There's a fair amount of discussion here on retirement.
No, I’m not retired. And I'm not close to retiring either.
And, frankly, if I listened to outside sources such as financial planners and advisors, as well as the Social Security Administration, and even the Wyoming State Bar, I shouldn't really think about retirement until I'm dead.
Eh?
Well consider this.
This election, the Wyoming State Bar is backed a proposal to raise the retirement age for judges to 75 years old. The life expectancy for American men right now is 77.8 years. In other words, much like the wizard scene in The Princess Bride, you can retire when you are mostly dead, and hope to enjoy your mostly dead status until you are really, really dead.
And why?
Well, we need to keep the brilliant brains at work until their light goes out for good, while keeping the young brilliant brains toiling in steerage, apparently.
And, let's not forget, it's a huge cost savings to the State
Indeed, if the State gets really lucky, because our upper ages are increasingly a wild card, judges will start dying on the bench, and we'll never have to pay out a dime of retirement money for them!
Wouldn't that be great!
We know that the State of Wyoming wants you lashed to the plow until you drop dead in the furrows, but what about everyone else?
Well, if you listen to almost any casual retirement advice, it's based on the age you can first take Social Security and you are discouraged to do that.
Depending upon your demographic, that can be age 62. "Full" Social Security starts at age 65 or 67, depending upon when you were born.
Here's the government tables on that.
How Your Social Security Benefit Is Reduced
| If you start getting benefits at age * | And you are the: Wage Earner, the Retirement Benefit you will receive is reduced to | And you are the: Spouse, the Retirement Benefit you will receive is reduced to |
|---|---|---|
| 62 | 70.0% | 32.5% |
| 62 + 1 month | 70.4 | 32.7 |
| 62 + 2 months | 70.8 | 32.9 |
| 62 + 3 months | 71.3 | 33.1 |
| 62 + 4 months | 71.7 | 33.3 |
| 62 + 5 months | 72.1 | 33.5 |
| 62 + 6 months | 72.5 | 33.8 |
| 62 + 7 months | 72.9 | 34.0 |
| 62 + 8 months | 73.3 | 34.2 |
| 62 + 9 months | 73.8 | 34.4 |
| 62 + 10 months | 74.2 | 34.6 |
| 62 + 11 months | 74.6 | 34.8 |
| 63 | 75.0 | 35.0 |
| 63 + 1 month | 75.4 | 35.2 |
| 63 + 2 months | 75.8 | 35.4 |
| 63 + 3 months | 76.3 | 35.6 |
| 63 + 4 months | 76.7 | 35.8 |
| 63 + 5 months | 77.1 | 36.0 |
| 63 + 6 months | 77.5 | 36.3 |
| 63 + 7 months | 77.9 | 36.5 |
| 63 + 8 months | 78.3 | 36.7 |
| 63 + 9 months | 78.8 | 36.9 |
| 63 + 10 months | 79.2 | 37.1 |
| 63 + 11 months | 79.6 | 37.3 |
| 64 | 80.0 | 37.5 |
| 64 + 1 month | 80.6 | 37.8 |
| 64 + 2 months | 81.1 | 38.2 |
| 64 + 3 months | 81.7 | 38.5 |
| 64 + 4 months | 82.2 | 38.9 |
| 64 + 5 months | 82.8 | 39.2 |
| 64 + 6 months | 83.3 | 39.6 |
| 64 + 7 months | 83.9 | 39.9 |
| 64 + 8 months | 84.4 | 40.3 |
| 64 + 9 months | 85.0 | 40.6 |
| 64 + 10 months | 85.6 | 41.0 |
| 64 + 11 months | 86.1 | 41.3 |
| 65 | 86.7 | 41.7 |
| 65 + 1 month | 87.2 | 42.0 |
| 65 + 2 months | 87.8 | 42.4 |
| 65 + 3 months | 88.3 | 42.7 |
| 65 + 4 months | 88.9 | 43.1 |
| 65 + 5 months | 89.4 | 43.4 |
| 65 + 6 months | 90.0 | 43.8 |
| 65 + 7 months | 90.6 | 44.1 |
| 65 + 8 months | 91.1 | 44.4 |
| 65 + 9 months | 91.7 | 44.8 |
| 65 + 10 months | 92.2 | 45.1 |
| 65 + 11 months | 92.8 | 45.5 |
| 66 | 93.3 | 45.8 |
| 66 + 1 month | 93.9 | 46.2 |
| 66 + 2 months | 94.4 | 46.5 |
| 66 + 3 months | 95.0 | 46.9 |
| 66 + 4 months | 95.6 | 47.2 |
| 66 + 5 months | 96.1 | 47.6 |
| 66 + 6 months | 96.7 | 47.9 |
| 66 + 7 months | 97.2 | 48.3 |
| 66 + 8 months | 97.8 | 48.6 |
| 66 + 9 months | 98.3 | 49.0 |
| 66 + 10 months | 98.9 | 49.3 |
| 66 + 11 months | 99.4 | 49.7 |
| 67 | 100.0 | 50.0 |
You'll almost never see any industry suggestions that you retire early. Rather, in fact, it's the opposite. You can find plenty of industry advice that not only should you work until you are 67, but you should work beyond that, just to be safe.
Whose interest does all of this serve?
Well, if you don't take a pension that's of the state type, that serves the state or local government. If you don't take Social Security, that serves the United States government. They don't pay out the balance to your survivors, or at least not purely so.
What about independent financial advisors?
This probably varies enormously from person to person, and here I'm talking about the people you employ to manage your money, including your retirement money. I really like my guy, who does great, but at the same time, I have yet to ever get a really straight answer on a simple planning questions. When could I, if I wanted to, retire? I asked the other day, and have before.
About the most I ever get out of that is "you're getting there".
That's not really an answer. Just the other day, therefore, I tried another approach. If I were to retire today, how much could I draw and not deplete the principal?
"We need to schedule you in".
That's not an answer either, really.
Now, as noted, I like my guy, but I think that financial planners fit into the same category as other economic folks. They're end product driven. It's not like a guy going out and thinking "I'll build me a car", and thereafter collecting the parts. It's more like General Motors thinking, "I wonder how many of these cars we can make?"
As that's a bad analogy, let me put in this way. To planners, to at least some degree, if you die with a big pot of untouched loot, you win. Hooray! To the person whose dead, well they plowed five more acres. yippee.
I'd note that industry advice, at least in my industry, also works this way. If you look at any articles on lawyers retiring, what you tend to find is articles about lawyers who "retired" by changing the work that they do. That's not retirement. That's like the plow mule being released from dragging a plow, so he can drag a cart. You're still dragging. For some reason, and perhaps this has to do with industry validation, it's a lot easier for article writers to write something like "Bob went from being a high stakes litigator to switching to be a high stakes litigator" than it is to saying "Bob went from being a high takes litigator to fly-fishing".
And that makes some sense to me. It's important to any industry to keep up the myth that the reason you undertook this wonder activity in the first place wasn't the money, or wasn't because you needed a job and this was the only one you could do, but because you love it. It defines you, you miserable sot, now sit back down and row.
Which indeed brings us to the few industries which really have noted short retirement periods, things like military service and the like. At a certain point, those lines of work actively say "get the crap out and get out of the way". Why?
Well, they depend on your fitness and feel you are a drag on things at that point.
All of which gets back to the point made in part one of this series. Why do you work?
Well, you have to. But if you work for a living, why should you keep on keeping on after you can actually just live.
Well, because society would prefer you do that.
Row.
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