Retirement

In reply to Enyar : You are correct. Everyone is different.  While I live on a lake known for great fishing I hate to fish. More, I don’t like beer!! 

I’ve played golf twice in my life and both times someone in our foursome died.  Even if it hadn’t happened I don’t like stick and ball games.  

I don’t drink coffee and I hate Chocolate chip cookies

In reply to frenchyd :

The point is, not everyone's experience is relevant to helping others.  Good and bad, my experiences are relevant to my life and my life alone, neither of which were really the result of choices I consciously made at a given point in time.  Mostly through chance and blind luck.  While I can look back now and see how a decision I made had a drastic affect on the rest of my life, it damned sure didn't seem so at the time.

frenchyd said:

In reply to Enyar : You are correct. Everyone is different.  While I live on a lake known for great fishing I hate to fish. More, I don’t like beer!! 

I’ve played golf twice in my life and both times someone in our foursome died.  Even if it hadn’t happened I don’t like stick and ball games.  

I don’t drink coffee and I hate Chocolate chip cookies

 

That splains a lot! 

Ian F said:

In reply to frenchyd :

The point is, not everyone's experience is relevant to helping others.  Good and bad, my experiences are relevant to my life and my life alone, neither of which were really the result of choices I consciously made at a given point in time.  Mostly through chance and blind luck.  While I can look back now and see how a decision I made had a drastic affect on the rest of my life, it damned sure didn't seem so at the time.

I wish I could say the same. When I talk with fellow Vietnam vets our life stories seem to have a similar “trigger” events 

Education, the draft, tour(s) in Vietnam, returning home dealing with that rejection while recovering  from the fear/ stress of combat. Jobs turning into careers, family life, then the Great Recession, followed by recovery and then retirement if possible 

Yes  there are differences, details differ but those are the chapters .

The greatest generation  had their chapters 

Great Depression, education, WW2,  postwar, Jobs turning into careers,  Family life, retirement  

i suppose millennials and Gen X will have their own chapters, but they will follow a similar pattern.  

"the greatest generation", Lmao no. 

In reply to frenchyd :

Again - that's not the point.  Everyone makes life changing decisions. It is extremely rare, beyond choosing to enlist during wartime, for someone to think "this is the most important decision of my life."  Instead, people tend to make a decision that affects their situation at that time.  This is especially true the younger you are. It goes back to that age old question when looking back, "What the hell was I thinking?"  Usually, we weren't. 

Retirement planning is often the same.  Some are fortunate to be in a situation to plan for a future a lifetime or more away.  Some are in situations where planning for the next day - or even the next few hours - is difficult. Unfortunately, the latter represents a larger percentage of the population.

I had a lot saved for retirement. 

Then I lost half in the 2008 crash.    3 years ago I was laid off for 2 years due to the oil crash.  That didn't help.  Then Harvey flooded my house.  Oops, my wife didn't mail that flood insurance renewal check.  I found out she didn't want to spend the $450 it cost because we were not in a flood zone.    No, I didn't divorce her. Yes, it cost a fortune to fix my house.  

On top of this I have a "special needs" child that requires a special high tuition school.   Like enough to buy a WRX for cash every 1.25 years expensive. 

So I'm not retiring.  I expecting to work until my health fails. Hopefully that lasts another 15 years when I am in my mid-70's.  

I keep re-reading "IF" by Rudyard Kipling.  It helps.

jharry3 said:

I had a lot saved for retirement. 

Then I lost half in the 2008 crash.   

 

What did you do then? Did you sell it at the bottom? Because it has since way more than recovered. If they were retirement funds, why were they sold? Where did the funds go? You had from 2008 to 2015 - seven years - for them to have recovered before your layoff.

I'm not asking to be rude, I'm really curious. Others have made mention of being "wiped out" due to the 2007/2008 crash, but if you held any sort of reasonable portfolio before the crash it should be even bigger now so I've never gotten a handle on why anyone would have been wiped out. Except for one guy, that was majorly leveraged going into it following a known to be extremely risky investment strategy.

In reply to Ian F :

If I'd been thinking in my 20's I would've bought land in Edwards when I lived in the Vail area.  Not sure how much my pizza tips would've bought, but it would've been worth it.  Same thing with buying rental properties in La Jolla when I was there for school.  Or buying a house immediately when I left dental school and was at my first military base.

I can tell you that unless the housing market is volcanically hot, I'll be advising my kids to buy property right away, not to wait.  Metric tons of money is what I'd have right now...

I’m planning on pushing towards 70 years like Suze recommends.  My last few years I might end up pushing carts.   

I might work at Weathertech as they are local and I can ask people all day - what kind of car do you have?  Sweet, those are nice.  

Ian F said:

In reply to frenchyd :

Again - that's not the point.  Everyone makes life changing decisions. It is extremely rare, beyond choosing to enlist during wartime, for someone to think "this is the most important decision of my life."  Instead, people tend to make a decision that affects their situation at that time.  This is especially true the younger you are. It goes back to that age old question when looking back, "What the hell was I thinking?"  Usually, we weren't. 

Retirement planning is often the same.  Some are fortunate to be in a situation to plan for a future a lifetime or more away.  Some are in situations where planning for the next day - or even the next few hours - is difficult. Unfortunately, the latter represents a larger percentage of the population.

The following all sound similar to my experience. Obviously not everyone experiences the biggest recession since the Great Depression in a vulnerable position but enough did that it’s a serious issue.  

24 million people were put out of work 7 Trillion dollars of the US economy was gone.  Yes I’ve heard different numbers and the economy has slowly recovered but for many baby boomers it’s too little too late.  

Mostly we baby boomers have moved on and some weren’t affected. But based on conversations I suspect the majority took a real hit. 

docwyte said:

In reply to Ian F :

If I'd been thinking in my 20's I would've bought land in Edwards when I lived in the Vail area.  Not sure how much my pizza tips would've bought, but it would've been worth it.  Same thing with buying rental properties in La Jolla when I was there for school.  Or buying a house immediately when I left dental school and was at my first military base.

I can tell you that unless the housing market is volcanically hot, I'll be advising my kids to buy property right away, not to wait.  Metric tons of money is what I'd have right now...

We agree.  I almost bought  a really nice property on Point Loma overlooking the harbor, North Island,  and San Diego. 

I never dreamt I could buy  LaJolla but if I had wow what a return!!!! 

Good Real estate is perfect investment. Especially for Vets. Extremely  leveraged and still provides tax protection.  

dculberson said:

jharry3 said:

I had a lot saved for retirement. 

Then I lost half in the 2008 crash.   

 

What did you do then? Did you sell it at the bottom? Because it has since way more than recovered. If they were retirement funds, why were they sold? Where did the funds go? You had from 2008 to 2015 - seven years - for them to have recovered before your layoff.

I'm not asking to be rude, I'm really curious. Others have made mention of being "wiped out" due to the 2007/2008 crash, but if you held any sort of reasonable portfolio before the crash it should be even bigger now so I've never gotten a handle on why anyone would have been wiped out. Except for one guy, that was majorly leveraged going into it following a known to be extremely risky investment strategy.

I assume you think I’m that extremely leveraged guy?  You are aware that I’ve been in that highly leveraged real estate for 35 years now?  That before I started the new house my mortgage was under $100,000?  

That it was my Bankers strong recommendation that I build this for tax reasons. and he showed me how to do the financial package? 

if it's worth north of a million, and it's huge - why not sell it?

frenchyd said:
I assume you think I’m that extremely leveraged guy?  

Nope! Spoke with a gentleman that invested at 5x leverage on margin in the S&P 500 index.. right before the meltdown. He tried to ride out the dip and didn't realize how far it was going until he hit margin call after margin call and wiped out hundreds of thousands of dollars in net worth and ended up negative for a while.

Borrowing for your house I do not consider investing, much less investing with leverage. It's providing a home to live in.

For a lot of people my age, GenX 40's-ish, we seem to have significant life decisions that revolve around money. Did we borrow money for school and how much? When and where did we buy a house? Did we keep a job through the recession? Did we have money in the market going down or coming back up? Did a divorce/child support wipe you our for a while? Our life stories revolve around those choices/situations and their outcomes. 

Most of us look at where we are now and how we'll go into the next 40 years based on financial decisions. School isn't so much about learning as it is about payoff on investment. Houses are the same way, we're not buying our dream homes, we're trying to catch a rising asset. We were told to fully invest in our 401k's from the first day of our first job out of college and if we did so then a lot of us had as much or more than our parents invested when the market crashed. It feels like we're obsessed with money but I think we're obsessed with the security that money might bring it we can round up enough of it. Or the illusion of security. We look at our parents and grandparents retirements being funded by pensions, social security and massive gains in real estate and none of that looks available. The two generations before us are telling us to do things that they didn't have to so that we can end up in the same place. 

Pensions and SS were designed for a full working life. Show up, don't get fired, and someone else will tell you when it's ok to retire. If you don't have those things, if there is no formal schedule to retire on, then we start to fall into two groups. Those that have saved/been lucky and can check out when the numbers say regardless  of age, and those that don't have savings for whatever reason and are looking at death/disability to take them out of the work force. 

We're a generation of have/have nots as we start to think about retirements and much of that feels like dumb luck based on financial decisions we made in our 20's. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Well said. 

yupididit said:

"the greatest generation", Lmao no. 

That is the generation that survived the Great Depression, fought totalitarianism in world war 2, went to the Moon and made America  the  World power it is.  

I’ll call them our greatest generation. Why won’t you? 

dculberson said:

frenchyd said:
I assume you think I’m that extremely leveraged guy?  

Nope! Spoke with a gentleman that invested at 5x leverage on margin in the S&P 500 index.. right before the meltdown. He tried to ride out the dip and didn't realize how far it was going until he hit margin call after margin call and wiped out hundreds of thousands of dollars in net worth and ended up negative for a while.

Borrowing for your house I do not consider investing, much less investing with leverage. It's providing a home to live in.

OK , Thank you for the clarification. In 20/20 hindsight I might have been more conservative about the construction. But I’m still glad I did it.  

However the money I lost in the 87 crash was because of leveraging. For the three and a half years prior to my loss I turned less than $10,000 into over $300,000 using leverage.  If I’d followed my brokers advice. I would have, “ played with the Houses money” in other words pulled my original $10,000 out every time it doubled and kept going. 

Then when the crash came I would still have more than $100,000.  I didn’t because I got greedy.  How’s the Wall Street quote go? 

Bulls get rich and Bears get rich but Hogs get slaughtered? 

mazdeuce - Seth said:

For a lot of people my age, GenX 40's-ish, we seem to have significant life decisions that revolve around money. Did we borrow money for school and how much? When and where did we buy a house? Did we keep a job through the recession? Did we have money in the market going down or coming back up? Did a divorce/child support wipe you our for a while? Our life stories revolve around those choices/situations and their outcomes. 

Most of us look at where we are now and how we'll go into the next 40 years based on financial decisions. School isn't so much about learning as it is about payoff on investment. Houses are the same way, we're not buying our dream homes, we're trying to catch a rising asset. We were told to fully invest in our 401k's from the first day of our first job out of college and if we did so then a lot of us had as much or more than our parents invested when the market crashed. It feels like we're obsessed with money but I think we're obsessed with the security that money might bring it we can round up enough of it. Or the illusion of security. We look at our parents and grandparents retirements being funded by pensions, social security and massive gains in real estate and none of that looks available. The two generations before us are telling us to do things that they didn't have to so that we can end up in the same place. 

Pensions and SS were designed for a full working life. Show up, don't get fired, and someone else will tell you when it's ok to retire. If you don't have those things, if there is no formal schedule to retire on, then we start to fall into two groups. Those that have saved/been lucky and can check out when the numbers say regardless  of age, and those that don't have savings for whatever reason and are looking at death/disability to take them out of the work force. 

We're a generation of have/have nots as we start to think about retirements and much of that feels like dumb luck based on financial decisions we made in our 20's. 

Speaking strictly about money as security, there are some lessons your generation has to either learn for itself or accept the advice of those who have been through it.  

You really haven’t been through serious inflation.  Post Vietnam Baby boomers lived through up to 19% inflation annually.  President Ford walked around the Whitehouse wearing WIN  buttons ( whip inflation now )  his attempt to get the inflation caused by Vietnam under control. 

History will show that America never really pays it’s war debts rather we inflate our way to the point where the cost of the war becomes insignificant. We’ve done that since the revolution.  

America now has two wars to pay for plus a giant 1&1/2 Trillion dollar tax cut to pay for. Stand by.  

docwyte said:

In reply to Ian F :

If I'd been thinking in my 20's I would've bought land in Edwards when I lived in the Vail area.  Not sure how much my pizza tips would've bought, but it would've been worth it.  Same thing with buying rental properties in La Jolla when I was there for school.  Or buying a house immediately when I left dental school and was at my first military base.

I can tell you that unless the housing market is volcanically hot, I'll be advising my kids to buy property right away, not to wait.  Metric tons of money is what I'd have right now...

Property... in the right place.  *Most* places in the U.S. do not appreciate like that.  And in many areas with a lot of appreciation, the taxes will kill any gains you are getting on the property.  Its easier to invest in a REIT fund which will provide similarly low returns.  This is similar to saying "If I'd been thinking in my 20's I would have bought GOOG, AAPL, etc."

I plan on telling my kid(s) to avoid real estate for any investment purposes for the most part.  Possibly rent/airbnb some property, but make sure the numbers work out (they often do not).  If its not matching the market returns, don't bother with it.

frenchyd said:

yupididit said:

"the greatest generation", Lmao no. 

That is the generation that survived the Great Depression, fought totalitarianism in world war 2, went to the Moon and made America  the  World power it is.  

I’ll call them our greatest generation. Why won’t you? 

WWII guys are the greatest.  These guys were young and held leadership positions in a tough time.  They defined what it meant to be a man.  

I met some vets at a reunion in western PA and not only did they survive WWII but they came back and worked the coal mines for their career.  These tough buzzards welcomed me that night and told me the best stories   

In reply to ProDarwin :

Those were the right places.  La Jolla has never, ever gone down in value.  Edwards, just outside of Vail, has exploded in the last 25 years, Cape Cod, when I lived there, flew up in price. 

As they say, Location, Location, Location!

mazdeuce - Seth said:

We're a generation of have/have nots as we start to think about retirements and much of that feels like dumb luck based on financial decisions we made in our 20's. 

I agree with this. Looking back, did I really have any idea what I was doing financially in my 20's? Not really. I just followed the advice of "max our your 401k and save for a rainy day".

Not to get too far off track but I think one reason I'm in the position I am today (besides dumb luck) is because I was always worried about financial security in an unknown future. All the things we're constantly flooded with by the media/internet about overpopulation, resource scarcity, environmental changes, etc. make the future seem more uncertain than ever and the response to that uncertainty, at least for me, was to save instead of spend in order to have a bigger cushion IF things get worse later on in life. Now that I put it in writing, it sounds awfully paranoid.

docwyte said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

Those were the right places.  La Jolla has never, ever gone down in value.  Edwards, just outside of Vail, has exploded in the last 25 years, Cape Cod, when I lived there, flew up in price. 

As they say, Location, Location, Location!

My mom's boyfriend lives in Del Mar Heights.........he has the only 1 story house in the neighborhood and basically no yard (like most CA houses I've seen) and it's absolutely staggering what it's worth.