Last night, I freaked out a bit. My wife would possibly say 'more than a bit'. The subject was money.
I had been leafing through some articles about retirement planning and hit the statement that you almost certainly don't need the amount of money that financial planners say that you need -- the idea being that financial planners are interested in making money -- your money -- by convincing you to give it to them so that they can nurture it for you. Otherwise, you'll be dining on cat food at 91.
I'm willing to believe that they overstate the case. I have a fair amount of respect for financial planners, but they tend to share the trait of others in the financial industry to the effect that while they see many reasons to put money into the market, they don't tend to see very many reasons why you should ever take it out. For the long haul is their rallying cry, but by that they mean decades. Perhaps centuries. So okay, take what they say with a grain of salt, perhaps a lot of grains of salt.
But then I hit the figure that the author was saying you really don't need.
Four million dollars.
I freaked. Knowing full well that that was an absurd number, I freaked. I immediately questioned all of the financial planning we've done (more of tracking and projecting than planning, actually, but still); questioned whether we're saving enough (we save more than about 70% of the population, from what I read); questioned whether, house prices being what they are, we should buy now even though we don't want to; questioned if we have enough of a buffer for unforeseen expenses; questioned whether I really should be planning to quit in three or four years and instead assume that I'll have to work two or three more than that.
After 9-11, I adopted a policy -- NNIGN. No News Is Good News. I stopped reading about what was happening and just focused on my own little world. All that the external information was doing was freaking me out. It wasn't making me safer, or more prepared, or more of anything good. Just freaking me out.
I'm thinking that for a while, I'd better stop reading boomer retirement articles.
2 comments:
My grandmother is about to turn 97 and the (quite considerable) nest egg she and my grandfather built up, is almost completely gone. There's maybe about 6 months left worth of money and frankly, I don't think she's going anywhere any time soon. Her situation is fine though, Medicare will take over when the money runs out, and nothing will change about her situation. Things have a way of working out.
I guess you need to find a happy medium of having enough money for your golden years, without wasting all of your golden years on work, just to have more money.
"I'd better stop reading boomer retirement articles."
What did I tell you about boomers?
:P Kidding!
Its weird, the paths that thinking about this brings me down. (Thats my entry for the Tortured Syntax of the Month award, incidentally.) I actually find my self thinking from time to time 'well, if I just die between 75 and 80, we should be okay.' Thats not driven by any feeling that we're going to run out of money after that -- I'm just tense about the whole idea. I don't like the thought of being elderly and poor, and I REALLY don't like the possibility of having to rely on a conservative administration for help if I am.
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