Sheri’s Summer Retirement Summary Part 10: Retirement Planning Staying Power

Whether you’ve been working hard, hardly working, or enjoying a balance of both this summer, I’ll bet the past few months have flown by fast. They have for me, anyway, as I’ve enjoyed some (too brief!) time with my college boys, helped my husband Dave ramp up his new business, co-managed SAGEbroadview, and – of course – kept reading every day. So here it is, almost September, and already time to...

Sheri’s Summer Retirement Summary Part 9: Another Early Retirement Illustration

As I covered in my last post, not every early retirement fits the stereotypical mold of becoming a multimillionaire by age 30, cashing in one’s chips and heading off to paradise. Sometimes, early retirement finds you instead of the other way around. Such was the case for Jack Pasanen,  when he retired to help care for an ailing family member. Healthcare concerns struck even closer to home for our clients Tom and...

Sheri’s Summer Retirement Summary Part 8: Experiencing Early Retirement

At least in its idealized version, early retirement may be among the most popular retirement models around. Who hasn’t fantasized about being the next lucky rat to exit the race? Maybe head to a Panamanian paradise, like one intrepid couple did in this US News and World Report piece. That said, real-life early retirement isn’t for everyone. As we covered in our segment on the road less retired, some people love...

Sheri’s Summer Retirement Summary Part 7: Sliding Into Semi-Retirement

  What’s the difference between a re-career versus mini-retirement versus semi-retirement? Admittedly, there’s a lot of overlap, and which path you’re on isn’t always clear except in hindsight. Re-careering, as the name implies, means retiring from one career to take up another, as Greselda Powell did in this post. Mini-retirement is more about taking a break from working, and returning to your career approximately where you left off – like Pat O’Konis...

Sheri’s Summer Retirement Summary Part 6: Mini-Retirement – Calling It Quits … for a While

In my last post, I shared Greselda Powell’s transition from high-tech engineer to artisan cheese expert. Greselda’s re-career seems to be working well for her, but it’s not for everyone. For some, a mini-retirement might be preferred, in which you take a break, but resume the same or similar career when you return from your “sabbatical.” In his excellent overview of retirement, Michael Kitces describes mini-retirement like this: “In this approach to ‘retirement’,...

Sheri’s Summer Retirement Summary Part 5: Hitting the Re-Set with a Re-Career

As we’ve described in our past couple of Retirement Summary posts, remaining fully employed well into your twilight years may appeal to you – or not. Either way, life doesn’t always go as planned. You may experience a life-altering event. Or you may just change your mind. When that happens, whether it’s driven by a financial or personal agenda – or both – re-careering may be preferred over retiring. This is...

Sheri’s Summer Retirement Summary Part 4: David Booth and the Road Less Retired

The Road Less Retired Legend has it that news anchor Barbara Walters once asked author Isaac Asimov what he would do if a doctor told him he had only six months to live. “Type faster,” he replied. Are you one of the fortunate few whose career completes you, as Asimov’s did? As I introduced in last week’s post, full retirement isn’t for everyone. To spin off of Robert Frost’s classic poem, I...

Sheri’s Summer Retirement Summary Part 3: Retire, Schmetire

Even without seeing the official stats, you’ve probably noticed an increasing number of so-called senior citizens who are no longer behaving like proper old people. In an homage to the new senior lifestyle, I’d like to focus on the “not-retirement” model I mentioned in my last post: Working (or playing) straight through Some people avoid retirement entirely. If you find meaning in your work – maybe you don’t even consider it “work”...