RETIREMENT OR "WILL I EVER BE ABLE TO"

I'll be the first to admit, I may be at the head of the Baby Boomer line chronologically but I am certainly NOT at the front of the "retirement race." In fact, if anything, I'm leading the "O my gawd, will I ever be able to retire -a-thon."

So this discussion is aimed primarily at those of you for whom the idea of retiring is a total mystery: me, for example. I've been working for what seems like hundreds of years but somehow without the conscious realization that I really should actively be preparing for a time when I would not (have to) be working that is, spending the majority of my time bringing money in. Oh, I understood that years were passing and that I could not depend on the government or even an employer to be more interested in making my "golden years" comfortable than I would be. I understood it but somehow daily life got in the way of doing much about it.

Full disclaimer here: I have had husbands along the way that some might assume I would have expected to carry part of the retirement responsibility. I suppose that is a reasonable assumption. But, not mine I guess. For whatever curious reason, I always felt I should be ready to carry the load. The concept of a partner just happening to "walk in front of a bus" (i.e. disappear for any variety of reasons death being the most benign if one didn't want to think of being left by choice) required me to be willing to take responsibility for the entirety of what I was doing should it become necessary. (This does seem to control one's choices somewhat. I wonder if it would be classified as a pessimistic or a realistic view? In my particular case it was either art imitating life or the other way around because it did become real eventually.)

At any rate, I have arrived here in my sixties with some resources, a long if not particularly distinguished professional career and many questions about the future which seems to be much closer than it was a very short time ago.

"How much money will I really need to live when I am not commuting to a job every day?"

"How long can I realistically assume that I will need to have money that is, where am I on the insurance salesman's actuary table?" (Or "How long will I live?" if you need to be really specific which we of the Baby Boom generation are not particularly good at doing.)

"How do I figure in inflation and unexpected expenses that I might have to fund along the way?"

"How do I decide when to take the step into "retirement" and what exactly will that mean?"

"Do I still have time to organize my life in such a way that I will be able to afford some level of retirement?"

"What other than financial issues should I be considering as I try to form my Boomer-Retirement-At-Last' plan?"

So, as you can see, I have many topics to investigate and study. In truth, this is only the beginning. Designing questionnaires and marketing research investigations for over thirty years has taught me to understand that answers to your initial questions usually create more questions and more interesting areas of discovery. Hopefully we will benefit from a Bette Davis ("It's going to be a bumpy ride") attitude more than the Scarlett ("I'll think about it tomorrow when I can stand it") O'Hara approach. So stay tuned.

Learn more about this author, Sue Black.
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