Your Retirement Living Connection

Between the Issues
Is Retirement an Option or a Mistake?
by J. Peter Lindquist

Clark Ewald claims that he made a successful transition into retirement “by the third stoplight on my way home from work on the last day.”

Not so for Peg Zarlengo. She had trouble with the transition but in time was able to adjust. “I was a workaholic and my work defined who I was. At first, I wasn’t sure who I would become when I didn’t have that.”

For Denis Nock, retirement was a more formidable challenge. He tried it for 15 months but had to give it up. “I assumed I would stay retired, but I wasn’t doing very well at it. I just wasn’t mentally stimulated enough.”

With Jean Barr, retirement never even had a chance. She founded her company when her kids were headed off to college and most of her friends were just starting to think about retirement. Now in her eighties, she goes to work five days a week—and loves every minute of it!

Wants and Needs

Is retirement an option or a mistake? It depends on who you are and what you want out of life. What is clearly the right decision for one person is just as clearly the wrong decision for another. Understanding this is doubly important for financial advisors because it affects retirement planning for both themselves and their clients. And the simple truth is that a successful retirement depends on much more than good financial planning and astute investing. 

By AboutSeniors

From: Janelle Spence's Travel Chatter for mature travellers

This issue is from Peter Finch in our office, who has just recently taken his family on a round world holiday for four weeks, and would like to share his experiences on different aspects of his travels. Peter writes ...

We flew with the Star Alliance group, using seven different airlines and having nine stops throughout America and Europe. All the airlines were very good, but on the internal flights there is mostly no food served, just coffee, tea and soft drinks. Southwest Airlines in the USA does not even sell food, and seat numbers are not given. You board in three groups, depending on when you check in, and sit wherever you like - quite different, and you have to watch the line at the boarding gate and get in fast.

Security has been stepped up and you go through several checks, and can be randomly selected for full screening. But we were never hassled and allowed two hours at every airport, and didn't have any delays. There is also security at major tourist attractions, like bag inspections at Disneyland and Universal Studios, and this adds time to getting in.

From AboutSeniors - Readers' Stories

by Daphne Hargreaves

My fate was sealed twenty-one years before I was born. It was at the time of my mother's birth.

My grandmother had longed to give her first born daughter the name Daphne. Her husband would have none of it, instead the baby was named Elsie Eileen. This name, my grandfather's choice, he registered before my grandmother was discharged from hospital - she was not even a party to the naming of the baby she had just given birth to!

As my mother grew up, my grandmother told her the story of how she was named. She instilled in her daughter the desire to use the name Daphne, should she bear a daughter of her own.

Thus it was predetermined.

I was born at 6a.m.on a glorious June morning in England. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, all was well in my mother's world; Daphne had arrived. Why couldn't my father have been more assertive? It was many years later that he admitted that he didn't really like my name but since my mother was so set on it he just 'let her have her own way' or so he said. 

The Retirement Savings Time Bomb... And How to Defuse It
by Ed Slott
Reviewed by Jon Ford, CFP®

I bought this book hoping it would add clarity to parts of the U.S. Tax Code. Since beginning my practice seven years ago, I’ve spent 20-plus hours each year in tax-planning seminars. They are invariably “topical,” in the sense that nobody offers an integrated view. Instructors and coaches provide updates on key changes from the last legislative session and speak to particular topics such as “tax treatment of ISOs” or “S-corp liquidations.” Most are quick to point out that they are teaching what we’ve asked for.

I think of these topical reviews as skeletal tax planning studies. The IRS, via its forms and investigative manner, provides muscle to bone. Imagine, though, a body of muscle and bone with no connective tissue, no blood, and no life, if you will. That’s how I viewed my understanding of tax planning.