Retirement Planning - Lessons Learned

[ultrarunner]

Techies can work remotely, and if you can work remotely, why would you live there?

My old college roomie retired from Lawrence Radiation Labs and moved up near Port Townsend about 20 years ago. He had a duplex in SF, and even then he was an equity king moving to rural Washington.

The weather is great, world class sailing, International Surfing, Redwoods, Top Universities and Medical, Travel Hub, Family Here, etc..

The cons are break down of social fabric like Portland and Seattle, Cost of Housing, Traffic, Endless new rules covering more and more aspects of life and older diesel tractors shunned...

It may simply be a number of people don't like being told what to do...

 

[riptides]

The economy is changing, and with it, geographic location is becoming more of a lifestyle choice than tied to a workplace. I think areas like California, that attracted based on work, are now finding that the economic conditions and lifestyle choices are now moving in another direction. Now and into the future, you will have to attract people based on their lifestyles and not their business decisions.

 

[ultrarunner]

Lesson could be some have found they have been able to do OK not working...

We have experienced accelerated retirements among doctors... they had not planned to retire at 58 -60 but found the pressures of maintaining a practice, staffing an office, Covid, etc... no longer worth the effort... also, not being able to find younger Docs willing to take over practices a factor in closing shop...

Chief of anesthesia planned to go at 65 and retired at 60... leaving for his farm in Oregon...

Medical is experiencing more burn out in anytime in my 30 years with several strikes happening now as full time nurses working next to temps getting ad much as double compensation...

 

[Frankenkubota]

FWIW, this is a recently published and very comprehensive retirement book:

Amazon.com

good for you

way to late for me, good luck

 

[MoKelly]

"If current policy doesn't create inflation, then we have no idea what causes inflation." - John Phipps, US Farm Report

People like to make things complicated for their own agendas and to deflect responsibility.

It’s very simple - supply and demand.

Demand exceed supply —— prices rise.

Regulate supply while at the same time increasing demand —- well, duh!

MoKelly

 

[riptides]

Lesson could be some have found they have been able to do OK not working...

We have experienced accelerated retirements among doctors... they had not planned to retire at 58 -60 but found the pressures of maintaining a practice, staffing an office, Covid, etc... no longer worth the effort... also, not being able to find younger Docs willing to take over practices a factor in closing shop...

Chief of anesthesia planned to go at 65 and retired at 60... leaving for his farm in Oregon...

Medical is experiencing more burn out in anytime in my 30 years with several strikes happening now as full time nurses working next to temps getting ad much as double compensation...

Yes, so how does one get by with not working? It depends on other resources available. I see it as a lifestyle choice factoring into a good majority getting out of the rat race. Downsizing comes to mind.

The new "worker" economy is definitely shoring up to be the worker calling the shots and not the business.

 

[kenmac]

I see it as a lifestyle choice factoring into a good majority getting out of the rat race.

I did just that a few yrs back !
Was in the ''Rat race'' for a long time. At 57, I decided to just get out. I haven't regretted it at all !

 

[goeduck]

The new "worker" economy is definitely shoring up to be the worker calling the shots and not the business.

I would have to agree with this in many cases and I see this as a good thing. There will be a balance point where things settle out. Many businesses had this coming as payback.

 

[California]

I would have to agree with this in many cases and I see this as a good thing. There will be a balance point where things settle out. Many businesses had this coming as payback.

Lots of amusing personal stories about this over on Reddit! Here's one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/q847oz

The first couple of replies:

"I’m shocked nobody showed, when they can work at Target in air conditioning and not breaking their back for more than $14/hour.

"I think what really gets me is that it's part time.
Like not only do you want me to work a **** job for **** pay, you also want me to do it part time? I don't even get a full 40 hours a week to be able to sustain myself?

And if you really want to go down the rabbithole of endless similar stories showing how attitudes have changed since Covid, this sub-forum has legitimate as well as unjustified stories of workers walking off as soon as they see much better paying alternatives. Times have changed.

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

Here's a classic I see there:

 

[KennyG]

A few impressions of the Reddit post from a grouchy old man:

Putting 35,000 lbs of boxes onto a conveyer doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. I've certainly done a lot harder jobs in my life.

I keep hearing that we have so many unfilled jobs because they are bad jobs and people deserve better jobs. It used to be that if you were unemployed, you took whatever job was available and kept looking for a better one. I guess it doesn't work that way anymore.

 

[Bearsixty7]

A few impressions of the Reddit post from a grouchy old man:

Putting 35,000 lbs of boxes onto a conveyer doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. I've certainly done a lot harder jobs in my life.

I keep hearing that we have so many unfilled jobs because they are bad jobs and people deserve better jobs. It used to be that if you were unemployed, you took whatever job was available and kept looking for a better one. I guess it doesn't work that way anymore.

I agree.
It's all a bunch of B.S. that is going to crash this country completely soon due to high unemployment pay. I get that anyone can lose a job and sometimes not be able to find one and unemployment is to help get you by but it should not be a life style!
Just like demanding minimum wage be $15/hr is B.S. there are a lot of jobs that don't require any skill and aren't meant to be a career, they are for highschool kids just getting started in the workforce and earning gas money, etc.
At $15/hr many businesses can't charge enough for their product or service to stay in business.

The Kiosk's at most McDonalds now prove this.

 

[California]

It used to be that if you were unemployed, you took whatever job was available and kept looking for a better one.

No, I think that is the central theme of all those posts. The emphasis is how the employer is blindsided when an underpaid key employee moves on.

People who are already employed, realizing there are far better-paying jobs available now, so they give notice. (Maybe the clearest example is staff nurses working alongside transient contract nurses earning literally double the pay. Why not get listed at an agency and double your income?)

Then their employer is shocked that their good and loyal employee, maybe their best employee that the business really depends on, wants to go where they will be paid more with a realistic opportunity to move up. The loyal employee wasn't supposed to do that!

Times have changed.

This isn't about people who won't work regardless of how high pay they are offered. That's a different problem.

 

[goeduck]

This isn't about people who won't work regardless of how high pay they are offered. That's a different problem.

Agree, the posts are about both. Two separate distinct situations with completely different origins. Everyone should be encouraged to make more money and better their lifestyle by getting a better job. Also, every able bodied person should be working.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I agree.
It's all a bunch of B.S. that is going to crash this country completely soon due to high unemployment pay. I get that anyone can lose a job and sometimes not be able to find one and unemployment is to help get you by but it should not be a life style!
Just like demanding minimum wage be $15/hr is B.S. there are a lot of jobs that don't require any skill and aren't meant to be a career, they are for highschool kids just getting started in the workforce and earning gas money, etc.
At $15/hr many businesses can't charge enough for their product or service to stay in business.

The Kiosk's at most McDonalds now prove this.

That was last year. This year it's $15.90. Inflation, you know.

 

[MoKelly]

That was last year. This year it's $15.90. Inflation, you know.

But the Fed says inflation is transitory until the supply chain disaster is cleared up sometime in 2030!

 

[lman]

My grandpa used to say that you are only as lazy as you can afford to be. There seems to be a trend lately that you are only as lazy as the government pays you to be.

 

[ultrarunner]

I agree.
It's all a bunch of B.S. that is going to crash this country completely soon due to high unemployment pay. I get that anyone can lose a job and sometimes not be able to find one and unemployment is to help get you by but it should not be a life style!
Just like demanding minimum wage be $15/hr is B.S. there are a lot of jobs that don't require any skill and aren't meant to be a career, they are for highschool kids just getting started in the workforce and earning gas money, etc.
At $15/hr many businesses can't charge enough for their product or service to stay in business.

The Kiosk's at most McDonalds now prove this.

It's already 15 or higher pre pandemic in some west coast districts...

A young mother I know works cleaning offices and her child is in daycare... she was so excited when the minimum wage in the city went up until she found the daycare raised it's price citing increased payroll cost due to wage increase.

 

[ultrarunner]

Employers don't have piles of money at least when it comes to small businesses.

I can cite several examples of coffee shop owners netting less than wait staff or my friend that had an office machine business repairing printers where he netted less that his two employees who also had vacation which the owner never did...

 

[MossRoad]

It's already 15 or higher pre pandemic in some west coast districts...

A young mother I know works cleaning offices and her child is in daycare... she was so excited when the minimum wage in the city went up until she found the daycare raised it's price citing increased payroll cost due to wage increase.

When we started our first in day care back in 1992, it was $100 per week. They said it would go down to $90 when the kid turned 1 year old.

Kid turns 1 year old, price goes down to $90, then 10% rate increase, so back up to $99. This went on for 10 years between our 2 children.

The number that sticks in my head is two-nineteen-ten. That's how much we were paying per week for 2 kids (infant and 5 year old). $219.10.

Today, you'd be lucky to get 1 kid in daycare for that cost.

 

[YLee Kioti]

Well sir we planned to the best of our ability and bought a house in our home town in a new subdivision with a 1/4 acre corner lot.
So far so good. Two years later the small opening between us and our neighbor squeezed in two houses. Then a school was built across the street and traffic was unbearable. Unable to exit driveway for an hour every 8am.
So we went shopping.
Large % of the 401k went into property, rough clearing, a Mueller building with temp (500sq') living area (three years there!) and all equipment for maintaining said property. Farm equipment and all about 42k, plus metal barn was another 75k which included finished out living area.......Oh and had our storage building broken into so about 10k in lifetime accumulation of tools vanished! Yeah thank you sir can I have another......ah yeah.....

So plan for the worse and pray for the best....we never saw this coming......but our ideal retirement area quickly turned into a high traffic, young party animal next door (he's a LEO, so who ya gonna call, right), and rapid taxes pretty much moved us out.

Guess you can never save too much for those unforeseen events in life.
All the best....