Flipping the Switch
This seems to be an apt title, Flipping the Switch. I am 63 and recently given a package to leave my place of employment after 30 years in the industry. It would have been nice to make it to Medicare but that need on my part played no part in the corporate decision. Leaving my full time employment after working 42 years, is an adjustment. This is an understatement that would make a Brit take notice.
This not about being bored or fear of being bored. I have no lack of interests and pursuits to focus my time and energy as well as children and grandchildren with which to spend time with my wife. In these very necessary ways, we are blessed. Marrying young posed many difficulties and in retrospect, I understand intellectually the lack of interest by so many for marrying young much less marrying at all. My experiences would provide ample fodder for those pointing to reasons to avoid such commitments. Finding work and getting good jobs, as well as changing jobs when opportunity knocked were great challenges with mouths to feed. They were anxiety driven events and now can be understood as blessings. My work career spans the time when companies abandoned pensions and offered 401K programs in lieu. I did not have an option to select one over the other. It would be nice to have a pension after so many years. It would offer a peace of mind now when I must actively flip the switch.
What switch? The switch in my head created by my work life rationale. Save, save and save. Always take advantage of the 401K, maximum withdrawal from pay, when possible. Manage my debt so as not to fall to far into the pit. Provide good education for my children and support them financially when needed. They never stop being your children. They are blessings. I see now the heartaches they gave us are minor in light of the amazingly destructive stories and difficulties people face every day on TV reality shows and in social media. We are also blessed that the problems and challenges we faced were not insurmountable and did not destroy us. Life has sent nothing we could not manage to overcome or at the very least survive.
Back to the switch. Dealing with all the costs and challenges of raising a family in the Northeast, finances are always at the top of the heap. Everything is inordinately expensive. Carrying credit card debt for years was a necessity, as was paying it off whenever possible. That is the way it goes. But the save switch was always locked in the closed position. Little or much, saving the 401K investment was a must. I never thought about opening that switch, changing its operation to the stop mode, (much less withdrawing.)
Now I crossed the line. I must now remove the +35 year saving imperative and begin the process of spending. Sounds like the natural course of events. You have worked and saved and now you need to live and spend. Sounds fine. It should work seamlessly with a few required steps. Call the financial advisor and tell them, I need to withdraw money for expenses starting next month. I will be given advice and ideas on how to do that and how to manage tax liability as well. This all seems very normal and expected.
But the switch is in my head is not in investment software. Many years ago, fear mongers told me that social security would be gone when I arrived at 66. Maybe they are right. What is clear is that SS will not make retirement for us possible without other income. That income comes from that which we saved and invested. The thought of now spending versus saving, is an adjustment that I find hard to minimize.
I am not fearfully exactly. I am confident that what we have saved and with wise and fortunate investing has given us some comfort and defense against the inevitable swings in the market to come. At least that is my optimistic view, but who knows what the future may bring. I take some confidence from Marcus Aurelius who urged, “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” And there is our faith in God who promised that we are never alone. Though he never promised a painless life only that we would not bear it alone.
If not fear or irrational pessimism, what is it? I would have to say it is conditioning. I am conditioned to provide, protect and save for the future. Not bad things, but habitual behaviors that are not easily broken. So, I must man-up and break a habit that in reality I could not sustain anyway. I wonder if there is a self-help market for breaking good habits? There must be. I definitely would be interested.