It takes a bit of an ego to decide you might have enough interesting to say to justify your own blog. Just a bit of background. I have been studying retirement issues for 20 years. In fact, I've been advising others about those issues for the same period, despite the fact that I never tried it myself. While I still can't say I'm retired, I no longer have a real job and I don't set my alarm clock (Can't hear it anyway). I am discovering that retirement is not at all what I thought it was. To me, its just a process by which I am learning to live with less structure in my life.
My financial planning training taught me that the main issue for retirees is whether or not the retirement assets we accumulate will last a life time. I learned about complicated formulae where we plugged in life expectancy, assets, average returns on the various assets in our portfolio, inflation, and lo and behold, we knew how much we needed and what asset classes to invest in. My problem began when I found out that I had plenty of money as long as I die within 3 years. That isn't really true. The main trouble I've always had was projecting my life expectancy (who knows?), inflation (in 1979, I would have guessed 8%), and expected return on investment (who would've guessed money market funds would be paying 0.8% in 2004). Over the last 3 years, I've come to the conclusion that its not about assets. Its about cash flow, namely how how to acquire the cash flow to maintain my living standard from sources other than full time employment. There are actually two main areas we can study: 1. How to increase our investment income and 2. How to reduce our living expenses. While both areas can produce valuable results, the second is definitely less popular among my clientele.
I hope this blog can be of value to those who choose to access it. Please feel free to post your comments. I look forward to developing this new tool to communicate with those of similar interest.
