Convincing my wife that I can ER also

arch57

arch57

Recycles dryer sheets
Joined
Dec 14, 2013
Messages
110
Age 56, house paid off and we own a lake house in Maine which we absolutely love and plan to keep it and hand it down to our kids. Figured all expenses including the 2 homes and should be able to retire from an engineering career in mid 2014 and live off of my pension, savings, IRA and dual 401Ks and then bridge nicely to SS.

Here is the issue. My wife "retired" this year at 54 after 10 years as a Director at a mega-insurance company that pretty much burned her out but she did very well financially. I have always paid the bills, looked after retirement accounts and planned for this moment. She is very worried about me leaving and wants me to stick it out a couple of more years. When she was working we paid for many big expenses out of cash flow but will now need to withdraw from savings for things like travel, etc. She has always been a saver and just can't get over the fact that we have to start drawing down our balances and it makes her nervous. I try to show her spreadsheets, balances, projections but her eyes glaze over.

I have been very frustrated at work for the past couple of years and now that I have a date in mind I can't wait to get rid of all the corporate BS, which is getting worse every day. Anyone have suggestions on easing the worries of a significant other?
 
First, welcome as I see this is your first post. Another lake house owner here but we live on the lake full time.

One idea would be to have an independent, third-party financial plan done as it would reinforce your assertions that you are good to go. If you have a significant amount with Vanguard they will do a financial plan for free or minor cost.

Second, you could plug everything into Quicken Lifetime Planner, Firecalc or some similar tool and show her the results and it hopefully would also have credibility.

Worst case, you may just need to declare that you have had all you can take and are ready.

Withdrawing from savings is not the end of the world - after all - this is what you saved for! But it is admittedly a difficult psychological barrier to cross after being in accumulation phase for so long.

It is not unusual that your nestegg will decline from ER until pensions and SS kick in - my plan shows declining balances from ER (at 56 in my case) to 70 when I plan to take SS at which point pension, SS and investment results will more than cover our living expenses and balance will again begin to grow. While my plan showed decling balances, the strong investment market over the last couple years has actually resulted in growing rathenr than declining balances. My view is that I would rather live with declining balances and enjoy whatever remaining time I have than have kept working just to leave our kids a bigger wad.
 
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Good replies so far...

Looks like I am going to like this forum! I have done all the planning myself, reading, studying voraciously for the past 10 years and don't trust the for fee financial advisors. Seems like my co-workers that used advisors still have years to go.
Anyway one post suggested using one of the free consultations. I think TD Ameritrade has offered my wife that because she has her rollover IRA with them. That may be the way to go and I will check my ego as she consults with an "expert". Of course hopefully the scenarios agree! I have run Firecalc and other tools with all kinds of various inputs and they always come up 100% sure.
 
REWahoo said:
Remind her that if she really thinks you can't make it she can always go back to work. :)
Click to expand...


+1,000!

I mean, WTF? She bailed when she had enough and you cannot?
 
arch57 said:
Age 56, house paid off and we own a lake house in Maine which we absolutely love and plan to keep it and hand it down to our kids. Figured all expenses including the 2 homes and should be able to retire from an engineering career in mid 2014 and live off of my pension, savings, IRA and dual 401Ks and then bridge nicely to SS.

Here is the issue. My wife "retired" this year at 54 after 10 years as a Director at a mega-insurance company that pretty much burned her out but she did very well financially. I have always paid the bills, looked after retirement accounts and planned for this moment. She is very worried about me leaving and wants me to stick it out a couple of more years. When she was working we paid for many big expenses out of cash flow but will now need to withdraw from savings for things like travel, etc. She has always been a saver and just can't get over the fact that we have to start drawing down our balances and it makes her nervous. I try to show her spreadsheets, balances, projections but her eyes glaze over.

I have been very frustrated at work for the past couple of years and now that I have a date in mind I can't wait to get rid of all the corporate BS, which is getting worse every day. Anyone have suggestions on easing the worries of a significant other?
Click to expand...
Arch57, welcome to the forum and congratulations on making it to FIRE readiness while you're still young enough to enjoy retirement!

The challenge you are facing is not unusual. If your DW doesn't like spreadsheets, retirement calculators may not help. Pb4uski makes a good suggestion, perhaps if she hears "it's ok" from an unbiased source, such as a fee based financial planner, she will be more supportive.

Of course, I wouldn't go that route unless I was certain how it would end ... :)
 
Brewer - she didn't bail but we were both worried about the toll on her health and two weeks after she left in June I said "wow I have my wife back". My job while full of usual big company crap allows me a bit more freedom and is not nearly as bad as hers was.
Anyway she knows I am determined to leave next year just want to convince her we will be okay.
 
arch57 said:
Brewer - she didn't bail but we were both worried about the toll on her health and two weeks after she left in June I said "wow I have my wife back". My job while full of usual big company crap allows me a bit more freedom and is not nearly as bad as hers was.
Anyway she knows I am determined to leave next year just want to convince her we will be okay.
Click to expand...
So you are not looking for permission, just want to make her feel better. If you are sure of your projections, just quit and let her take her of feeling however she feels.

If she was a "director" of an insurance company it is hard to see how she would not understand very well all the math behind funding a lifestyle with assets. If you suspect that she has seen some flaws in your plan, get her to explain this to you.


Ha
 
haha said:
If she was a "director" of an insurance company it is hard to see how she would not understand very well all the math behind funding a lifestyle with assets.


Ha
Click to expand...

She could have been in marketing, HR, etc.
 
We did what you're lookin' to do... 24 years ago, and I'd guess with a helluva lot less $$$... always with the idea that we could go back if things didn't work out.

It was a different time, and we probably did it with lower expectations. Might say, on a shoe string, as we lived very frugally for the first 9 years before we took SS @ age 62...

But ... :dance: everything worked out. We still have our place at the lake, our permanent home in Illinois and our mobile home in Florida, , though this may be the last year for that. We're very happy.

As we belong to a different era, your circumstances are surely different from ours, but some parts of our experience and planning might be interesting to consider...even though a little outdated.

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/sharing-23-years-of-frugal-retirement-62251.html

Best wishes for a happy retirement.
 
She was in operations, project management or as I called her "task master". I got it! I will create a home remodeling project that I can handle, make her the PM and she will relish the chance to use her skills and get something done.

She really is a great hard working women and I know she will have her work gloves on as well.
 
I had a similar situation with my DH. My spreadsheets and projections didn't do it for him, so I devised the need for a very simple spreadsheet that I asked him to create and keep up for me.

Once he did that, got into it with his own hands and brain, it made more sense to him.
 
Hi, and welcome. :)

Maybe she is worried about her income if she should live longer than you. Does your pension have full survivor benefits? Will she have plenty of income after your demise, should you pass first?

If so, then that should help her to feel more secure.
 
Act hurt that she doesn't have confidence in you as a man.

If your relationship dynamics revolve around guilt as ours sometimes does, it might work. She might even go above and beyond to assure you of her confidence.

:LOL:
 
If I were in your spot I would offer to to take care of the house, if your wife wants to look for a lower stress job, do consulting work or start a hobby business for extra money.

We cut a lot from our budget just from both being home. Figuring our how to reduce taxes or cut annual expenses say 10K a year ($10K X 40 years = $400K in after tax money) is probably going to have as much if not more pay back for you at this point in your lives now than working an extra year or two.

We did things like reduce the grocery budget, lose the land line, switch to rechargeable batteries, weather strip, review our insurance policies, sell an old car, and replace most of the bulbs with LEDs. All those little things and many, many more really added up to save quite a bit off our annual expenses and yet they didn't change our standard of living.
 
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Arch, I'm one year your junior and in the same boat. My wife quit her job 3 years ago when we moved overseas for me to work as an expat for Megacorp. Now 3 years later my BS bucket is getting full, but she doesn't think "we" are ready to retire. I try to show her my spreadsheets, but she's not convinced what our retirement expenses will be (true, it will be very different from our life here....can't compare at all). I have a $100k retirement budget, but can't guarantee that we won't want to spend more occasionally if we do a lot of traveling. I'm not sure what to do. I'll probably just end up working for a couple more years until "we" are ready. Good luck and let us know what works for you.
 
scrinch said:
....I have a $100k retirement budget, but can't guarantee that we won't want to spend more occasionally if we do a lot of traveling. I'm not sure what to do. I'll probably just end up working for a couple more years until "we" are ready. Good luck and let us know what works for you.
Click to expand...

$100k is a pretty healthy budget IMO. We live pretty well on a lot less.

Perhaps you can ask DW to put together a retirement budget from the ground up and she'll realize that you have enough. The way I see it is when times are good you can do more or better traveling, and if times are bad you can tighten up on spending some.
 
I guess I'd begin by asking her what exactly would calm her fears? It may be a second opinion as suggested above.

My DW glazes over at spreadsheets as well and she can't remember what our net worth is, but she has so much confidence in my abilities that she's confident we can afford to retire. Of course if our finances ever go pear shaped at some point in the future, she'll be asking me WTH. Maybe I should get a second opinion to protect myself...
 
Unless you live on the east or west coast in a high cost of living area, $100K is a very generous retirement budget and quite a bit higher than most retirees enjoy, I suspect. It should cover quite a bit of travel.

I third having your wife come up with what she thinks retirement expenses might be. If she's worried about finances, she needs to at least be familiar with a proposed budget. Otherwise she's just reacting emotionally with no basis in fact.
 
This thread ought to be required reading for couples contemplating marriage. :)

Ha
 
With the pension/s what type of % will you need to take from your portfolio until SS? I retired 7+ years ago and have been drawing about $50,000 from it yearly. I have about 20% more now than when I retired :dance:. This could be the case for you also...depending on market conditions of course.
My wife was hesitant concerning my retiring (I made the decision pretty quickly - after crunching #s). But I had had enough, period and told her it would be fine and jumped - our life together is going great - truly the happiest years of my life. I just wish time would slow down!
Good luck - it will all work out.
 
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