay busy and preoccupied for some number of years. Not sure if any extensive world travel plans are in my near future.”
#2 “Many people, despite the best and most educated of retirement plans, do not ‘retire'—they ‘get retired' I am one of those; I ‘got retired.' My retirement plans went out the window when the unexpected happened (global pandemic) that could not be planned for. I was forced to retire several years before I was financially prepared to, and that will affect the rest of my life. It came too early, but not so early that I was young enough to regroup and rebuild my employment/career—I was already in my 60s. So, I would always caution a younger person doing their planning to try to save enough and set their planning for an earlier age than you might otherwise expect you will retire.”
#3 “I didn't really have much of a ‘plan' until I retired at 67 (more accurately, my employer decided to retire me).”
#4 “I had planned on retiring at age 65, but at age 64, my whole department was laid off. I was given a nine-month pay package with health benefits and a profit-sharing bonus. The catch was, if I wanted to keep my RSU stock options, I could not work at a competitor for two years. After being off work for a few months, I decided we had enough money and decided not to go back to work. We only needed six months of COBRA health insurance before hitting Medicare age. After a few months of me not working, my wife decided to retire.”
Several commenters wrote about how the pandemic interrupted their plans.
“How about COVID taking control of the country and its economy the month after we fully retired?”
There was lots of sad stuff in the thread like this.
#1 “For awhile, until DW's health began deteriorating, stroke, and death from COVID.”
#2 “I retired at 56 about 18 years ago. My plan was to golf with my sons three times a week and walk along the American River four times a week. I would read books as much as I could. Hip and old knee injuries quickly ended my professional golf aspirations in my dreams. Couldn’t break a 100. Cataracts in my eyes prevented comfortable reading. In 2021, the operations began: foot cancer, coronary heart bypass surgery, emergency appendectomy, and finally two eye cataract surgery . . . They do take a toll. I walk 20 minutes a day now. I enjoy travel now when a son and family goes with us.”
#3 “Early retired 58. Plan was to continue to play golf twice a week as I have over a lifetime. Spine, back, and vision issues ended golf (sadly).”
#4 “I understand your pain; my spouse died 16 years before I retired. The one thing that I learned is that I'm still here and needed to continue to live. Some family members didn't like the fact that I moved on and built a new life. Regardless, I did recover and did create a new life, and over time, we are all happy and healthy now. But mourning for a loss is a difficult thing for all members of a family, and recovery takes longer for some more than others. Me? I still mourn but I do appreciate my life.”
#5 “My [spouse] died five years ago on our seventh anniversary of ‘retirement.' That was not in the plan, either. The plans of extended world travel, which we had started, and all other dreams just evaporated. I am now the sole caregiver for my severely disabled adult child. Grief truly doesn't end. What seemed important before retirement no longer does. At least we got to do some things before the reaper collected, which is a lot more than I can say for those who defer retirement and die very soon after that. At least I grieve in a gilded cage.”
#6 “One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen was a gentlemen at my mother's CCRC. He was a successful guy. Loved to play the piano and golf. That was his retirement dream, to just play the piano and golf. He had a stroke that forced his retirement. He lost his eye sight and his ability to walk. He can’t play the piano anymore and can’t golf. His dream ended in an instant.”
#7 “My retirement has not gone at all as I had planned, but that is likely my fault for spending more time fantasizing about what I wanted my retirement to look like vs. looking at the reality of my situation more practically and realizing what it would most likely look like. I retired at 49, single and childless, and planned on spending a lot of time traveling. For the first two years, I did a fair amount of traveling and saw a TON of concerts, but then COVID hit and that was the end of that. For the first few years of my retirement, my parents could “live independently with help;” now my father needs someone around pretty much 24/7, so I really can't be gone for more than a couple of hours at a time.”
#8 “On a personal level, no, things have not gone even remotely as planned.”
#9 “My dad is 72 and still working seven days a week (he started a new business at 70). It is not keeping him young, as some might argue. He rarely has time for anything but work, and his health is declining. According to him, he has no retirement plan. I see this and it makes me want to try even harder to figure out a solid retirement plan that gives me freedom to experience life beyond the need for a paycheck, while I’m still young enough to relish that freedom (as many here have commented). I love my dad, but I don’t want to follow his path.”
#10 “Retired at 57 (earlyish). DW and I sold everything we had and went off to travel the world. Both of us were in excellent shape, as we had planned on numerous extreme activities, which we did for the first six months. Then we slipped into a more observation role as in watching wildlife in Africa. No gyms in safari tents and it's not like you can go off jogging in the Serengeti. We ended up gaining a lot of weight . . . After 18 months, we grew very tired of brushing our teeth with bottled water . . . Our health has taken a downturn. With the additional weight, we now have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and I've developed arthritis in both my hands. Of course, we are back in the gym but finding that it's much easier to stay in shape than to get in shape.”
#11 “My mom retired back in 2010. Financially, it went better than planned. The withdrawal rate was much lower than projected (around 0%). Psychologically, it wasn't great. With no relatives or friends around and living alone in a bad neighborhood, my mom started to exhibit mental issues just a year in. After several years of prodding by my late sister and myself, we managed to convince her to move near one of us. My mom chose to move to California because of the better weather. In addition, my sister was willing to buy a property in the retirement community near her . . . Things are great, but then my sister suddenly passed away, so she is once again living in a state without relatives . . . What was surprising was that the issues that came up were not of a financial nature.”
#12 “One year out of retirement, my DH learned he has the same genetic disease that killed his brother. (His other two siblings escaped that fate). Expect a decline-to-death timeframe of 4-7 years. I grieve for him but I grieve for me, too . . . It seems I was put on earth for caregiving. Even my daughter has 50% odds of being afflicted . . . So no, my retirement got broken into pieces.”
#13 “Same here. My spouse died seven years after I retired. My mother-in-law outlived him! It was shocking and totally unexpected . . . Few talk . . . about the emotional ‘loss' of living so long that your friends and family die first.”
#14 “I would like to point out that your retirement will probably not go as planned. Plenty of people expect to do stuff like golf all day and become bored. I recall an interview where Jimmy Carter said that he didn't realize that spending 24/7 with his wife would become tedious and realized that they needed their own space.”
Sometimes, the bad stuff happens before you even get to the line.
#1 “When I was 59 and my wife was 56, she became very sick. We had a good nest egg, and I planned to retire comfortably in my mid-60s, but that changed when she couldn't go back to work and the medical bills stacked up. I'm still working at 69 to make up for the loss of household income.”
#2 “My father died in his early 60s when I was in college. I don't know what his retirement plan was (he didn't have much savings), but he never got to retire. My younger sister planned to retire early when she turned 60 because she was getting burned out. She had plans to retire to some beautiful place, but she died suddenly in her 40s.”
One poster detailed a summary of his friends' retirement challenges:
“From a financial perspective, the biggest things that seemed to derail family/friends’ retirement plans were hard to foresee and plan for:
- an unplanned job loss, disability or death of a primary breadwinner in the years leading up to retirement
- divorce
- kids who remained as dependents
- financial support of a parent or quitting a paid job early to provide care.”
And one last comment to start my brief discussion:
“My condolences to the people who have lost a spouse, but that is something I knew would be a big risk. There are also people who used to post here who went missing who likely died so the posts you see about things going well literally has a lot of survivorship bias. One of the reasons that I retired in my late 50s as soon as I financially could was that I had one year in my early 50s when I went to three funerals of people who were roughly my age. I was not real close to any of them, but when you see coworkers and neighbors dying, that does get you thinking. This joint life expectancy calculator is pretty simplistic but playing with your numbers in it may give you some surprises since joint life expectancy is not intuitive.
https://www.kitces.comjoint-life-expectancy-and-mortality-calculator/
For example, according to it for a 60-year-old couple, there is more than a 25% chance that they will not both make it to be 70, and I would assume that there is at least an equal chance that one of them will have life-limiting health problems by then, too. Your original question asked about “as planned,” so you really need to include the risk of dying in your plans.”
Somebody Is Probably Going to Die
I've used this graph multiple times on this blog in the past, but it's a concept that's really important to internalize.
Green is rich, red is broke, and black is dead under a scenario with reasonable assumptions. The Y axis is frequency, and the X axis is age. The point is that you are far, far more likely to die young than you are to run out of money because you lived too long. The joint life expectancy calculator from Kitces is also pretty handy. As I write this, I'm 49, and Katie is 46. There's a 30% chance one of us will be dead before I turn 70 in two decades. Two-thirds of the time, one of us will be dead before I turn 80. Sure, there's a small (9%) chance one of us will still be alive 50 years from now, but it almost surely (1%) won't be me.
More information here:
Giving Up a $250,000 Salary to Retire Early Is Hard
What Retirement Really Looks Like
People sit in their cubicle, ER, OR, or clinic visualizing some sort of fantasy retirement. That one probably isn't going to happen. A lot of that stuff you are fantasizing about needs to be done now—this decade or next, while you're still working.
- Your retirement will probably come sooner than you think.
- Your retirement will have less recreation in it than you think.
- You or your partner will be alone for more of your retirement than you think.
- You will have multiple medical problems in retirement.
- If you're a fan of this website, you are almost surely going to run out of time or health before you run out of money.
More information here:
I’ve Been Semi-Retired for a Quarter Decade: Do We Have Enough Money? Am I Bored? Are We Happy?
What Should You Do About This?
I don't think there is a lot of actionable information here. Mostly, we all just need a little bit of attitude/perspective change. But some things can be done.
#1 Lower Your Expectations
If you're envisioning 20, 30, 40, or more years of perfect recreational bliss, you seriously need to lower your expectations, or you're going to be miserable when the inevitable occurs.
#2 Don't Work at Something You Hate Longer Than You Must
If you're not enjoying your work, find work you enjoy or find a way to FIRE ASAP. Given what retirement often looks like mortality-wise, that might be a lot less money than you think, especially if your projections are really conservative.
#3 Maximize Flexibility
Those of us who read financial blogs tend to be planners. I often tell docs worried about burnout to optimize their career decisions for longevity in their careers. By the same token, I tell retirees and potential retirees to maximize for flexibility. What may not be optimal under the most likely or most desired scenario may provide a far better outcome under other common future scenarios. Retirement is going to look differently than you think. Plan on it. Be as resilient and flexible as you can.
#4 Care for Your Health
There will come a day when your health limits you far more than your money, and due to the usual sense of optimism/immortality/invulnerability most of us carry, that day is probably coming a decade or more sooner than you might think. Do what you can to maximize your health. Maintain a healthy weight. Exercise multiple times a week. Get appropriate screening tests. Be healthy.
What do you think? If you're retired, how's it going both financially and personally? Any tips for those of us not yet retired?