work life balance

The Abundance Conundrum

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People reaching retirement age these days have witnessed a huge evolution in how people live. Growing up, many never saw the inside of a restaurant except maybe once a year. Family road trips usually included a picnic basket with cheese or balony sandwiches. Larger families lived in smaller houses back then, so now each person has about double the living space.

Author Eric Barker notes that we probably have far more now than in the past, but we seem to be no happier. We instinctively believe that more will fix it: more money, more food, more things. The problem is the quest for what makes us feel good doesn’t have a finish line. “It’s a pie-eating contest and first prize is more pie.”

The pressure to fit in, to keep up with the neighbors is now compounded by social media, which generally shows the best version of everyone we know, and none of the problems. There have been many more pictures of expensive cars than of the tow trucks sometimes sent to repossess them. You see vacation photos from exotic places, but not the credit card bills which detail how they were financed.

Aggravating the situation, technology has given many the option of working all the time. Flexibility is nice, but in the olden days, you could leave your work at work and be engaged with your family when you were home. Now our work is in our pocket, so we have to make a decision: answer emails, or play with the kids or talk to neighbors or enjoy some other leisure.

Going with the flow is perhaps more costly than ever to our wealth and sense of wellbeing. Thinking about the fundamentals of our own happiness, pursuing our fondest ambitions in a mindful way, being thoughtful about how we spend our time: these might be the answer to the battle between “more” and “enough.”

Financial planning is at the root of a balanced approach to life and living. It begins with the attempt to define life on your terms, to learn your internal motivations, to clarify your understanding of success.

Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

New Lifestyles, New Plans

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It seems that life used to be plainly segmented. First we got educated, then we worked, then we retired.

Financial plans followed suit: first we accumulated during our working years, then we spent in retirement – hopefully, not running out of money before we died.

Increasingly in the 21st century, life is sliced and diced. Periods of education may happen at any age. People remake themselves to meet the needs of the marketplace, or their own preferences. Stretches of leisure may be mixed in with periodic bouts of consulting or other work in the golden years.

Some people choose to retire to volunteering or a new business venture or employment in a more enjoyable field, or seasonally, or part-time. There are a lot of ways to live life these days.

In addition to changing lifestyle patterns, people are living longer than ever before.

In this new environment, financial plans and planning need to be more flexible, and serve different purposes. The key theme: flexibility.

1. Investment products that tie your money up for years are less appropriate than before, as changing circumstances could mean an unforeseen need for liquidity.

2. The accumulation of funds in traditional retirement accounts still makes sense. Adequate funds make work optional in later years, or enable volunteer work or even a business start-up.

3. It may pay to pay more attention to tax brackets, as shifting circumstances could change tax status from year to year. Techniques to take advantage of low-bracket years may reduce lifetime total income taxes.

The key, of course, is not what the trends are or what many people are doing, but what YOU want to do. Clients, if you would like to talk about this or anything else, please email us or call.

Content in this material is for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.

A Lesson From An Old Friend

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Surveys indicate that many Americans dislike their jobs. If you are among them, I hope you are not irritated by the enthusiasm I have for my work.

“Job” is the key distinction, however. One individual who had a formative influence on my life did not have a job—he had an enterprise. Dean Sack founded the York State Bank in the World War II years, among many other endeavors, and ran it to the age of 92. If you have ever wondered how I arrived at the goal of working to age 92, this is it. I met Dean when he was 76, eleven years after he retired—a retirement that only lasted six weeks!

Ironically, much of our work is devoted to helping people fund and find fulfilling retirement lifestyles. Most do not have control over their working conditions to the degree that I enjoy. So retirement is a worthwhile and laudable goal for most, if not for me.

When the Depression hit in 1929, Dean was an adult, at work. He fascinated me, a student of history—and face it, not many want to hear an old man’s stories. So we grew close. Among the qualities that Dean showed: a hunger for new ideas, and to learn; consistency and honesty and integrity, no pretense and no bull; a tight focus on the things he could control. He and others of his generation did much to build their communities and the world.

I was fortunate to observe so much wisdom at an early stage in my career. Thirty years ago, nobody talked about ‘work-life balance,’ but Dean was the model for an integrated life: being the same person at work and play, with friends and customers, day and night.

We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, as they say. Vast wisdom resides in those generations. The lessons we may learn cost nothing, but can be valuable beyond price. Here’s to our mentors and teachers and wise elders!

The Retirement Revolution

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Retirement, a relatively modern concept, is changing. Demographics, economics, and social change are all working to rearrange our notions about later years. Some commentators think that the term “retirement” itself needs to be retired. We’ll look at the trends and how they may affect you or people you know.

The changes in life expectancy have been astonishing. Since 1970, the average person is retired for seven more years according to the New York Times. Ken Dychtwald, president of Age Wave, notes the extraordinary growth in the average life span this way: “On the first day of the 20th century, the average life expectation was 47. On the last day, it was 78.”

Bottom line, the increase in our life expectancy has been partly tacked onto our retirement years. But when actuaries predict that there will only be two workers per each Social Security retiree, one has to wonder whether a society can run with one out of three adults living in retirement.

With the high unemployment rates of the financial crisis in vivid memory, it is hard to think about a labor shortage—but that is what the demographics point to. Two good things may come out of that: higher increases in wages, and more flexibility for workers seeking reduced hours, phase-down jobs, or other retirement-friendly alternatives.

Potential social changes are harder to predict. Anecdotally, more people below age 60 have indicated a preference to “always be doing something” in the way of work. Usually the object is a less stressful role, or part-time, or in a field of interest. At the same time, more people are thinking about checking things off their ‘bucket list’ when younger, while their health is good. One client told us, “It makes no sense to scrimp and save until you are too old and sick to do anything.”

One might say that more leisure is finding its way into our working years even while more work is getting into our leisure years.

Now more than ever, learning is an important part of keeping up with changes in the world and the skills required to earn a living. So just as work and leisure are expanding out of traditional boundaries, education is no longer confined to our early years.

We’ve written about the ideal way to retire before. The key things are to know what you want to do, and make plans to get there. Please call or email us if we may be of service in this regard.

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

The Ant and the Grasshopper, Revised

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Most of us are familiar with Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper: the hard working ants slave away all summer building nests and storing food while the lazy grasshopper idly eats and makes merry. Each one calls the other foolish: the grasshopper tells the ants they should relax and enjoy life, while the ants admonish the grasshopper to work harder and prepare for winter. In the end the ants have the last laugh when winter comes and they have food and shelter while the grasshopper has none.

It should be noted that Aesop was not a bug expert. If he was, he might have realized that grasshoppers only live a few months and do not survive long enough to even see winter. Knowing this, the grasshopper was actually quite wise to ignore the ants’ advice. He lived his life to the fullest, with no time wasted on unnecessary labors.

The true moral of the story is this: it is equally foolish to hoard wealth we’ll never use as it is to squander wealth that we’ll need in the future.

None of us knows the date that is going on our death certificate. We should strive to emulate both the ant and the grasshopper, because we never know which one we’ll wind up as. Like the ant, we should work hard and save wisely to prepare for the future. But like the grasshopper we should also enjoy what we have, while we have it. We need to have a little fun every day, because we never know how many days we have left.