Budget Blues

Written By:Billy Moore

All of us would like to spend our retirement years do the things we have been planning for the last forty years - enjoying life instead of working every day just to get through it. The problem is that many of us didn't actively plan for our retirement until it was too late for the traditional methods - saving, investing, 401k's, etc - to work for us, because we no longer have time on our side to compound our retirement funds. Even if we did start our planning early, often we only considered the fleeting glorious years of good health, full checking accounts, and zero balance credit cards -- we didn't do the long-term math.

We overestimated our health and underestimated our post-retirement financial needs. We also forgot that life can become challenging during those last 5 or 10 years. Very few fortunate souls quietly drift away in their sleep without having to deal with major surgeries, hospitalizations or chronic and expensive illnesses - not to mention the ever-increasing costs of medical care and prescription drugs. The reality is, the longer we live, the less chance our money will last.

Many studies show that people's nest eggs won't last long enough for them to retire early and live well. The Employee Benefit Research Institute, a non-partisan research group based in Washington, said its retirement-readiness study found that living longer, saving too little and inadequate planning for health care costs, will leave many retirees without enough money to pay basic living expenses. According to their study, a third of middle-income workers will likely run out of money after 20 years of retirement, and significantly more lower-income workers will deplete their savings after 10 years.

Baby Boomers between the ages of 46 to 62 have almost a 50% chance of not having enough money to pay basic retirement costs and uninsured medical expenses, their study concluded. Generation X workers 29 to 45, have about a 45% chance of running short.

Critics say the Baby Boomers failed to properly plan for their retirement years, and did not heed the warning signs of the predictable burst of the economic bubble. Now, they are not willing to discipline themselves to do the work necessary to realize their dreams of early retirement.

The critics, as usual, are wrong. Those of us who now find ourselves short of funds as we face our retirement years, are more than willing to do the work necessary. Just tells us what work we need to do. But don't send us to the Golden Arches, or tell us to become a department store greeter - we have come too far end up there - and don't tell us to start a lawn care business - we have had too many birthdays for that.

Offer us an opportunity to put our years of experience to productive use so that we can have the time and the money to live well and independently, spend time with our families, and do the things we have been planning for the last forty years or so...