Your question is right on point!
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Well, I guess about now Iâm glad I can say I have a pension (not a huge amount) and enough in cash (savings account) to get through at least 4 years. Iâve kicked myself many times for not investing that money and it would probably be double itâs value if I had invested it over the last several years.
My husband is set to retire this summer. I donât think he will change his mind, but I guess it depends on just how bad things get over the next couple of months.
I have worried about sequence of returns risks. Now I may experience them.
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@ucbalumnus As I noted, bad management often makes bad decisions (typically part of what makes them bad managers). If you have managers who donât value contributions of people solely because they are âout of sight,â they are bad managers and should be the first to go in a downturn.
@shawbridge As you know, what works for some companies/industries doesnât work for all. I think there has been a significant change in the past 2 years. The pandemic showed that remote could actually be very effective. I have several clients who tell me that had you interviewed with them more than 2 years ago and asked if you could work remotely, they would tell you no way. Now, they have people working remotely (senior management is working remotely in many of those cases). What they found is that productivity increased meaning if people were saving say an hour a day commute time, they were giving a portion of that back to the company. Not true with all industries, jobs within industries or companies. Which is why I said letting people go based on being remote (as the only determining factor) is an oversimplification.
And sometimes, people in the office are the least productive and show up every day with the idea they will get credit for it.
We have multiple offices. I work regularly with people I have never met or even seen on a video call. As to me, people in other offices work remotely. Doesnât make them less valuable to me or the organization as a whole.
Giving assignments by walking down the hall may happen for very junior people (though again in certain industries/companies is much less common than it once was), but at some people you seek out the best people for the project. Doesnât matter where they are; often even if they are on vacation (been burned on that one a lot :)).
And again, just saying that working remotely being the first one to go in a downturn is oversimplified. Sometimes that will be the case but other times not.
And I am not surprised that some people who retired will need to enter back into the workforce. If you look at the returns over the past 5-10 years and assume they will continue going forward, you may well be surprised. Remember listening to an investment call in show back in the go-go 90s (irrational exuberance days â and yes those types of radio shows were common back then) and hearing a caller who said that her friends were crazy because they were using 25% as an expected annual return while she was being reasonable and using âonlyâ 18%.
There a lot of people who have never gone through a downturn in their adult lives. I think the next one will be a bigger struggle than otherwise because so many people just donât know to handle. I know a couple people in the finance world who say they didnât know interest rates could go up. LOL
@saillakeerie didnât know interest rates could go up! YikesâŠthinking back to 1983 first mortgage, double digits. We have some retirement essentially in cash that I would love to annuitize, but not until I see higher rates.
Iâve seen a lot of real estate ups & downs and am awaiting the downturn to buy a local rental, but Iâve been waiting over 5 years 
I keep telling my kids, it goes up, it goes down, sometimes it never goes down as low as it was before, but thatâs market dependent.
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In an ideal world, yes. Not going to happen in the American corporate reality.
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Some companies are better managed than others. That some are managed poorly doesnât mean all are.
The thing I see with the younger people I know is that they want more flexible, more vacation time, more work life balance. I wonder if American corporate culture will morph as people have adjusted to the new normal.
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I wonder how that attitude/expectation will translate to current and future earnings and retirement nest eggs for younger generations?
Not going to beat the dead horse any longer⊠
However, the popularity of Dilbert and the success of The Office definitely tell something about the average American corporate culture.
@deb922 - I hope things do change. Not holding my breath though.
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@saillakeerie, I agree that there has been a reevaluation of what can be done remotely. Part of the practice of one of my companies includes highly interactive training that involves conversations among participants after going through interactive exercises among sub-groups of participants. Global clients had for years asked us to try to do this teaching remotely as flying in people from all over cost them a lot. Plus, they thought we would charge less for it. We told them it would never be of the same quality. When the pandemic hit, I asked the guy who runs that practice to completely reengineer what we do rather than port over to Zoom what weâd been doing F2F. With quite a bit of work, we now get ratings as high for virtual training as we did for F2F. I didnât think that was possible.
On the other hand, it is actually more work for us even though we donât have to travel. So, our prices have not declined (they are a little higher). But, the total cost to the client is much lower.
However, it has harder to build trusting relationships with folks I have not met before and there is less information available â the 10 minute chat between things while walking to the coffee machine provides a lot of useful information about what is really going on that one doesnât easily get over Zoom.
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My company seemed willing to let people work from home forever. They already gave up one office building, and all those employees have nowhere to go now.
In a year when the current lease on the main building is up, they will either downsize or give that building up completely too.
Right before the pandemic started, a brand new 300,000 sq ft building was started right next to our building, Iâm told itâs finished but the original tenant pulled out so itâs empty. I wouldnât want to be in commercial real estate right now lol.
I think itâs the new normal⊠and in my industry thereâs a big worker shortage, so the balance of power has shifted, at least for a while.
Barring a complete catastrophe, I wonât be one of the unretired 
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I think some of the younger generation are not talking about one spouse downsizing their job to fit family needs (or being a stay at home parent) but instead are wanting to retire early - even if it is with a downsized budget. Some are not having children. The dog or cat (or other household pet) has taken the place of married with children.
It takes maturity and sacrifice to stay married (if you started off marrying the right person and that person also didnât go off the rails during the marriage) and to provide the right nurturing/environment to raise children successfully (also cannot prevent someone from choosing to go off the rails).
We just set up our monthly draw off our retirement funds after consulting with our FA. We have a general number of what our RMD at age 72 would be with our current nest egg.
Trying to guide single DD to âadultingâ - being better with her budget (which she is capable of doing). She wants to become a homeowner in a bit, but has to have the budget working better - she will be making more money. The jury is still out in my mind if her BF will be long term marriage commitment kind of person - DD is learning patience and not rushing the relationship; BF is still finding his way with his career (sports management); Covid has frozen what he had in place so he had to just get a job to make money - so he is still at a very ground level with his chosen career.
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Really talented/in high demand people can get many things in place that others cannot. However a lot of younger people do have the idea that they can put in the minimum and get out the maximum.
We have a son in law that saw my DH as one who just got paid a decent salary because he was an electrical engineer â he had no idea how creative and hard working DH was in his job nor how competitive keeping in his job/career was over the years - he survived very deep cuts in personnel (contract electronics manufacturing); DH âturns onâ at work with all the skills/knowledge/abilities. DH had to travel extensively with his job over time, and he disliked the travel but it is what it took to fulfill his job/career.
A customer group came with senior VP and their team (who could not handle their project, thus hiring DHâs company) over a very complicated and time sensitive manufacturing schedule of a new product that had to be completed in a tight window (data inputs which needed imbedded programming; understanding of all the choke points and how to avoid delays) within requiring very sophisticated and complex scheduling as well as the experience to know what are the most likely problem areas. DH presented the solution (thousands of things to control, thus the sophisticated programming requirements) - explaining how his program worked. At the end of the presentation, the SR VP came over to DH to shake his hand. DH was the only one in the room that could provide the successful way to do the job.
Sometimes working hard and working smart has things go against long term success in oneâs career. Being flexible enough at the work place as well as in the home environment to ride through the paradigm changes or bad situations that develop.
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My D & her husband are both 100% remote. Both work full days. Neither of them needs to be in an office with people to accomplish the work that they do, because their companies leverage technology in a way that enables people to come together online. My S has a job that requires him to be present in the workplace. Unless they put a multimillion dollar piece of equipment in his house, he will not be able to work remotely. Some jobs require the worker to be physically present, while others can be done just fine remotely. If I were still working, my job would have been a good candidate for a hybrid of remote and in-office; it definitely could not have been 100% remote. The key is to figure out what is necessary for the job.
My SILâs last employer told him that they couldnât let him work from home part time. They told him that they trusted him to do his job at home, but they had employees that they couldnât trust to do their jobs at home ⊠so it wasnât fair to allow him to work from home when they wouldnât allow others to do so. That is a crock. Itâs also why he chose to find another job.
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I agree with this. There was an airline commercial a long time back (United, I think). Boss walks into a conference room full of employees and tells them a long time customer fired them that morning. Said they didnât know the customer anymore. Calls were returned with calls or faxes (commercial was before email made the scene). Boss said that was going to change that day. They were going out to see each and every customer in person. Someone mentioned it involving like 100 different cities (which is where the airline came in). Someone came into the conference room with a stack of airline tickets and started passing them out. Someone else asked the boss where he was going and he said to go meet with the customer who fired them that morning.
Working for about 3 decades, there have been many technological changes that removed/limited opportunities for in-person connections (wasnât the intention/purpose of the technology but it was the result). Those were natural chances to develop and maintain relationships. People have had to change to develop and maintain relationships. Opportunities and challenges.
I think companies in industries where flexibility is workable who refuse just to avoid change will likely lose talent to companies that allow flexibility. Particularly true when there is more demand for talent than there is talent.
Doesnât mean thatâs true everywhere. Some jobs lend themselves more to remote work than others.
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The office space segment, not so great. Industrial leasing is doing extremely well.
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Like most workplaces, whether in-office, remote or a blend works is the partial responsibility of the supervisory/administrative staff. How are you measuring output of your staff - where ever they are? How are you keeping staff engaged with co-workers and admin - where every they are? What opportunities for staff development - in person or remote or blended are you offering? How are you creating your work culture - whether on site, at home or a blend?
Meeting a staff person for coffee or a walk should not be off the table even if the whole crew in the office is.
Just as staff at home need to keep engaged and create a new routine/schedule to make remote or blended productive, supervisors and admin may have to work a little harder too.
Itâs about the effort and keeping people accountable for the effort.
I really hate when older people knock younger people for being slackers working at home. There have been plenty - PLENTY - of days decades ago and now that I see in office productivity âslackingâ.
And if younger people want to AIM for an earlier retirement and better work/life balance - well I applaud them. Itâs their life/work game to play.
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I am fine with younger generation (or any for that matter) to make their own decisions about work/life balance, when/how to retire, etc. Up to all of us to decide what we want. Where I have a problem with some of the younger folks is that they appear to want high pay but to have 9-5, no nights/weekends job. And at least in my field, you can have one or the other but not both. Reason you are well paid (particularly at the start of career) is that you will work crazy hours at the drop of a hat. Economics change dramatically if that isnât the case.
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@abasket and @saillakeerie, I think the issue is productivity overall.
In my consulting firm, we donât have maximum vacation time for consultants (as opposed to admin staff) and a significant component of pay comes from revenue from work that the consultant delivers to his/her clients. For a couple of decades, I have been saying to them (after the first couple of years with us) that âYour job is to ensure that the clients love your work and our work overall. I donât care how much vacation you take or where you work from if you are delivering for the clients.â Which goes to @abasketâs point that people may be more productive if they manage their work/life balance thoughtfully.
However, it would be hard or next to impossible for them to make their high comp if they were working 9 to 5 per @saillakeerieâs point. Indeed, I think I gave you the example earlier of a female consultant who couldnât earn the income she wanted when she became a single mother with no family support. For reasons that are sometimes unclear, in pre-Pandemic times, we might need to leave town on a couple of days notice, which doesnât work if you need to bring in night-time child care, for example. So, folks who choose to manage the work/life balance by having a 9 to 5 work life wonât be able to work for my firm. The folks who work for us love the work and typically do very well financially. We give them lots of flexibility on how they spend the hours but not a lot of flexibility on how many hours they spend.
From a retirement standpoint, the people who pay their dues will get toward retirement more quickly if they also manage their expenses so that they are doing significant savings. Not all do.
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In terms of work/life balance and productivity, the assumption 2 years ago was I was going to the office every work day. Never something that was questioned in terms of being worth the cost (commute time, time to get ready, gas, parking, etc). Then suddenly all that changed. For months we never went to the office and the work continued to be produced. Communications/connections with people changed but they did continue. Now that being in the office is an option, I go through an analysis of is it worth it to go in. For different people its different results. Most common people to be in every day (or at least close to it) are people with small kids at home. Too many distractions. I know other people without small kids at home who say they are too easily distracted at home. Its me and the dog at home (and she pretty much sleeps the entire day only to wake up once or twice to walk to another room and lay down there and take a nap). I have more distractions in the office. At this point, if I have a crazy amount of work to get done, I am much better at home. And in the office, less than 1/2 the people are there any many of them work with their doors closed. So many of the benefits do not exist anymore. And never would I have thought I would resent my commute (less than 30 minutes so its not bad at all) but I kinda do.
Whether work from home hybrid or entirely impacts retirement (having a place to go every day is a big adjustment that I hear from a lot of retired people) remains to be seen.
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