Retirement Question

azgreg · 2026-02-24T20:07:17+00:00

Any of you guys use a financial advisor to help manage your retirement funds?

eltigrecda

I've been retired for about 3 years with a good pension from work, and as a Canadian I also have a decent government pension (CPP), which I paid into the entire 50 years of my working life. With my mortgage paid and both pensions indexed (and of course, free health care), that is more than enough to live on. When my wife passed away, I took 50% of her pension as a lump sum, for which I use a financial advisor (Edward Jones) to manage. I was an accountant so I could probably figure out a decent investment strategy myself, but that sounds like work and I'm done with that! I take monthly withdrawals from it and use that as my travel money. I've taken 2 golf trips to Scotland/Ireland and 2 cruises so far. The lump sum should last me 20-25 years.

Typhoon

Bravopilot My club is the last place to go for advice unless it’s about Vodka

Bravopilot

Typhoon You used to have some nice posts on shine there. Like a nice Vodka😎

Par4QC

SMT I'm understanding the retirement part.
'Investing/invested' has me stumped. Time? Energy? WTH else is there?🤔

azgreg

SMT What is this thing called Retirement of which you speak???

It's when you stop working for money and let your money work for you.

Typhoon

azgreg I can’t see actually retiring since I get paid a decent amount to barely work. Our advisor asked why I still work. My wife was sitting next to me so I couldn’t tell the truth.

Bravopilot

Typhoon Hardest part for me is I always worked, hard to stop. Additionally, my adult son lives with me and will never work, each day is more money I set aside for him to live on. I can easily live on my Air Force retirement and not have to spend any investments or saved money. The mandatory pulls will still allow fun time at 73.

SVonhof

That's a good one to have a white lie on.

sdandrea1

Bravopilot The mandatory pulls will still allow fun time at 73.

I'm there........

Dewsweeper

With the accelerated inflation and often used tactic to manipulate the economy by the government, I'd say save some more after you think you had enough for the rest of your time.
Basic macro economics, when the base workers get a boost in their supposed base wage, it changes everyone's load, and speed up the process of whichever tunnel we're in. The base is supposed to bare the most weight and motivate the base workers to move out of there. But no, they want to stay at where they are but want to get paid more. It is not a matter of if their employers willingness to increase the payroll, it accelerated the inflation. So the ignorant is happier to see more digits on their paycheck not realizing the increased numbers will not make up for the lost of their purchasing power. Water flows to the valley, but if you remove the path open the flood gate, then everything accelerating much fasted.
News report on major carriers that Walmart has been experiencing a growth in the buyer's segment which they never had in the past. Those who make over 6 figuers are flooding the discount stores like never before, so is the growing crowd at Costco and the liked warehouses.
To think a reputable white collar with higher education degree made $20K annually just half a centuries ago and that alone could support a family. Today, you'll need 10x or 18x of that to start comparing to the 20K 50 years ago. Inflation rate does not cover everything that is essential.

SVonhof

Dewsweeper
Good post.

CA and SF more specifically wants to raise minimum wage to something like $30 per hour. How can you get a burger, fries and soda for $5 with the pay rate that high? You cannot. Unless you replace the workers with robots/computers.
At that point, you have eliminated many of the workers that were making more anyway, so the overall cost can be relatively similar.

I agree that you cannot live in SF when you are making $15 per hour, but as you said, that's not what it's meant to be, it is meant to be a "starter" job, not a career job where you are supporting a family with the wages.

So, suddenly a person going to McDonald's is paying $15 or more for said burger, fries and a soda.

darpar

SVonhof Unless you replace the workers with robots/computers

That's right around the corner....sooner than you think,it'll be an Ai world b4 you know it!

Dewsweeper

SVonhof "Unless you replace the workers with robots/computers."

Exactly, these base line workers will be digging their own graves.
They have no idea of why others are getting more pay than they do. Granted, there are special situation where people fell into opportunity warp and get more digits, but not very often. The days of working from the garage to a multi-billion empire is over. Just as the dawn of the industrial era, those times were over.
Not sure what is the future. The buzz everyone been taunting recently is "artificial intelligence"; it really depends on how one defines the term. If just the simple automation and data accumulation, they had been around longer than most people realized.
Like it or not, more automation will come. People want socialist system, and they may very well be getting it. No one starves but no one will get rewarded by working harder and smarter. everyone will have a bed to return to, each night but no one will get more even if working smarter and harder. Looking at the past half a century, it really did not work out as the pretty picture we painted.
Life on earth is a constant move to get to the top, sometimes it is not to enjoy being on the top but the journey getting there.
I asked a few who's never going to worry for their lives, their children, grand children.......Why in the name wouldn't they stop working and enjoy the fine things in life? Their simple answer was, they enjoy making money and saving money.
More than 3 decades ago there was a joke circulating in the small company named Microsoft. One of the favorite pastime of co-founder Gates was going through and clipping the coupons from the Sunday Newspaper, according to his house keeper.
For those who do not understand being on the top will have to weather the wind and the storm are best be left ignorant,

« Previous Page