What happened now that it is our turn?

I am often struck by the difference between our parents' retirement plans and those of our generation. Our parents all retired between the age of 58 to 62 with pensions, Social Security, and retirement health care. The funds they saved on their own and via their profit sharing plans at work were just gravy for them. No worries about their money lasting, changes in their health plans as they were income secure. They even got Senior Cards from McDonald's that entitled them to free drinks and sundae's anytime they came in...senior discounts were in their heyday! We hoped it would last for our turn, but always feared it would not as it seemed all just too generous especially for such a large group as us Boomers. Now don't get me wrong, I think our parents deserved every bit of it and more. They fought in WWII, lived through the Great Depression and are truly the Greatest Generation. It's just that it would be nice to have a piece of that pie!

NOW they are telling us that we have to plan for and save for our own retirement, this just in the past 10 years or so. This is a great experiment with the Boomers as the guinea pigs. When Roosevelt started Social Security it was because there were so many who could no longer work in their old age, and who became totally impoverished. Good idea....this three legged stool with SS, pension, and personal savings. Now pensions are provided to fewer people every year, there is talk about cutting further into SS when the age was just recently raised, and personal savings become the end game for retirement planning.

Is there hope for the Boomers? Will we survive this experiment and thrive through our own retirment phase? I think so! We just won't have the same retirement as our parents....just as we didn't have the same anything else as our parents' generation. More on how to tomorrow!

Quick transition!

In retrospect, I think our move into the next phase of our lives happened too fast but perhaps that was for the best. Since we had already made a lot of preliminary decisions, all else really ended up being the devil in the details.

What we did right....nearly two years before we worked with Legacy Wealth Management in Memphis to do our retirement planning, with the view that Bill would retire from his corporate job at age 60 to 62. All our financial ducks were in order so all it took was a call to our account manager to start withdrawals within 2 weeks.

What we did wrong....not enough flexibility about the short term and not enough reality about how much of a change this would be, how physically draining it was, and how long it would take to find/build a permanent residence.

Major life transitioins become harder as we change, but unavoidable all the same unfortunately. With the hindsight of 2 years, I can say that although our lives were topsy turvy for nearly a year, we made the transition successfully in the end and that is all that counts. Resilience is essential as we age and it's what keeps us young in spirit if not in years!

We made the transition and so can you!

Thirty months ago my husband left the corporate world at the age of 60 after 38 years of international travel, office politics, and climbing the corporate ladder. He was a Senior Vice President of an international firm, and was used to having a staff doing his bidding and all the accoutrements that corporate life provided. I had started my home-based business selling quilt fabric on eBay 8 years before with the idea of it becoming our retirement business. We had been living in Memphis, TN and decided to move to Maryland. We wanted to live near our only child and closer to elderly parents in PA.

In retrospect, that was a lot to bite off all at once! Transitions are always hard, and even more so when you are leaving behind the job and identity that served as your touchpoint throughout your life. It was easier for me than for my husband. Running a home-based business can be quite lucrative, but it is not an exercise in ego, status, or perks of any kind.

We sold our house in less than 2 weeks and had to go to settlement two weeks after that, whew. Our daughter helped us find an apartment in MD which we leased sight unseen. When the mover loaded the van, we packed both of our cars and were off on our adventure into our new lives!

More tomorrow about what went right, what went wrong, and what to learn from our adventure!

Susie

So THIS is "Retirement"??

Welcome to our new blog, "Boomer Retirement Adventures". We hope to both share our experiences in navigating our lives in the new retirement and learn from others as we do so. We Boomers never did anything quietly or held back, and we won't start in our 60's!

Both my husband and I will be posting daily and hope you will join us.

Susie