Retirement Attitudes

Last night during the NIT game between UMass and the Drexel Dragons there was a John Hancock commercial that showed the same scenario playing out simultaneously in the bedroom of many boomer aged couples (clean it up, this is a G-rated post) where the husband is freaked out about retirement and the wife reassured him that the sky is not falling. It was actually a pretty powerful commercial.

On a related note I read a retirement article on Yahoo a few days ago that I meant to comment on. The interesting thing was not the article (I don't even remember what it was about) but the comments. Several took the tone that the government is trying to train (may not be the best word) us into believing that we need to work until we are much older before we should expect getting social security.

Essentially we are being manipulated into believing that things are worse than they actually are. There was also a comment or two that the financial services industry is in on it. I can say I am not in on it, if anything I've been manipulated into thinking that it will not go well for a lot of people who are relying on the government for a meaningful retirement safety net.

I cringe anytime I read an article that references one of those awful statistics about how many people over the age of 50 have less than $25,000 accumulated. Regardless of the right and wrong of it, I believe all of these people will become the government's problem and the people with more than $25,000 (obviously I am exaggerating) will have to sort it out for themselves.

In thinking about the first paragraph of the sky falling on retirements and the idea that "they" are trying to manipulate us has a lot of negativity. Letting this sort of negativity dominate the thought process and planning process is a killer figuratively and literally. Although this veers of the conversation that most investment articles have I believe it is crucial to long term portfolio success, and just about every other aspect of life, to have a positive outlook on things.

The way I usually phrase it in the retirement planning context is to view planning as a challenge to be solved and then set about solving it in a way that suits you.

On a related note Prescott is getting a semi-pro baseball team (not the same thing as minor league baseball but still pretty neat). Finding some sort of seasonal work for a sports team ties in with a lot of people's interests. The expectation should not be that this sort of thing will pay all the bills for ten years but that it will relieve some portion of the income burden placed on the portfolio. Prescott has several sports teams and someone could be lucky enough (from their viewpoint) to work for all of them.

In my opinion it is much easier to think creatively in these terms with a generally positive outlook. Preachy maybe, but I believe in this wholeheartedly.