If Medicare were to end, I would not be able to afford healthcare for long. And so my life expectancy would probably be shorter than otherwise, however my mother did live to 93 with minimal healthcare. She took a thyroid pill. She would have gone blind earlier without Avastin shots. And she would have been bed bound earlier without surgery to fix a broken hip. So I will try not to break anything. And I will go when I go. It’s a sad thought.
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For me it would go basically like this. I am going to retire when I am ready and feel like I have enough money and income streams to live on. If the rules are changed after I retire and I have to come up with more money to live on than what I have in the bank/investments then I will go back to work in some capacity.
I am a planner by nature. I do understand some things are more likely to happen than others. Nothing in life is guaranteed, but you still have to live your life. I had one parent die at 71 (16 years of retirement) and another die at 75 (9 years of retirement). I am going to enjoy life after 41 years of working professionally when the time comes. If something happens in the next 10 years before I retire that changes the game and I have to work 2-5 years longer then I will deal with it then. I know right now with the current rules I am good.
I have been poor so I know how to live on the cheap. Do I want to live that way now? Nope as I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
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My company just let very tenured people go last week. Several had 20+ years tenure, one 40+ years
It was unexpected.
When you think about what you need and plan for that by I want to work x years, often plans can be disrupted by the not foreseen.
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IRMAA levels are determined by family income level. I know this because when DH was still working and his income was higher, I had to pay the IRMAA for my Medicare.
If Medicare is abolished, there will be millions of affected people.
I’m concerned about all things related to CMS.
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I agree with much of what you said.
In my case, and the case of many of my peers, we were “promised” one thing, and we may wind up with something very different. And we based career and retirement decisions based on those “promises.”
I too have been poor, and I can live on less than what I was expecting, but I won’t be “happy” about it.
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I was laid off just shy of one year on my first adult job out of college. In some ways they did me a favor. I learned very quickly nothing is guaranteed. I will never 100% trust a company to do the right or good thing. Therefore I have always thought what my next move might be.
I in the roles I have had for the past 15-20 years part of my job has always been to do what-if or worst case scenarios for the companies I have worked for. I have brought that into my personal life. At times I will ponder what life might look like if I lost my job. What if I had to take a lower paying job. Would I sell my house and buy something cheaper or would I rent? It is why my wife and I have worked hard to build a solid emergency fund. But also we are very aware that we need to keep our skills current and not get bypassed by technology.
I had a boss once that told me that I always had to be thinking about my next job.
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DH retired at 64 1/2 - he went out on his own terms, put in his two weeks’ notice which carried him into the next month of employment, so our health insurance also went through that next month. I then picked up the health insurance with my employer (I worked enough hours to qualify). For the last 22 years of his career with the company he was always in fear of the layoff list, which he was on a lot but was taken off by the global company vice president and probably others over that time period. He continually added skills to be ‘too valuable’ to be cut - during one work slow period he took a short course in data base management which he then learned on his own programming skills to add to his depth of industry and technical experience base. On a complicated product build situation, DH provided the solution with breakdown of all the gating items and interplay - such that the customer President in the meeting came around the table and shook DH’s hand (the customer and others couldn’t figure out the solution strategy, but DH had it all figured out). With the way the industry went (contract electronics manufacturing), with global plants to technically support, DH had to travel a lot for work nationally and internationally - not something desirable to him (he is a homebody). The last few years of his career, DH was away from home often two weeks out of four - with one week to two week stays supporting a plant in CA (we live in AL). His boss in AL was not happy DH chose to retire (plant manager boss was not an engineer and was a bit in over his head - oh well, he didn’t have DH anymore to treat badly), but when you treat a racehorse like a pack mule… DH was not going to get stuck on thankless jobs which he saw on the horizon, putting in lots of uncompensated hours of time (plant manager didn’t keep the right staffing of technicians). DH had over 35 years with the company - his coworkers did a small send off. The following month after DH retired, his dad’s health declined quickly and dad died, and his mom and family needed him the following three month and then his mom died with quick end (dad was 92, mom was 92 at their deaths) - so DH’s work exit turned out to be truly ‘at the right time’. DH spent time back and forth to WI for family needs there, staying long periods of time. I worked 11 more months after DH retired, for me to retire right at age 65 - I was in my ‘sunset career’ working in rehab/skilled care as RN/BSN - after being a SAHM (for 18 years and also surviving aggressive cancer). I was Administrator and CFO of a specialty physician group in my peak career (I have two graduate business degrees), but someone had to raise our children with DH away on so much work travel (I became SAHM when DDs were ages 3 and 5). My cancer treatments started when our DDs were in 8th and 10th grades.
‘Our plan’ was to both retire together but plans change. No one plans for cancer. No one plans for pension plans to end (DH’s did with the last company buy-out/company sell). DH is proud that he never was w/o work his entire professional career - he changed jobs some, with one firm relocation out of state and switched jobs for the family not to relocate (he was primary income for the family). My peak career job, I had a 401k that had good matching and 3% extra employer funds in every year as a top-heavy plan - so in a short 6-year time I had a healthy buildup of 401k (21% of base pay). I took advantage of 4% matching with sunset career 401k - had good investment choices there so built up a little money there.
Our retirement nest egg is holding up, we are both 68 now.
DH’s company had one merger and two buy-outs during his time there (the last buy-out left him with no pension for the last years of employment) - so each conversion had cash and stocks which we put into IRA then later Roth IRA, selling the stock at ‘right time’. One last conversion bit was a $131/month ‘pension’ that is a lifetime annuity; IDK if it has survivor benefit.
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I know two single women who have had to go on after failed marriage which has left them not where they have wanted to be for retirement planning. Here are their scenarios.
One is now 68. She purchased a condo after her divorce (he got the house which she didn’t want) but she needs to stay working, she is now 68. He had addictive behaviors, and she also paid for marital counseling that went w/o better situation - it was a no-fix situation. Their divorce was through mediation, and he tried to get as much as he could as well as try to work sympathy with the mediator. She has a job now working for an orthopedic physician group doing scheduling and can work PRN (so she works very flexible hours). She has a small mortgage (fortunately purchased with low interest rates) and plans for travel expenses. Before she was 65, she had a FT job working from home and also picked up working a second job for a period of time at a fast-food place to save up for a special vacation. She makes the best of things. She has two grown children (from an earlier marriage) and grandchildren that are HS and college aged.
The other had a husband that refused to work, any kind of job (they are in a bigger city, so there are jobs and work - he is able bodied). With their divorce, she actually had to also pay him some spousal support for a period of time (he is not disabled so I believe that period has now gone by), and she is in her own purchased place after the divorce. Split off half of joint assets (all that she had built up) so she had to stop the situation with the divorce. She has two sons she helped put through college and they are very close to her - and one son is married and now there is a grandbaby. Since her divorce she completed a master’s and PhD in nursing while working FT. She now has shifted into more of a faculty role, which she can do for a long time - she is in her mid to late 50’s.
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Great adaptability
I don’t get the entire - you loved someone for many years, it didn’t work out, let’s screw them over.
But i realize it happens.
If it were to happen to me (not saying it will), I would hope it would be amicable. Pay the lawyers or be fair.
But they both adapted greatly.
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I hate anecdotal reports.
I know someone who divorced after 30 years. It looks bad, she lives with her parents and doesn’t own her own car but shares with her parents.
I also know that there were 3 houses that the couple owned, one a million dollar vacation home owned for many years. All 3 house’s sold, all made substantial profits, all split half and half. All retirement plans, split in half. Husband owns a business, paying her low 5 figures per month, tax free. Will pay until retirement which is around 10 years in the future. She works a job also making an annual low 6 figures. When she chooses to work in between extensive travel.
See how that information looks different than the surface of living with your parents, not owning a home or car?
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Yeah, things are not always as they appear to be. Stories abound of people who live on very little, yet have millions in the bank. And even more stories of people with lavish lifestyles up to their ears in debt.
As long as both people in a partnership have a good plan for how they can make it financially on their own, should the situation arise, they don’t have to panic about what will happen in the case of divorce or death.
The problem is that so many people don’t have a good plan for that, especially women. My spouse and I have never been high earners but have been very careful and deliberate about making sure that either one of us could support the family independently if we needed to, for whatever reason. We did that by making particular education and career and insurance choices. Others can do that using a variety of tools and strategies (including prenups).
I wish everyone was like the friend you mention, and I hope that more women especially will start to make sure that they have appropriate plans in place for their independent financial security.
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My DW and I will be married 30 years come September. She was a SAHM for 8 years with the kids. Those were some lean years. She had a normal professional career before kids. She first went back to work PT then took a FT position that she was way over qualified for but the schedule and location was good active kids. She got her Masters and moved into a decent paying job about 4 years ago. She just was offered a position that comes with a 40% increase. Finally where she should be. We are 52. One kid launched. One a sophomore in college. No cost for college. We have some catch-up on retirement to do, but we aren’t in a terrible situation.
We are empty nesters now basically. Costs have gone down without kids being around and no more sports or activities either. And I view when we go out to dinner it is half price because we don’t have the kids. If we stay employed for 10 more years and the market doesn’t crash we should be fine. Although we do have a new expense because of the cat the kids got us for Xmas.
I don’t forsee any issues in marriage. But if I were wrong both of us could easily survive into retirement. But as we see it we can finally do the fun things together that we have been putting off because of the kids. We actually have shows to see the next 5 weekends. It is nice to do stuff like when were dating or just married.
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All I can say is “God bless your wife!” I see many women who work PT jobs or work in jobs that coordinate with their children’s schedule (like FT teachers). DH’s mother worked as a career teacher who traveled for her teaching job to another community - her husband acted like she was a SAHM and did nothing in the home, nothing at all. She was the primary income and only one with pension/retirement funds outside of Social Security. When they sat for dinner, he would say what was missing on the table and expected her to get up and get it, be it katsup or his hot tea - even when she had a bad hip and delayed hip replacement surgery. The four sons had to rotate chores with dinner dishes (stack, wash, dry, put away) and on Saturday had to vacuum and dust various rooms, vacuum the stairs. Mom took care of bathroom and kitchen, did family laundry and FIL’s laundry. FIL’s laundry day was Monday, and her husband did not make it a day better for his wife - mother was expected to continue doing FIL’s laundry on Monday.
One parent dropping out or having part-time or lower paying work - sometimes very difficult to ever ‘catch up’ on salary/benefits. We were dual income no kids (DINKS), and I didn’t drop out of job market until age 43, when DDs were 3 and 5. From age 42 to age 64, DH’s income only went up $21,000/year. He did have a few years with stock options and bonuses, but very infrequent. There were only 6 years when our combined income was $127,000 or higher (two when we were at ages 41 and 42 at my peak income, and four our last four years of joint income age 61 - 64, I re-joined work force at age 60. I would work regularly many weekends and also sometimes double shifts (had incentive for most years of OT pay after 8 hours even if not working a 40-hour work week) - younger daughter was in her last two years of college. Before I went back to work, I almost purchased to run a home health care agency, but there was a legal hitch that caused that firm to sell to another agency which already had a health care ‘certificate of occupancy’ (the selling agency did not have this in place even after many years of successful operation - something overlooked by all) - I was going to take a small business loan, purchase the building and the business. My last 4 1/2 years of employment gave me enough time and pay into Social Security to have a little bit more Social Security earning on my own versus spousal amount with DH’s. After being out of the job market 5 years, prospective employers look at an individual like they are ‘brain dead’ despite qualifications. The care I took with DH’s 401k investments ‘paid off’ with our funds there and with our financial advisor (with our Roth IRAs and our 5 Annuities). DH learned over these last 12 years once we started with FA and FA would explain things to DH. Then DH would understand more when I showed him the various analyses I had been doing with 401k and the shifting of funds there for best returns.
Haha - my husband and I went to outside concerts for the first time since our 2nd date (we went to Jimmy Buffet concert back in 1983) - we’ll be married 40 year this year and we saw Chicago, Earth, Wind, & Fire, The Dooby Brothers, and ??? can’t remember - so much fun…we paid the cheap seat, bring your own chair and sit in the grass and darn if we weren’t a couple of the younger ones there, at 68! Yes, it is fun to relive those youthful days!
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We are staying with MIL at her house in Florida and I have pulled out some non-financial lessons from our experience there and how I want to behave in my older age and have put those issues in the non-financial retirement thread. But, I also have a financial issue. Definitely a first world problem.
My MIL is and has always been prone to making rash decisions and deliberately ignoring advice if it challenges her but then sometimes a the year later changing her position, while refusing to acknowledge some of the basic logic. Years ago, she decided that because she was not using their cottage in the Laurentians, she would not pay its upkeep anymore. It was being used by some cousins and some of her kids and there was a ton of deferred maintenance for years. At some point, she anounced that she had transferred its ownership to her four kids, ignoring the prior statement of her son that he could not afford it and did not want to own it and of a daughter who wanted to use it but said that she could not afford it. Given the complexity in ownership, more deferred maintenance. Utimately, ShawWife and another sib bought it from the two who couldn’t pay. I had to use my deal-making expertise to structure a transaction to make it tax-efficient – it would have been much simpler if she had just given it to the two who wanted it and adjusted upward the cash inheritance of the two who didn’t keep the house would receive. By then, the house was in such bad shape that we knocked it down (the contract just drove a snowplow into it and it collapsed) and they built a beautiful house on a very low budget.
We are now staying with her and taking care of her in her Florida house. LIke the Laurentian house, it is small and not that valuable but in a really nice area and location. A few days ago, she said, “I’m tired of paying for Florida house” as we were talking about replacing three sliding doors with hurricane proof sliding doors. I pointed out the problems that were created by transferring the responsbility of paying for it without making future ownership clear (she does not want to fully get it but basically does). So, I helped her clarify her desires. Her intention is that it will be given to all of her kids, but it is not clear that one or more want it (climate change and hurricanes a big issue) and she wanted to do that immediately. I pointed out that the time she did that with the Laurentian house, the house deteriorated because no one knew who was really going to own it. So, I worked out the following logic with her and wrote an email for her which she sent to the kids saying that she was not sure how many more years she would be able to get to Florida. So, from now on, she has only decided to pay for maintenance expenses but not capital improvements (like the hurricane doors) and that she wants to transfer the ownership as soon as she stops using it so the four kids should get together and see if one or more of them want to own it (and the value of it would be including in how they calculate the inheritance for each kid).
Now, we have to decide whether we would like to own it. The sib with whom we co-own the house does notlike Florida and I think co-owning with the other two who can’t afford it would. become problematic. So, I think it would have to be us on our own. I love coming down here and would love it even more if it was just us. But, coastal houses in Florida (we are 1.5 blocks from the “Gulf of America” and the area took the full brunt of Hurricane Ian and got hit by both Helene and Milton) are assets that are going to decline in value and are probably overvalued now – big inventory on the market without buyers and many people who might want to sell are using their houses into rental properties instead. To make it work for us, we would have to create a studio for ShawWife. It would work best financially if we could stay here six months a year and establish it as our tax residence, but I think that is unlikely.
So, I have two questions. If I want to come someplace warm in the winter that is easy to reach from Boston, where would I go? Are there other places outside of Florida (we have friends in Charleston SC but that Charleston is not that warm in winter). And if it is Florida, are there places that are better? We are on an island with a causeway that is jammed in the morning with workers coming and in the afternoon with workers leaving but the island is a lot less developed and strip-mall infested than the other areas in Florida that I know. But it is a barrier island and hence vulnerable to storms?
And, given the climate change problem, the value of the asset will decline. So clearly a dumb decision to take it rather than cash as a purely financial matter. But life is not purely a financial matter. How crazy is it to acquire a house in Florida at this point?
I don’t know anything about the surrounding issues and I wish you luck but I did notice: you’re in the Boston area? So are we. 
Hi!
I wouldn’t.
One, the cost and liability.
Two, if you keep it, family will want to use it and that could become an issue.
Three, less hassle to just rent when you want some warm weather. And that would enable you to try out lots of different places and maybe eventually buy if you really want another place.
Four, I know that as I age I am all about simplicity. I wouldn’t want to own a property in a place with so much volatility.
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I and many others think it is not crazy at all to acquire a house in Florida right now. To acquire this specific house, with the traffic situation and other things you cite, though, I’m pretty sure this is not the choice of house I would make.
I would choose FL - just a different house and location.
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Why not sell the house now, while MIL is alive? She can add that money to her estate and the kids will get their share when she dies. If she has a desire to go to Florida in the future, she could stay at an extended stay hotel.
This gives you the option of picking the place you want in Florida (it is a big state and there are lots of places to retire to). I am also outside Boston, and everybody here who snowbirds does Florida. When I was in NJ, many snowbirds did Arizona.
Ditto. As long as teh Feds continue to (stupidly) back-stop flood insurance, coastal areas should keep their value. Millions continue to move into FL. (not to mention, MA has an inheritance/welath tax so a new domicile has some advantages).
Concur that selling and moving off the barrier island is the way to go.