Retirement Savings: How we Planned

by Billy
(Tenn.)

Making a decision on how to use our retirement savings has not been as difficult a decision as we had originally thought.

Not knowing how many more years we will have to enjoy our life's savings does create a challenge but, we are working very nicely on figuring out just how we want to move forward.

My wife and I both have a financial planner who we see on a quarterly basis to see how the 401(k) monies we invested with him are doing. Anyone alive the last few years is sadly aware investments in the market have not been good.

We have been a bit lucky as we have not lost anywhere near what many of our friends have complained about. We are not investing any new money in our accounts nor are we removing any monies from our accounts.

Our various accounts are earmarked to go to our children when we are gone. The house, cars and accounts will be split evenly between our son and daughter.

It may sound like we are not enjoying the monies we have put away but, nothing could be farther from the truth. We are very fortunate to have social security, Air Force, Johnson Controls and Gilman Engineering retirement income. We do not have to take anything from our investments as the income we have not only takes care of our monthly needs but, allows us to travel when we want, put additional monies in our local bank "fun account" and spoil our grand children when we choose.

We consider our self's very fortunate to be in the position we are at this point in our lives.

We worked hard for the great majority of our lives and we now have the ability to enjoy what our hard work through the years has given us. We do understand that things may go poorly in the coming years but, we feel we are in pretty good shape to deal with those financial issues that may come up.

Actually, we are giving great consideration to selling both of our vehicles and buying a new Fork Edge in the next couple of months. I've just about got the wife talked into the idea.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention both my wife and I do a little part-time work for a tax service and both of us spend some of our time daily answering surveys and doing a little bit of writing on Mechanical Turk.

As I had written earlier, we don't plan to use the monies we have invested to continue our lifestyle but, we are not afraid to if needed because of the financial position we have worked hard to get into.

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