Retirement: It's a Real Thing

 Retirement: It's a Real Thing

I am not someone who looks too far into the future. In my day to day life I don't really think about anything that isn't coming up in the current week. I'm pretty much a day to day person. Our 1^st trip to France we stayed in Provence for a week. All the little towns in Provence have once a week markets and each town has them on different days. The locals seemed to go to a nearby market each day where they would pick up what they needed for the day's food. We did the same while we were there and that planning one day at a time agreed with me.

As I got into my 40s suddenly the idea of me actually retiring became a real thing. Up to that point retirement had been something that was way in the future and not anything I thought too much about. I looked back remembering my first job working for someone. I was 15. It was a summer that went into fall working at a Farm Stand in Syosset on Long Island. It was a large farm stand that required 4 to 5 people to work the counter on the weekends. Patrons were usually spread out across the counter stacked 2 or 3 rows deep. It was somewhat like Davis Ranch in Sloughouse out on Jackson Highway. That was now more than 25 years ago. If I added 25 years to my current age that would put me over 65, an age when people retire. My retirement savings was meager, to say the least. I had put a couple of thousand into an IRA but that was about it. My father and both my grandfathers had retirement programs through their jobs. For the first time I was working at a place that had one as I was currently working at El Dorado County. I figured I was going to have to put another 18 or so years at the county to make that work. Looking at how things were going at my job, I had a hard time seeing that happening. Heck, I had never held a job for more than three years. 18 seemed out of the question...

After evaluating my situation, I started putting as much money as I could into my retirement accounts so I might be able to do it (retire) someday because let's face it, most everybody dreams about being retired someday!  Whenever I got a raise I tried to continue to live at our existing level of income and put the extra into savings. I was determined to save enough to retire. I figured that minimizing the increase in our standard of living while increasing our retirement savings would make it easier to retire comfortably. Except for our house we had no outstanding loans. We bought used cars and paid cash for them and we kept them for as long as possible. This new way of managing our income made Kris a bit crazy but she put up with me. As we got towards the end of the month I would take any extra money in our checking account and move it into either a retirement account or at least into a savings account. Many a month Kris would look at our checking account and ask me “Hey what happened to our balance there was $500 there yesterday and now there's only a little over $100? What happened to it?” My reply was always “ We only need $100 for the rest of the month so I moved the rest into our retirement savings.” She found it frustrating. I tended to keep all our finances in my head. I was always good with money. When I was working at Consilium they provided us a free consultation with a financial advisor. I took them up on it. When I showed up for the consultation the guy asked why I didn't bring in all my finance stuff, like bank records, bills, loans and tax documents. I told him I know it all and he can just ask me what he needs to know. He was dubious. So he asked away – all my yearly income and all my yearly out go that included everything housing, utilities, food, entertainment, savings, etc. At the end he added it all up. My income and out go total for the year were within $100 of each other. He was amazed and said he never had a client do that before. I explained that when I was in the Air Force my expenses were greater than my pay and it forced me to track everything down to the penny. While I don't know it down to the penny anymore I still keep track in my head where all my money is going, plus I do my own taxes. He was impressed. We talked and he gave me some advice but mostly said I was doing just fine compared to most of his clients.

The real problem was that this change (focus on saving for retirement) all happened rather suddenly. We were going along one way and I just seemingly out of the blue started moving all excess discretionary income into other accounts. When I got a raise I put most of it, or at least as much of it as I could, into my retirement account. I also tried to convince Kris to do the same with hers with some success. Looking back and knowing how Kris does things I can see why Kris was so frustrated.

Anyway, I learned to let Kris know when I was about to move money out of our checking account. We went along this way for a number of years. Kris accepted the mission and for the most part agreed with my plan. However, she still found it frustrating not knowing exactly where all the money was as well as when and where I would be moving it around.

This went on for a number of years but if you know Kris, you know this was eventually going to have to change. It's not just Kris, because we both like to control things. When I think about it, it is amazing to me that we have had so little conflict on this in all the years we have been together. Of course, like most solid relationships there is a high degree of trust between us. I'm sure there must have been a few incidents along the way but given the way each of us is, it's been minimal. I don't remember any big arguments. Kris likes to get things done quickly. Having something not done, on her task list, weight on Kris. I, on the other hand, have little problem with to-do tasks. They don't really weigh on me. Also I am just naturally a little more patient about things. As a result there are a number of reoccurring tasks that I once did that have since moved over to Kris through the years.

Eventually Kris asked to take over the managing of our day to day finances and I let go and turned that over to her. After that I just managed my retirement accounts. Kris is good with money so there was really little for me to worry about. It actually freed me up as I no longer felt compelled to track and worry about every little thing about our finances. After awhile I stopped really paying attention. If I needed to know if we had money for something all I had to do was ask Kris. It actually turned out to be great, at least for me. At that point I had traded my El Dorado County job for a position with the State of California which had the same retirement system. I had also purchased 3 years of retirement credit as a result of my years in the military. My retirement accounts were all getting healthy. As long as we continued on the path we were on, retirement was going to be in our future.

This month I had my yearly meeting with my financial advisor at our bank. One of the perks we receive from our bank is we are provided with a financial advisor. I don't know how many years I've been meeting with them, but it's gotta be at least 20 anyway. It's long enough so that I am on my third advisor as the previous two have retired. Every year before the meeting I review all our accounts and this year I once again realized just how much I am removed from tracking our finances. I'd be hard-pressed now to give an account of our income/outgo and where we spend our money on a monthly or annual basis. I no longer keep any of that stuff in my head. I was able to retire 15 years ago, 3 months after my 61^st birthday. If kids had happened I probably would have had to work longer but still I went from virtually nothing saved for retirement to being able to comfortably retire in just under 20 years. Kris retired 6 years later at the ripe old age of 55. I like to think those years of my tightly tracking our finances helped to get us to this point but maybe I'm giving myself too much credit.....