Six reasons to start planning for retirement now

1. Your vision of the future

When you think of your retirement what do you see? Do you think you will retire early or will you be among the majority of the population who retire between the ages of 62 and 67?

Retirement planning should commence when we begin our work lives but rarely does. Depending on who you work for, some employers get you started by encouraging you to contribute to some form of financial retirement plan by matching a percentage of your contribution. Consider yourself lucky if you work for that kind of employer.

2. Your definition of retirement

The dictionary says "the act of ending your working or professional career." I always thought it was when I could stop having to work, you may think that too.

Unfortunately, many of us will not have enough retirement money to survive, much less enjoy our retirement. We will have to find part-time work just to make ends meet. This should be a motivating factor in devoting time to your retirement plan and diligently working toward building a substantial sum to help you get through the later years of your life.

3. Lifestyle you plan to have

Do you plan on traveling and seeing the wonders of the world? Will you continue to own a home, a car, a motor home, a motorcycle, or yacht? Will you become the expert fisherman you always wanted to be, or maybe the accomplished artist, or author? Will you visit your relatives and children, or play bridge, or bowl with your friends?

4. Funds to pay for your retirement

Have you saved or are you saving for your retirement? Do you know what a 401K,  Individual Retirement Account, or Roth IRA is? It's never too late to start saving, but too often we don't consider what our needs are going to be and do not have the wherewithal to afford the things we want to do in retirement. It is not uncommon to postpone our retirement savings until after our education loans are paid off. That may be a good reason, affordability, but not a good choice. The earlier you begin saving for retirement, the better off you will be.

Social Security

You may be expecting to afford your lifestyle on your social security alone. That is unrealistic, or your vision and lifestyle are quite modest. You might be able to accomplish this feat if you moved to a third world country or somewhere the living expenses are very low.

You should expect your Social Security Benefits to be between $1,000.00 or $2,000.00 per month after reaching retirement age which is between 65 and 67 depending on who is deciding. This translates to the poverty line in the United States, $12,000 for an individual or $24,000 for a couple with two children.

5. Health limitations to consider

As we grow older, our health problems often appear. Unplanned expenses like surgeries, doctor visits, and medications are things we don't think of when planning for the future. Health insurance is another expense we don't realize we will have to cover when we stop working. These days it is more common to have to contribute to health care costs even if we are still employed. Health insurance plays a critical role when we reach retirement age. Health care expenses are not projected to decline, ever.

6. life expectancy - how long we will live

This may be the reason most people put off planning for retirement. Facing the question of the age of our demise is not something anyone is comfortable doing, but even less so at 25 or 30 years of age.

Here are a couple of reasons to get over the shudder of your life expectancy. When you compute how much money you will have (not need) in retirement you can use this rule of thumb. You will have to begin withdrawals from your tax-deferred retirement savings, if you have any,  at the age 70½. The government says so and even fines you if you fail to do so.

These Required Minimum Distributions are calculated based on how much is in your retirement account and how long you think you will live to collect it. It is modestly reasonable to expect to live into your mid-80s, so the difference between your age at retirement and say 86 means that on a $41,000.00 account you will roughly take between $2,000.00 and $3,000.00 per year. On $100,000.00 it would be between $5,000.00 and $9,000.00 per year and you would add that to your social security income and pay the taxes due.*

Contingency plans

Assuming you did the right thing and started planning for retirement as soon as you were employed, made sacrifices, and saved in an Individual Retirement Account, you will still find that things will come up you did not plan for. To ease the burden of those unexpected things you will be wise to have contingency plans for several things that can and do go wrong. What if your spouse gets in an accident or becomes ill and can't work? What if one of your children suffers from an illness that requires costly medical expenses? What if you or your spouse loses their employment and you are faced with foreclosure and lose the equity in your house? Often times people do not plan for retirement thinking the equity in their home is their retirement. That may work for some but is just as risky as putting your retirement savings into the stock market, both have associated risks as well as returns.

*Note the examples given here are rough estimates and should not be taken as accurate examples. Please contact your financial advisor for details on you specific plans and needs. Another option for retirees is an annuity which protects the holder against losing value like stocks and bonds.

Bought a Dell XPS 8700 Desktop Computer

Beware! Buying a new computer is not the happy, streamlined experience it once was. I've been coaxing my old Dell XPS 420 along for 7 years, or more and finally broke down and got a new system. I shopped my heart out. Compared everything every which way. Watched YouTube videos researched reviews and took my sweet time, instead of just jumping in as soon as the urge struck me.

My old XPS 420 computer ran on the Microsoft Vista operating system it shipped with, which would indicate how long ago I bought the system from Dell. Too many hardware items no longer function, or worse, function intermittently, to indicate here.

Suffice it to say, it was time to retire the old boy.

The new system is a 4th generation Intel Core i7 CPU, running at 3.6 Ghz with 12 Gigs of memory and a 1 Terabyte hard drive. It came with a corded keyboard and mouse, and a Nvidia GTX-745 graphics card with 4 Gigs of RAM! It has 6 USB ports, an HDMI port in addition to it's normal video output, as well as built-in audio, WIFI, integrated LAN and Bluetooth capability. Here's the kicker, it came with Windows 8.1.

Problems With Dell

I ordered it on August 25th and it was supposed to arrive on September 3rd, but by the 3rd, it still hadn't shipped. It arrived on the 8th. This was probably the second indicator that I was in for a bumpy ride with Dell. The first bump was, I found a price online at Best Buy for less than the published price on the Dell website and I chatted with Dell support to ask if they matched the competitor's price. They claimed they did, but it took an hour of back and forth before they complied with a matched price. They rode me pretty hard trying to up-sell all sorts of warranties and protection add-ons but finally relented, so I placed the order. I discovered later, I could have purchased it for less if I had asked about dent and scratch availability.

Problems With Windows 10

So OK, I power the computer up and start transferring and installing to my heart's content. This went swimmingly for two days. Then I chose to take advantage of the free upgrade to Windows 10 opportunity and waited a good hour before that was completed. This was a major mistake.

For whatever reason, Windows 10 set all my files and folders to "Read-Only" and I couldn't save word documents or backup my financial files. I spent another two days adding Administrator privileges to my account and resetting the files and folders to Read/Write, three separate times, but the changes would not stick. Every time I restarted the computer, the files and folders were Read-Only. Thank you, Microsoft and Windows 10!

Having had enough of that, I decided to rollback to Windows 8.1, the OS the machine arrived with, only to find out this was not possible because the "hidden" Administrator account  (I unhid), could not be changed or removed. At this point, I tried twice to let Dell know I wanted to return the computer. They ignored both requests, one by chatting and one by email.

Over the weekend, when I knew they were not available to assist, (they don't assist much anyway), I managed to download their Recovery software to roll back to Windows 8.1. That worked, but I lost everything I had loaded and installed to that point. I didn't care because I thought I was returning it anyway. Well, a new monkey wrench into the works. My old system gave up the ghost and died. I couldn't connect my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse so I had no way of doing anything. I had second thoughts about returning the new system about that time.

After a good night's rest, I realized I could connect an older USB mouse to the old system and recover some of the files. The new corded USB keyboard and mouse would not work on the old system, of course, because it needed drivers for them. The old system is so old, Dell doesn't provide new drivers just like Microsoft doesn't want to support Vista or any other old operating system.

There's More

Now Windows 8.1 won't let me change the Account or Screen Lock photos. They worked fine the first time around, but now it's rocket science to get them changed. In my search for a solution, I found this is a common problem and complaint. Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to produce a flawless operating system all these years later. I was around for Windows 2 and MSDOS so I've seen many different attempts at the operating system game from Microsoft over the past 35 years.

So unless you are a computer guru, you might want to get your system installed and your important data transferred by someone who has more experience than I do. This was not a very pleasant experience.

Loyalty is a Two Way Street

I have noticed negative mutated motives of individuals and institutions as I have matured through the years. Once riveted by the simplicity of the "Golden Rule" whereby we treat others the way we would like to be treated, I have noticed it has melted away and practically vanished from our world of fast-paced work lives and incessant greed for more.

I now understand why our elders used to say "an idol mind is the devil's workshop." Left to our own devices, our "human nature" leads us down the path to no good. Trying to "keep up" is fruitless and so we're tempted to revert to schemes and methods that are unscrupulous.

The grandest relationships are those in which each entity supports, encourages and nurtures the other. They put their own interests second and if both parties use this model, both are very satisfied with the results. Treating each other the way we wish to be treated.

Loyalty works the same way

When we honor and respect the other party and are treated with the same dignity and respect, we both win. Loyalty requires we behave in a manner that complies with the rules upon which our relationship is based. We don't steal from our employer and they reimburse us on time and in full measure. Our employer expects us to perform our jobs to the best of our ability with due diligence and we appreciate the benefits that come along with our employment.

We remain loyal to our partners, our teammates, our colleagues and our friends and expect them to return the favor in kind. At least that's how it's supposed to work. When we find out we have been betrayed by our friends or partners, we are surprised and upset and want to understand what the reasons are for their betrayal. We experience a loss of faith in those individuals or institutions that have returned our loyalty with a betrayal of trust. Usually, we develop a callousness to the spirit of friendship, teamwork, marriage or whatever the case is in a particular broken relationship. The truth is that relationship is broken. Sometimes they can be repaired but too often they cannot.

The relationship of employee and employer has undergone a change in recent history and to its detriment has plagued our society with a dysfunctional work environment. Today it is quite common for employers to expect loyalty from its employees without returning the favor completely. The greed that has seeped in on the part of the employer requires the same diligence on the part of the employee but with few guarantees in return. You might say economics created this devaluation and that is a component of the greed factor. In general, however, it is the lack of respect for the other party that is the root cause of the breakdown in loyalty.

The result is very unfortunate in that now the employer sees no reason to nurture the relationship the way they once did and the employee has an excuse not to. So where once there was a win, win situation we now have a lose, lose. Neither party is loyal to the other and it is evident in the turnover rate and profit margins.

Who musters their best effort for an employer who lays people off if the economy takes a dip? How loyal would you be to a company who fired anyone whose employee evaluation was below a certain value? How many employers are increasing their employee's benefits? Too few to really matter. The trend is in the opposite direction.

Is it possible to trust someone or something you do not believe is loyal to you? No, loyalty is a two-way street. If you expect loyalty, your best bet is to deliver it in kind. Treat your relationships with others the way you want to be treated and remember this when you have expectations about the other person.

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