I’ve definitely come to learn that having “all the time…” is not enough time to get things done.

I have so many things I want to do, to work on, to learn, etc.  I’d like to: become proficient with music recording, learn more foreign language words (not learn “a” language-whom I kidding), learn more technical skills, figure out a long-term Roth conversion strategy, do more sporting adventures, etc.

JD Roth once said in a presentation “If something takes two hours to do, when retired it may take two weeks.”  That is such a true “I can do whatever-anytime” statement.

This past week I had a handful of meetings/appointments.  When I say “handful,” I’m counting one or two each day.  That schedule is not something I generally prefer.  I do not want timeslot commitments on each day.  I want to have my items of interest/activity available to engage at any time on my schetchle.  I want ALL my time.  I want ALL the time for me.

Now comes the interesting part, actually doing these interests/activities…at least in an organized manner.

I know someone who has a great system where each day of the week has a theme.  One day is task completion, one is volunteering, one is family, one is community, etc.  This is an excellent strategy to align your upcoming activities into an organized week.

I just don’t think I can operate with an entire day set aside for a theme.  I have started creating my categories and put them, along with many items in both Google Keep and Google Tasks (i.e. “don’t forget” lists).

I want to be productive.  I want to be conscientious of my interests, tasks, and desires.  But I do not want to be locked down to commitments or appointments…at least if I don’t have to be.  I don’t even want to be forced to use correct grammar on that last sentence if it doesn’t feel right in my mind (right or correct?  See?).

I guess it all comes down to so many of the FI or Retirement community stating that their goal is “freedom” of time.  Yes, just stating “freedom is our goal” would have saved mine and your time not having this posting.

Enjoy all or any of your time.  Do something you love.  Go love it now!

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice. This post is not a piece of literary mastery, just a random thought I had.

TLDR: Decumulation in retirement is 10X harder than working/accumulation.

Is my thought valid?  Could it be that the accumulation period ends (preferably) when you want it to end—when you have enough to leave your career?  Decumulation is hard for so many reasons.  They can be 1) you don’t know your end-of-plan date, 2) you don’t know your spending rate year-to-year, 3) you don’t know the inflation rate and pricing structure, and 4) you don’t know the tax rate and forced government payments.

I was thinking about this topic last night—or more specifically at 4:07am lying in bed.  Wow, I thought, I have no idea—no real idea—of what lies ahead.  This doesn’t keep me up at night, but it is one of those strange things I think about.

Inflation

There’s nothing worse for a retiree to see the price of a Big Mac in the 70s.  That rate of inflation sends shivers down a retiree’s spine.

Strategy 1

One way to make this puzzle easier is to decide to leave as much of your net worth to others as possible.  With this strategy, you may spend as little as possible, to leave the most possible.

Strategy 2

But, what if you want to do the other extreme and Die With Zero?  What if you want to bounce your last check to the undertaker?  This is an impossible task to time correctly.  What’s worse, you can’t design a glide path down to nothing if you don’t know where/when the runway is located.

Other Strategies

Do you spend more upfront and then glide almost horizontally?  Do you spend very, very carefully now/early and then have a giant dying party-not fun!

What if you’re an intelligent person and choose to balance spending now and spending in the future?  How do you determine the timeline?   How do you set up chapters of life/spending in retirement?  If you fail at your plan of spending for enjoyment, where do your remaining resources go?

Taxes

Let’s say we want to optimize the amount of money we get to spend through our retirement life.  Then we surely have to have the money to spend it—that means not letting it get away.  This is where tax optimization, or at least a tax strategy is important.  By paying our required tax amount each year and figuring out how to optimize that over our remaining/planned years.

Taxes are HARD in retirement.  If you’re lucky your income levels will change over time, pensions, social security, profit-taking, etc.  Bad things can happen too: inheritances, life insurance, etc.  These “incomes” (inflows) may or may not be taxable.  They often stack onto your income stack and push your income towards higher marginal tax rates. 

Oh, but wait, it gets more complicated.  These additional income types/categories may impact other charges (medicare, investment taxes) or subsidies (ACA, etc—I’m sure there will be more in the future i.e. renewable. etc).

Inflows

What about safety-first type inflows—a SPIA?  It’s very nice to have an automated deposit each month.  Is it worth the comfort of handing over a chunk of your money to an insurance company?  Many studies seem to show you spend more comfortably when you have guaranteed payments coming in.

Enough already?

I don’t want to go into a lot of detail about what is going on in my head as I type this, but you get the idea—Money in retirement is much harder than when working/saving…and that was hard in itself.

I am not attempting to present answers today.  I’m just sharing another random thought in my LifeInFIRE.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice. This post is not a piece of literary mastery, just a random thought I had.

BAM!  Normal life startled me this morning.

6:30a this morning came around too early.  It wasn’t that it was earlier—or much earlier—than I often wake up, but rather the fact that it was my alarm buzzing away that upset me.

I was jolted by the sound of my distant path.  I was required to be in the shower immediately so I could prepare for the commute into the city center.  This is not at all my normal “commute.”

Upon arriving at the parking structure at 7:40a and waiting for the shuttle bus, I couldn’t help but think how I was just a cog in the system.

Jury Duty

At 8:15a I entered the courthouse, went to the jury duty assembly room and checked in.  I was told to sit and wait.  It was obvious at that point that I no longer had any control over my time.

I was called into the first LARGE group at 9am and placed into a congregation room to wait for an hour.  We then did an online questionnaire.  We waited another hour to weed out 20 of the 80 jurors before the remaining 60+ went up to the courtroom at 11am.

At this point—for some reason—we were standing for the judge as if they were some sort of messiah.  I never really understood that.  We went through 3 rounds of questions—judge, plaintiff, then defendant.  We had lunch in between.  The whole painful process of listening to people 1) crafting any possible excuse, 2) those crying about applicable or random life stories, and 3) the different people asking to use the restroom…that was another shocker.  We were forced to ask permission for anything.

At 4:15p the jurors with the lowest numbers were selected first for the jury.  I was #70 something so I figured I was in the clear and just hung out, locked in a courtroom, in a courthouse, in the heart of downtown, 20 miles and two rush-hours away from home.

Retirement, Humor

Many of the jury panel had gray hair.  Nearly everyone stated they were working.  Only 1 in 20 had a sense of humor—maybe because it was a long 9-day civil trial. 

After being in full control—well 99% control—of my time, no matter how interesting the trial and the process would be, the pain of giving up 9 days (100ish hours) of my life felt torturous.  The fact that my exact location, even my chair was fixed and locked and I couldn’t move seemed like an unbearable requirement.

As I sat through the jury questioning—and considered my lack of freedom—I couldn’t help but think about criminal trials and the convicted losing their civil rights and being sentenced to jail.

One main core principle of FIRE—and retirement in general—is “freedom.”  Freedom of time, location, and activities is one of the most amazing values I treasure in my life.

Did I lose my freedom for a day?  Did I balance my freedom on this one day for the ability to live in a society that allowed me to gain my freedom?  I’m thankful in all aspects.

Bias for Action

I decided at the lunch break—which was awesome because I was able to walk around downtown where I hadn’t been since my last jury duty 5-6 years ago.  A nice 75 minutes.—that if I wasn’t locked in a courtroom for 9 days, that I would do a bunch of things above and beyond my normal daily tasks/activities.  To be specific, I said two non-normal things time 9 days—equaling 18 items, many from my wife’s direction/list.

Find the Positive.

I tried to find the positive in supporting our “system.”  I tried to find the positive if I wasn’t sat on the jury.  I tried to find the positive in my normal freedom that I’m lucky to have every day and strive for gratitude.

Respect

I support our judicial system and I’m so thankful for it.  I did think the simplified facts shared on this civil case seemed a little ambulance-chaser-ish, but I didn’t hear all the testimony, so I don’t know. 

I will say that every time I’ve been called in for jury duty, the court employees are absolutely wonderful to the jurors.  They do a great job at being thankful for us for supporting the US judicial system.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice. This post is not a piece of literary mastery, just a random thought I had.

Your environment matters.  My wife keeps using the word aesthetics at me.  It feels like an aggressive term to me requiring changes and costs, since I prefer the efficiency of space.

How do you think about your home environment?

I like to have my stuff organized (and not moved around) so I can find the items I need later.  I don’t get any anxiety about my stuff.  I know the stuff I have/keep is there for a reason.  This may come down to the fact that I spend so much time thinking about a purchase before I make it.  Rarely do I just buy something significant instantaneously.  I’ve always lived a conscientious, deferred gratification structure.

My wife first taught me to use shelving.  Then it was storage bins, then it was stuff behind cabinet doors.  Apparently, I took that too far and have these great 72” wire shelves with perfectly sized storage bins holding much of my life/interests.  I’m perfectly happy…but not so much with my better half.

My wife told me about an article where women tend to fix their “nest” at home.  That didn’t make sense to me unless I related it to a man’s cave.  The comparison between a cave and a nest is quite shocking.  I would definitely prefer a walled/protected cave over some twigs in a tree.

While I was traveling in Bali, I found it strange how the beds had canopies/curtains.  I figured it made sense for bugs, but it still seemed strange sleeping in safari-like bedding in a hotel.

This fancy bedding made me think of Kathy’s “nesting” perspective.  Then I thought about how I was on this trip and living my FI life.  I combined my FI lifestyle and my sleeping environment into FI-Nest.

When thinking about my FI-Nest each day, I realized that I was truly living my amazing FI life.  A wonderfully privileged life that took years and decades to prepare for. 

This FINest life was not a yearly vacation charged to a credit card (though these Hyatt rooms were paid for with credit card points) with balances left unpaid while accruing interest, but rather long set aside funds that grew to allow this FINest travel.

I urge you to set up and realize your FI-Nest life.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice. This post is not a piece of literary mastery, just a random thought I had.

What do you wanna do with your life? 

In a world long, long ago there was a hit music video on a channel that played music videos instead of stupid reality shows.  An abusive father was yelling the question at his son.  A normal kid from the 80s, much like me.

Now 40 years later the same question keeps popping up—what do I want to do with my life? 

Quality Time Remaining

My wife asked me if I heard of QTR?  Her sister mentioned it and for some reason, they thought I would know about it.  Why they thought of me and my planning, long-term thinking, old-man personality…I can’t imagine. 

Many of my peers are talking about the books Outlive and Die With Zero.  All around me, there is a lot of talk about healthspan vs lifespan.  There’s a lot of talk about investing for memory dividends and taking full advantage of the different phases of life.

These two books overlap in that being healthy, fit, and active are extremely valuable.  They are the main currency of invoking quality time, specifically the ability to get the most of our quality time remaining.

As I get older I realize the deepest value of health.  I see both my and Kathy’s mom are aging and how their quality of life is decreasing.  Being observant is a wonderful power.  It allows you to be aware of the world around you.  In the best of cases, it should drive your decisions for the better.  It can even motivate you to take action for the better.

I think about phases of life and abilities more and more each year.  I’m lucky; I don’t have to think “When I retire, I can…”  I currently have all the time in my week to do what I want.  I have an amazing 168 hours to use.  I do need to be better at assigning and using that time for things that are best suited for this phase of my healthspan.

I have been working toward positioning some activities into the younger-ish and older phases of our lives.

Examples for younger:

I have been working for action on things that are better/easier/more important now when we’re younger-ish.  Travel to eastern Europe, Hockey, Triathlon, Helping time.

Examples for older:

I’ve considered moving the easier-ish/less important items to later phases like traveling to western Europe, cruises, Reading in the afternoons, Helping time, and even bashing on my guitar and Marshall stack.

To Do / Don’t Forget List

In my attempt to plan and organize my future “things,” I maintain my Don’t Forget List.  It allows me to not stress about trying to remember what I want/need to do in the future. 

I can group my items into Important, Less Important, Later, House, Family, Adventures, Shopping, Working, etc.

When thinking about QTR, is this something I’ve always done but am a little more deliberate?  Is this something that I need to kick into high gear for our GoGo/MoJo phase of life?  Is this just another part of life that I need to keep track of, and if so, what if I miss the opportunity/phases that something allows and it’s gone forever?

Either I’m a thinker, or I’m running out of time.

Do what’s true to you.  Do what’s in your heart.  Do it NOW.  You never know what tomorrow may bring.

*** Nothing in this article is to be construed as financial advice.  I am not a financial planner, nor do I pretend to be.  You should always consult your own professional when seeking advice. This post is not a piece of literary mastery, just a random thought I had.