Didn’t see that one coming…

COVID-19

Wow – I did not have Global Pandemic as part of my potential retirement surprises. I won’t make that mistake again…

The key risks are to those over 60 and with certain health conditions, but no one is immune. You and your family need to take precautions and be careful. I thought about it and suggest four areas of actions for you to take.

Action one – prevent further surprises

Personally, we are sheltering in place until at least April 10th – that’s the rule in our state. The less you’re exposed, the safer you are. You benefit the herd by not passing it on. Eventually there will be a lot more testing and a vaccine, but for now, stay low. #StayHomeStaySafeSaveLives

Action two – help where possible

Part of helping is playing your position. As part of shelter in place, you are likely playing right couch, kitchen counter, or center desk. I’m sidelined from my volunteer activity, but am playing left recliner. It’s what we need to do to help. We can get actively back in the game when we get the all-clear.

Most volunteer sites are shut down. You can help by sending money to food shelves. Their demand is up quite a bit, because a lot of people are losing jobs or having hours cut. Blood donations are needed so call your local blood bank. I bet they have procedures in place to have you, and them, avoid COVID-19.

Action three – your mental psychological game

Everyone is a little freaked out by COVID-19, some more than others. The shelter in place limits contact – it’s hard to have a good conversation from six feet away. You can be the ‘reach-out hero’ to family and friends.

We have multiple video conferences now each week, including family, friends, and some people whom we have not talked to as frequently as we should.

Based on our experience, people really need to connect – it really helps.

We have had excellent results scheduling Zoom(sm) meetings from ‘zoom.us’. It’s free. Sign up for an account and you can host meetings. Attendees don’t even need an account. There is an app for iPhone/iPad/Android devices and a simple download for PC/Macs. Zoom even has videos on how to use Zoom. The link is here: Zoom video tutorials

You can use this time as an opportunity for some mental self-care. I’m keeping a COVID-19 diary that records what we do during the day and significant events which I see in the news. It will become part of my book, “Esteemed Grandfather’s Book of Advice and Memoir”.

Online classes are not just for kids who are remote right now. FutureLearn has a COVID-19 class from The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Your library and/or your company may provide some online classes. My library even has some ‘Great Courses’ to stream. Search OCW or open courseware to find classes you might like.

You can also refer to No Surprises Retirement’s Free stuff! or Pre-retirement or retired, why not RAP? blog posts.

Action four – physical self-care

The funniest thing I saw was avoiding the COVID-20 – that is gaining weight while staying home!

Get out and walk, but keep your social distance. I walked around the neighborhood yesterday and we all avoided each other. It was kind of humorous, as it looks like we all hate each other, but people still said hello and waved.

Disclaimer – before you start exercise – start slow, check with your physician. Don’t over do it and become a casualty.

If you’ve got exercise equipment in the house, use it.

If you don’t have equipment, no problem – believe it or not, apparently the armed services (Army, Marines, etc.) do not use a lot of exercise equipment in boot camp – they have the trainees do pushups, front-leaning rests (top of pushup without the ‘push’), and situps. (Pro tip – if you’re just starting doing pushups, use your stairs – start on like the third step up so you’re at an angle. It’s an easy way to transition into ‘real’ pushups.)

Please share your COVID-19 strategies and tips in the comments!

Actions you can take include:

#StayHomeStaySafeSaveLives

If you have not seen the “Why you should read this blog…WIIFY” post, it’s here

Questions, comments, or suggestions for retirement surprise areas you want to know more about?
-Leave a comment
-Use ‘Contact’, above, to send an email.

I RAPped!

Blizzard, A. Goicolea, Phoenix Art Museum

Per the NWS, we’re getting a blizzard here this afternoon – three to eight inches of fluffy snow!

Don’t miss the retirement action calendar after ‘Rapping’.

Rapping

As part of my RAP (Retirement Activity Plan and Free stuff!), one of my goals is to remain socially connected. Connection is not usually a problem when you’re employed because you have coworkers. I’m still employed 80% of the time and my coworkers are great (now, please tell me where my laptop is…).

Fortunately, for the 20% of the time when I am retired, the gentlemen from the old neighborhood have invited me to their weekly breakfast meeting. They are interesting and engaged people and the restaurant has excellent coffee and is extremely generous with the meat on the country breakfast. They are now one key part of my social connection in retirement. Excellent people and good food – what more could one ask for?

If you’ve seen the RAP template, it has areas for creativity, social, personal, and activity.

Looking back at last year, I give myself about a C for activity. I tracked exercise and averaged almost 12 times per month. My goal is about 17 times per month (4 times per week) or better.

I was pleased with my personal work. I made it through Pimsleur French I and most of II. I watched a French subtitled movie. I read a couple of investing books. (The one I recommend is The Four Pillars of Investing by William J. Bernstein. Get the old version; it’s cheaper and has 99.9% of the content.)

I was also happy with my creativity. I continued the blog. I completed some house projects and fixed a few laptops.

Retirement Action Calendar

I borrowed a genius idea from Vanguard, Merrill, Kiplinger, and Forbes and synthesized (RAP – creativity!) a spreadsheet with key dates for pre- and post-65 retirees. Excel and Google Sheets versions are located here.

The one time events show some dates for my friends Rick and Jean (pseudonyms), but will likely be useful you, too. The one time tab includes Medicare sign-up, initial RMD, any initial pension payments, and starting Social Security. You’ll need to research and customize your own dates. As an example, Rick will sign up for Medicare on, or soon after, 6/1/2020 because his Medicate will start 9/1. If Rick is too late (after 12/1), he’ll have a Medicare penalty.

The annual events tab includes Medicare open enrollments, estimated tax payments, a budget and RIP checkup, and a medical (Obamacare) open enrollment.

Actions you can take include:

Download and personalize your Retirement Action Calendar.

Do a check of your RAP for 2018. How did you do? What will you change for 2019?

And if you have not seen the “Why you should read this blog…WIIFY” post, it’s here https://nosurprisesretirement.com/2017/07/09/first-blog-post/

Questions, comments, or suggestions for retirement surprise areas you want to know more about?
-Leave a comment
-Use ‘Contact’, above, to send an email.

Carp time! (a play on Carpe Diem)

Well golly, we had a couple of bad retirement surprises this week. One was that a father of some of the kid’s high school classmates passed away at a young age, only 66. The other, less bad, was finding out that a relative would need surgery at a much younger age that we thought.

If you’ve followed No Surprises Retirement for a while, you know that we focus on avoiding bad retirement surprises. No one can avoid every bad surprise (but you should be trying!), so remember to enjoy some carp time. Carp time would be fishing for those who enjoy it, but others can carpe diem (seize the day) and enjoy their favorite activities.

There is a balance

One could completely abandon planning and work and instead seize enjoyment until the money runs out, then live like a pauper. On the other hand, one could work like a dog, scrimp and save, plan, buy annuities, wait until FRA or 70 ½ for Social Security and then not live to enjoy it. There is a happy median of enjoying what you have while judiciously planning for the future.

Savor what you have

Those of us who are not retired usually have to go to work. Since it’s a requirement, what are you doing to savor and enjoy it? Without going all Zen on you, I can tell you that in my job, I look for the good parts to savor in several areas:
-colleagues – their banter, their admirable traits which include technical skill and adaptability, their quirks which can be irritating and endearing at the same time
-customers – their ability to collaborate, their humor, their gratitude when we deliver for them
-routine – the gift of routine which provides a sense of stability
-change – the excitement of something new, like a new project (admittedly, not all changes have been fun over the past thirty some odd years…)
-coffee – our cafeteria makes a perfect Starbucks Pike Place and I REALLY savor that with half and half daily.

If you’re already retired, you likely have established some routine that meets your needs and, hopefully, provides opportunity for savoring.

I’d like to hear from you in the comments or by email to nosurprisesretirement@gmail.com on what you do to ‘carp time’ (or carpe diem) in your usual life.

A reader wrote in!

A couple of weeks ago a reader wrote in and shared Barry Ritholz’ ‘Retirement Pyramid 2.0’. Thanks, reader, for sharing. Barry’s pyramid focuses a little differently than mine, more toward financial behaviors, but it is excellent and I recommend that you click on the link and review it. Barry and his team usually give very sound advice – I follow a number of them on the Twitter.

Funtirement!

Funtirement is my daughter’s name for when I take a Friday off for my own three-day weekend. This week, the three days of Funtirement found us waking up about the same time as a work day, enjoying lunch at a British pub style restaurant, and cleaning up some paper work at home. We also got our license plates updated, watched two episodes of Live PD, and had a pizza from the pizza place in the old neighborhood. I read the latest issue of The Economist, economically sourced from my local library, an article on Faroe Islands food in The New Yorker, also from the library, and a retirement study from Aegon. (The Faroe article used the words ‘rank’ and ‘fermented lamb tallow’ in relation to the food – not going there ~~soon~~ ever.) Finally, we enjoyed a Father’s Day ice cream sundae gathering at my daughter and son-in-law’s house. All the kids and wonderful grandchildren were there.

Next week’s Funtirement will be scientific! I’ll be headed over to the clinic for some routine maintenance. For those of you old enough to remember, it will be a replay of Fantastic Voyage…

Actions you can take include:

-Pause, reflect, and see what you can find to savor in life.

And if you have not seen the “Why you should read this blog…WIIFY” post, it’s here.

Questions, comments, or suggestions for retirement surprise areas you want to know more about?
-Leave a comment
-Use ‘Contact’, above, to send an email.

What was I thinking?

The other day I said to myself, “When I retire, I’ll spend more time on exercise and flexibility.” What was I thinking? If you want your best retirement, why would you not make the investment in your health well in advance. (I know I’m probably not telling you anything you have not heard before here…). In my case, and I am not a model for physical fitness, I am gradually upping my exercise goal from 30 minutes four times per week to 1 hour four times per week. I already do strength and cardio and I will add in flexibility. This will also go into my Retirement Activity Plan (RAP)! Reviewer’s note – Mrs. NoSurprisesRetirement notes that a) the road to hell is paved with good intentions and b) not everyone will be able to keep this schedule. She’s not wrong. I’ll let you know how I do.

One part of my goal for being in better shape is to support the more or less standard flow of retirement; go-go, slow-go, no-go. The other part is to help me keep living, working, and travelling now.

Speaking of travel, here’s a picture of me, morphed with the other 13,500 or so visitors to the Kunsthal Rotterdam that participated in the digital image exhibit a couple of years ago. (Off season, literally had the place to ourselves!) In modern art museums you can frequently become part of the art.

Rotter - modern IMG_0279-cropped

Go-Go, Slow-Go, No-Go

Michael Kitces, the financial planner, in his blog , notes, “Michael Stein, author of “The Prosperous Retirement” first popularized the concept of a three-phase retirement: the Go-Go years, the Slow-Go years, and the No-Go years. The approach was relatively straightforward: early retirement is represented by the “Go-Go” years and is characterized by an active phase, that may include a continuation of a lifestyle similar to pre-retirement, but with more time for spending and “extra” activities like travel; the “Slow-Go” years are when health and energy begin to decline a bit, resulting in some spending reductions as the budget for activities like travel or even just eating out begin to decline; and the “No-Go” years are characterized by an almost total shutdown of activity-related spending, as consumption decreases to just the core expenditures necessary to maintain the household itself.”

My takeaway from the above is:
-understand the phases
-understand what your budget can support (a trip up North v. an 83 day around the world cruise or something in the middle)
-think about not only your cash budget, but your energy requirements in each phase and see what your personal ‘energy budget’ will support.

There is some argument about the timing and applicability of the three phases, but it seems like a useful model. (Old saying, “All models are wrong, some models are useful.”). We have planned for go-go years until about 71, then the budget supports slow-go and no-go until ‘end of retirement…’

I know we watched the in-laws move through the three phases, some faster than others. Re-reading this before I posted it reminded me of the favorite saying of another friend, “Don’t postpone joy.” Genes, luck, and your version of the supreme deity will have a big say in the timing of each of our phases. We’ll likely return to look at the phases more in detail in later posts. In the meantime, think about your RAP and what you’ll do in the go-go years.

Do as I do?

In the Free Stuff post post I mentioned taking classes from providers such as FutureLearn and edX . I signed up for FutureLearn , but it’s for the past, the Cold War. I enrolled in “From World War to White Heat: the RAF in the Cold War.” taught by a professor from the U of London and a PhD from the RAF Museum.

Actions you can take include:
-Check yourself – are you doing what you can to be in your best shape for retirement?
-Take a look at the free education resources, including YouTube. An esteemed consultant once taught me, “We reserve the right to get smarter.”

And if you have not seen the “Why you should read this blog…WIIFY” post, it’s here.

Questions, comments, or suggestions for retirement surprise areas you want to know more about?
-Leave a comment
-Use ‘Contact’, above, to send an email.

Free stuff!

Who doesn’t like free? This post should help you on the Creativity-Social area of the Retirement Activity Compass. You will probably want to update your personal Retirement Activity Plan (RAP) when you’re done reading!

Remember back to the “Pre-retirement or retired, why not RAP?” post? We focused on ‘creativity’ to help keep our retired minds sharp and ‘social’ to help keep us connected to each other and the community. One way to get a toofer on that is to learn something new by taking a class – a free class.

Free #1

Mrs. NoSurprisesRetirement has completed a number of classes on various aspects of the history of the United Kingdom from her favorite free e-learning site, Futurelearn. A couple her favourites (British spelling of favourites, get it? Ha!) were ‘A History of Royal Food and Feasting’ and ‘England in the Time of King Richard III’. I looked at Futurelearn today and they have pretty much everything from anatomy to writing fiction. Classes are available both anytime (Beginning Dutch, anyone?) and scheduled. Mrs. NoSurprisesRetirement likes the scheduled courses because of the interaction available when you comment on the content or questions. Futurelearn is Mrs. NoSurprisesRetirement’s favorite e-learning site because of the diversity in class formats and the international audience. People in her Richard III class lived within a few miles of the key historical sites and provided really interesting comments.

Free #2

If you’re like us here in the frozen northland Minnesota and you are 62 or over, you can audit (sit in on the class for no grade, but it’s OK this time) classes at the U of M and MNSCU’s universities, colleges and technical colleges. If you’re someplace warmer else your state likely has something similar to the Minnnesota benefit and you can find out here at A SENIOR CITIZEN GUIDE FOR COLLEGE. This is a really good way to learn those things you always wanted to but did not have the time/money before now.

But wait, there’s more!

You can go to Harvard, MIT, or the Sorbonne with edX This is Mrs. NoSurprisesRetirement’s other favorite e-learning site and, similar to Futurelearn, edX has a wide span of classes. Introduction to German Opera from Dartmouth, The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact on Pop Culture from the Smithsonian, and Urban Design for the Public Good: Dutch Urbanism from TU Delft are just some examples.

Don’t stop there – check the library

My local public library provides two different language learning programs, one of which is from Rosetta Stone. They also provide Lynda (now from Linkedin) which has classes on just about everything, including Microsoft Office for that new computer you’ll get for Christmas and photography for that DSLR you got last year.

Sample Retirement Activity Plan template – free!

I put a RAP template out on Google Drive for you to download and modify to personalize as needed. It’s in Word format, but let me know if you need one in Google Sheets format. Copy and paste this link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13rGYZR8yl5IwXciqzp7WuUOGNWX8_auP?usp=sharing

into your browser (I primarily use Chrome) and you should be able to see them and download. Let me know at nosurprisesretirement@gmail.com if you have a problem.

Actions you can take include:

-Develop and/or update your RAP.

-Don’t forget about the social aspects of retirement – reach out to a friend and re-connect, especially now in the holiday season.

And if you have not seen the “Why you should read this blog…WIIFY” post, it’s here https://nosurprisesretirement.com/2017/07/09/first-blog-post/

Questions, comments, or suggestions for retirement surprise areas you want to know more about?
-Leave a comment
-Use ‘Contact’, above, to send an email.