Three Things I Should Have Said About Retirement Planning
A friend of mine had been a pediatrician for a few years before he had his first child. “Now that you’re a father,” I asked, “has your advice to parents changed?” “No,” he said. “But I am more empathetic when I give it. I now realize things are not quite as easy as I made them sound.”

All these factors make a huge difference, as I was always quick to point out.

By working five more years, a husband and wife who are both 55 today, earning a combined $120,000 a year with retirement savings of $75,000, would end up with 47 percent more a year to live on at age 70. That’s assuming they continue to save 10 percent of their income each year, and withdraw 4 percent of savings each year in retirement.

A huge part of that 47 percent increase comes from higher Social Security benefits. If our hypothetical couple apply for Social Security at age 65, they are in essence penalized for not waiting two years. They would each receive $3,348 less a year.

So, I wrote it was just a no-brainer to work until age 70, if you can.

While my math was right, what I now realize is just how hard it is to keep working as you age. My job doesn’t require much more than typing all day long, and I find myself getting fairly tired by day’s end. I can’t imagine I am going to have more energy a decade from now.

EXAMPLE TWO Implicit in all my retirement advice was the assumption that everything in life moves in a straight line. For example, once you begin saving, you keep saving. But as the father of four, I have come to realize life is not that orderly.

For instance, I used to believe that people edging closer to retirement usually had the ability to save more, since child-rearing expenses were no longer a factor. So, I blithely wrote, you could take all that money you had been putting toward college, for example, and invest it for retirement.

Well, our “baby” graduated five years ago, and now all that tuition money is going to … home repair. While the children were still in school, we put off every major expense we could in order to fund the very expensive colleges of their choice. In the process, our home went from shabby chic to simply shabby. A new roof, a paint job (inside and out), upgraded air-conditioning, a new driveway and the like will eventually take care of that. But all that is going to cost money that could have otherwise gone toward our retirement. I glossed over situations like this when I was writing my retirement books.

EXAMPLE THREE Remember all those things you want to do before you retire? Maybe go on a big trip or pay for a child’s wedding? In our case it was a big trip that involved a wedding.