How Much Do You think You Need to Retire? What Age Will You/Spouse Retire? Investment and General Retirement Issues (Part 3)

Parent Cafe
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Dh and I assume I’ll outlive him. One of his sibs died in her mid=60s, another has had a heart attack, another a stroke and a kidney transplant. I take better care of myself, and both my parents lived into their early 90s so I don’t think we are wrong to plan that way.

I told dh that I wouldn’t want to stay in this house by myself. To my surprise, he said that he wouldn’t either! He loves to garden and tinker in the garage. I thought that he’d never want to give that up. But that’s one reason that I have been looking at CCRCs. I want him to know the options and to see himself there. Thankfully, he really liked them!

It’s funny to realize as I typed this out that so much of my planning – hiring a FA, looking at CCRCs, decluttering – is focused on setting dh up for success should I go first.

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2162

We always talk about death at work. One coworker’s H used to work at a funeral home, is 15 years older and now has Alzheimer’s. Another is super interested in the whole funeral business, and I’m the one who is constantly trying to make my life easier for H or my kids once I pass. And in our small town, every day someone we know has passed away.

I used to fully expect to outlive H, unless I get hit by a bus. The women in my family live H is 4 years older than me, and has a strong family history or dementia and other problems. But now his dad - who he favors complete with his arthritis woes and CLL - is still going at 90 and his mind is pretty decent. He doesn’t have a good memory, but it’s no worse than it was when he was younger. So now the race is on…

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My sister has a massage once a month - she sleeps better. Would like to have it twice a month but is living on a modest retirement budget.

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I now will be helping almost all of September, or even beyond - there is not a spot for the baby in day care until the end of September. DD1 goes back to work FT Sept 2, so I am a ‘Godsend’ - also saving them a month of her daycare cost. Bonus is the baby will be bonding with Nana all day long M - F.

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Some people of a prior generation may not have had some of the advances with stroke and heart medications and preventative things, and their bodies may have aged more due to lifetime lifestyle. Maybe genetics against them. If they chose to be sedentary, maybe they just also were not feeling well but not really wanting to change their sedentary lifestyle. Also, when one isn’t stimulating their mind.

Hard to tell. Some live below the average life span.

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2166

that is a good review, but since its 8 years old, the number of states which are community property has increased to nine. But more importantly, several non-community property states allow folks to treat property as community property under special rules.

“Four other states have adopted optional community property systems. Alaska allows spouses to create community property by entering into a community property agreement or by creating a community property trust. In 2010, Tennessee adopted a law similar to Alaska’s and allows residents and non-residents to opt into community property through a community property trust. More recently, Kentucky adopted an optional community property system in 2020, allowing residents and non-residents to establish community property trusts. Finally, Florida adopted a similar law in 2021, allowing citizens and noncitizens to establish community property trusts.”

See your tax advisor for details.

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Absolutely agree that an estate planning attorney licensed in the state where one lives is the best source.

I just posted the link to illustrate how the stepped up basis thing works because someone was curious about it. That still stands.

The article does say there are nine CP states recorded as such by the IRS. From the link I posted:

“Currently, there are eight community-property states: Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, and Washington. In 1984, Wisconsin enacted the Marital Property Reform Act, which incorporates many community-property principles and has been recognized by the IRS as a community-property state. ”

And there is one very important point that the article makes: even in community property states spouses can have separate property which will be treated differently. So yes, make sure to consult a pro. :slight_smile:

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I wouldnt recommend any attorney whose face is on a billboard asking if you’re injured… or if you want to be injured.

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I saw this article relevant to ‘aging well’. I have the ‘shared link’ so everyone should be able to open the article.

I also think the more choices you have or give yourself, the more content you can be in handling adversities along the way. Our bodies and minds age, and try to keep them ‘aging well’.

Retirement Can Harm Your Brain. Here’s How to Keep It Healthy. - The New York Times

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Well - he’s, in my opinion, made one smart move - related to - not retirement as he’s not retired - but cash flow. That’s likely $4-6 million easy money every year, some of it tax free.

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I calculated RMDs as if DH and I turned 73 in 2024 to calculate how much our withdrawal would need to be.

That gave me real numbers to work with instead of ‘the unknown’.

We both turn 69 in 2025, but we have relatively lower income tax because neither of us is working/no earned income.

I had to put together the balance of our 5 annuities along with the balance of DH’s 401k, then divide by the life expectancy factor.

So I see that we can estimate and then plan to take out a bit more than what the actual number is (once we do have to take RMDs) to avoid any underestimating and paying a penalty.

Instead of converting from 401k to Roth IRA, we are going to put funds into our personal stock account. We have not had the best Roth IRA returns, but that is not being managed by us, and we don’t want to change it.

I do understand the concept behind RMDs, but it is extra work for taxpayers and probably makes more people seek and use professional tax services once RMDs begin.

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I am concerned about the level of the stock market. This article is from the professor I took Econ 101 with. Terrific guy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/opinion/stock-market-advice-investing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.f08.E3z5.6wKlOHPWBYfX&smid=url-share

What do you guys think?

I think I’ve prepared for this but am going to review once again with FAs.

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@shawbridge -I share your concerns. I will also be discussing this with my FA.

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Thanks for sharing that article.

Usually I respond to market changes by doing nothing. But I want to take this opportunity to rebalance our collective portfolio. Our allocation is too heavy in stocks.

My retirement acct is a simple 3 fund portfolio (US stock, Int’l stock, bond index) that I rebalance occasionally. I didn’t even get employer retirement benefits until 10 years ago, so it’s not very big.

My spouse is an extreme set it and forget it, has literally never made a portfolio change, and also has much bigger portfolio than me. Half of my spouse’s portfolio is 100% in stocks (from first benefitted job age 29-37), and half is in a well-balanced lifecycle fund from current employer (37-now).

I’ve worked around that the past few years to achieve a total asset allocation that I’m comfortable with. But the all-stocks old half of my spouse’s portfolio is getting harder to work around. I don’t love the fund options from that previous employer (spouse never rolled over since it’s all in TIAA). My spouse is considering a job change soon. So I’ve been dragging my feet on doing anything with that all-stock half, thinking that I’ll just make everything gets rolled over into one place and dumped into a good lifecycle fund when it’s a convenient time. Whether that’s an IRA or an employer-linked account will depend on what my spouse decides to do job-wise.

I recently recalculated and we’re currently at 70/22/11% US/int’l/bonds because stocks have gone crazy. For our preferences and age (47), I want it to be 50/30/20. So I need to decide if I want to do a bit of a kludge by changing my portfolio to be heavy with int’l and bonds. Or doing some much more logistically annoying stuff to rebalance my spouse’s old portfolio.

I keep dragging my feet, but I just had a dream last week that the market dropped 25% overnight, so that’s probably a sign that I’ll feel better if I just do something.

I had my elderly mother’s small portfolio in fed money markets, CDs, and a stock index, split between her bank, an IRA, and a brokerage acct. I’m tired of keeping track of the allocation so other than her bank CDs, I just put it all in VTINX last week. That fund includes TIPS which makes me feel better.

So my reaction to the market anxiety is to just make sure that outstanding rebalancing tasks are completed.

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I think that tariffs are clearly hitting - ask Ford, Wal Mart and Target - the latter two just posted horrible earnings and the former is allegedly considering a dividend cut.

Yes, we are forcing the market into a slow down.

But alas, I keep my plans in tact - with stocks via 401k and fixed income in my regular investing.

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his article reflects the bogleheads philosophy: stick with investment plan, if its 60:40, then rebalance to get it there. Some rebalance quarterly, but I do it once a years. Another way is if you are taking any distributions, take all of them from the overfunded account. You can also turn off Auto stock repurchases in your taxable brokerage account.

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He was a great professor. He was on the board of Vanguard for 28 years. Now he is CIO of Wealthfront.

On another note about age of retirement, he gives me hope in his non-retirement that I can keep working as long as he has.

I increased my allocation to gold after Trump was re-elected. I’m wondering whether I should do that again.

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I wouldn’t call 50/30/20 heavy with international. The world market cap is currently 63% US / 37% international. With 20% bonds, that would make the split 50% US / 30% international / 20% bonds. 50% US / 30% international corresponds to no home country bias, rather than overweight/underweight.

Regarding the article, US big tech being overvalued by CAPE type measures is nothing new. Others have been making similar statements for the past decade. Vanguard is particularly notable, with predicting international is likely to outperform US tech year after year. More people took notice this year, after there were at least several months during which the prediction was accurate, after many years of being inaccurate.

I agree with the article about basing allocations on risk tolerance, time horizon, and future financial plans, rather than trying to time the market. Future market expectations are built in to current pricing. To successfully time the market you need to be better than market expectations, which are often dominated by professional investors with greater resources than individuals. It’s not impossible for an individual, but it’s more complex than just thinking market is high or Trump’s plans are bad for economy, so it’s a good time to get out of equities. As the article points out, most individuals who try to time the market lose more than the would have by holding and not changing investments. I expect this was true for most individuals who sold equities following liberation day tariffs and missed out on >30% market increase since then.

As such I don’t plan to change my investments or allocations. I currently have ~20% of liquid investments in fixed income, as well as a good portion of net worth outside of liquid investments that is less correlated with stock market. This well aligns my risk tolerance, time horizon, and goals.

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Some of us just aren’t buying those cars right now, regardless of cost, because of the uncertaintly in general of the economy and employment prospects. When things are uncertain, we just stop in our tracks - who cares if the tariff’s have or have not hit? I might not havve a job tomorrow, so for now, don’t buy anythign big and eat a lot at home buying cheap groceries (who wants to pay more and more for tips that don’t get taxed, but I get taxed on everything).

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I have left our index funds unchanged. We can live fine on our fixed pensions for now, and DH has not yet taken social security. No mortgage, no debt… fairly frugal. At some point, inflation will eat away at our pension value, and then we may have to rely on our Roths, but I don’t anticipate that for at least 15 years.

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