Retirement

WARNING: This may be my dullest blog ever (if money matters bore you as much as they bore me!)

Still reading? Okay-ay, here it goes. How many of you have a retirement plan? And by plan, I mean a literal idea of when you'd like to retire, how you will afford to retire and what you will do when retired. Joe and I both give the max to our 401K's (actually it's a 457 for me since I work for government), we both have Roth IRA's, savings and other investments that are humming along nicely. I thought that was enough. And then I met with my ICMA rep and learned that I'm taking a "long winding road to California instead of the most direct and efficient route." Huh? Well, that was his analogy, not mine.

I'm in one of those pie plans - the 2040 plan - where everything is neatly allocated and invested in a semi-risky, higher yielding account (because I have the time to take risks). However, this level of throwing money at retirement is equivalent to a B-grade effort. Perfectionist that I am, I want to make the smartest A-grade effort, and to do so, to really make my money work for me, I need to know when I want to retire and how I want to live so I can build up the exact amount of money that I'll need. Well, crap. I don't really know.

I've assumed I would work until I can get Medicare in my 60's since health insurance is so expensive (maybe we'll be a Socialist county by then and it will all be paid for and I won't have to worry? ...), but like most folks, I would love to retire sooner, and choose part-time gigs on my terms. I'll need enough money to live off of to age 100, so that will need to be considered too. Maybe I need to think outside of the box and include the expense of paying for health insurance into my retirement plan, so I can retire earlier. I don't know. All of this boggles the mind, but is worthy of thinking about. I'm witnessing older relatives, who did not plan for retirement, living near or below the poverty line. I don't want that stress and strain, so I need to think about all of this some more. What are the rest of you planning?

On a completely unrelated note, Joe's second left metatarsal is indeed fractured. He met with Dr. Zho yesterday for a one month follow-up to his post-half-marathon appointment. At that appointment, the doctor couldn't tell definitively if the metatarsal was fractured. This time an x-ray confirmed Joe has a fracture, which means he's off of running for another 6 weeks and will just be good to go in time for our August backpacking trip.