Great place, Hoggirl. Enjoy. Our last guests were at Christmas. I agree with you about being cautious about guests, at least for now.
Beautiful view!
Anyone turn 60 this year? You may be screwed:
[Turning 60 This Year? A Weird Social Security Rule Means COVID-19 Could Cost You Thousands Over Your Lifetime](Turning 60 This Year? A Weird Social Security Rule Means COVID-19 Could Cost You Thousands Over Your Lifetime | The Motley Fool)
I would imagine Congress will get around to fixing this at some point, but you never know.
@notrichenough ,
Thank you for posting. I will share this with my friend. Both of us are 60 this year.
Iâm happy for you! Beautiful view and Iâm sure it will be very relaxing. Enjoy! And thanks for sharing.
Thanks, but I will not be sharing this with my brother who just turned 60 and got laid off. Itâs going to be hard enough for them.
Dang! 60 this year⊠?
Whew ⊠missed turning 60 in 2020 by just a couple days.
Depending on how things go, those of us who turn 60 next year might get nailed by this as well.
If I wasnât worried about the stock market taking a nose dive again pretty soon, Iâd seriously consider retiring in the next couple of months.
I know the market can crash at any time, but I just feel like right now Iâd be kind of âirresponsibleâ to take the chance, with all thatâs going on.
Iâm hoping it will be OK by next spring, when I am really thinking about it.
I have to admit though, monitoring my spending for the last 6 months (when it seems like we havenât done much at all) makes me rethink my overall plan.
Multiple financial advisors say I will be fine, but itâs scary to think about not bringing in âthe big checkâ every 2 weeks. Iâm also told that the first 5 years retirees generally spend more than other years, and that makes sense too.
I hope things are back to ânormalâ by next spring, but I suspect they wonât be.
@1214mom - Sometimes I advise âwork longer, but travel more extravagantlyâ (you have more money than time⊠trips can be short / splurgy). Of course during Covid that plan does not work as well.
I will retire 7/31. Weâve been planning this a very long time. DH retired March 2019, and in May he started Medicare. Itâs my turn now 
@colorado_mom, congratulations!
We have already been planning the travel more (some extravagant, some not) part, until COVID. For example, we took 5 vacations last year, and we would have done something similar this year. I told my husband if we were going to keep working, I wanted to travel. But it may be a couple of years before we feel comfortable traveling much.
Now I am thinking about working longer also.
I suspect I will âknowâ when itâs right. Part of my issue is deciding if I should look for a job I like better than my current job, or just âriding it outâ because I only have a short time before retirement.
@1214mom, I obviously donât know much about your situation, but my instinct is that at our age, our work should be fulfilling and probably help provide a sense of meaning. As a result, I am a believer in switching to a new job if you would like it better.
In current times, it is unclear how long or short our work will be. I have run my own company for many years and we were experiencing a slowdown even before COVID and a part of our business that involves face-to-face interaction shut down for a while. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, âWhat if it never comes back?â I asked our financial advisor to rerun the âFinancial Independence Planâ to see if we were still there given a) our purchase of a more expensive house with a significant set of renovations on the way; and b) an assumption that I have no more income. The result: I could stop working today and still be OK. Of course, I have no plans to stop work. At the company, we worked to replace some of the F2F interaction with Zoom/online activity and clients are eager (though want to pay less for online/virtual work). Fortunately, in the last three weeks, we have gotten a surge of potential new business in the part of the business that didnât relay on F2F interactions.
So, my bias is to shoot for meaning in your work and if that means applying for new jobs, my recommendation (unburdened by knowledge of your actual situation, of course) would be to do so.
A poster on the Class of 2009 thread that I am one had that same question. She decide to look and apply and is very happy that she took a new job (and left her old one, which seemed like a toxic situation to me).
Until Covid totally settles down (I imagine after an affordable and effective vaccine is available) we have that additional item which factors in a bit of âunknownâ.
There is an expression of not borrowing trouble by worrying about what tomorrow may bring. Of course one prepared as best as one can for the future.
It is good to sort out what each spouse is looking for. I certainly found out more from DH as we are approaching retirement and exploring options. He is happy staying in our current home. He is sick of travel from work, so any travel I will generally do will be with others (or I go by myself to some friends/family). He is going to make a trip with me to visit family/friends in Switzerland, but he probably will stay 2 weeks and I will stay longer. My last trip in 2016, the rail/bus pass is what determined my stay - I believe a 29 day pass.
The unknowns at this point are where the kids will be - they will move away from our state at some unknown future time, and then we will see if we have a 2nd place somewhere or other decision on current home.
I finally did look at our 401k balances. We are up for the year. I totally had no idea where it would be. So that was a happy discovery.
I have more in cash/cdâs/moneymarket funds and less in StocksâŠsay 40% /60%. I think we are going to see a huge drop soon but Iâm not going to pull anymore out of the stock market because we are not likely to need it for another 10 years or so.
Itâs hard to know, though I am with you @anxiousmom, about the tanking of at least parts of the market. Not clear hotels can drop a lot further. Energy pretty hard hit. But, tech is doing very well. My board member types tell me that companies are responding to the crisis by automating with software/AI so that they wonât need to hire back people to do the work, which doesnât argue for a big recovery in demand from consumers once the government pulls the plug. The Senate has refused to provide funding to state government, which have to balance budgets by year-end. Hence, a huge contraction in what they are paying for things. Big contractionary effect there.
The non-real estate portion of our portfolio has 17% in cash, 4.5% in gold, 26% in short term bonds, and another 6% in munis.
Iâm anxious about the RE part of our portfolio. We currently hold 6 properties. We are in the process of selling our old house and the studio on the lot next to it. We will use the proceeds to a) pay down the mortgage we took on the new house; and b) pay for the construction of a new studio and the renovation of the house. Hopefully, the properties are sold before the crash. We have two rental properties in very attractive locations and one vacation house up in Canada.
RE movement âdependsâ on many things. Supply/Demand and the right buyer to name several key things.
We feel good about waiting on moving our home because we donât have a reason to do so right now - and the more freshening up we can do in several areas, the better price it will sell for. I also believe our area will continue to have rising home prices, esp in the right school districts. H asked me to set an amount on the home improvements, and what our tax basis is on our home; my answers satisfied him. He knows I am closely following our RE housing market.
If DD/SIL/GKids land somewhere somewhat stable, we may buy something small there to be able to spend quality time with them - or maybe rent something on short term. We shall see. We like to help, in a limited way, with the GKids (who are now 1 and 2), but not enabling poor financial or other decisions by DD/SIL - and they are the parents - so the responsibility doesnât fall on us. However we all want good things for the GKids. If they stay a while where they are, GD should be transitioning to one of the two Montessori programs that are convenient and affordable to them. Both DDs benefited from a terrific Montessori program. SIL has no clue on this because he has had no experience with kids/early childhood devât other than watching his own kids and what he learns from DD.
If all works as planned we should have about $200K in annual income from retirement accounts, Social Security, and earnings from other investments once we retire, enough to live comfortably but not extravagantly. Our biggest expenses will be travel as long as health permits and major gifts to our kids, e.g., for a down payment on a house. Weâve traveled frugally until now, but I donât mind spending a little to travel in style in retirement. We can live on $200K per year without consuming capital. That will leave about $1 million for each of the kids when weâre gone. They wonât be rich, but theyâll have ample resources to live comfortably and raise our grandchildren without financial difficulties.
This isnât directed to @bclintonk but something I wonder about. It was pointed out that he wanted to leave $1m to each of his kids for them to live comfortably and raise his grandchildren. Which is admiral and great.
But right now my ilâs are in their mid 80âs and very frugal. They are in relatively good health. The âkidsâ are 60 and 58. The grandchildren are from 32-25. When my ilâs both pass away, the kids will be retired and not raising their children.
While I donât expect inheriting a large sum from my ilâs (or my mom although sheâs not in a great financial place), I guess it would add to our own nest egg. Itâs not something I think about and anyways we will be into our own retirement.
Just thoughts for today
FIL talked about setting up a grandkidsâ inheritance, but never did. So, when we inherited from our parents (95ish) to us (60âs) our kids (25-30) received a gift yearly from us for several years to help them with a nest egg and downpayment, etc.