FREE NEWSLETTER
Go to main Forum page »
Suzie and I are packing a travel bag right now. Later this morning, we’re off to the Fermanagh Lakelands, a two-hour drive from our holiday home. We’re staying for three nights in a fancy hotel that’s also the wedding venue for the daughter of a very close friend. We’ll be attending the festivities there. I’m looking forward to the wedding, except, of course, for the suit I’ll have to wear.
I’m particularly interested in seeing the bride in her wedding dress because, unusually enough, I purchased it for her. Certainly not the traditional way with a wedding dress, but the bridal budget was having a cash flow crisis at the time.
I was deep in the throes of sorting out my retirement finances when this not insignificant purchase happened, and I admit, very unusually for me, I dallied slightly before making the offer. But a realization hit me: I’m retiring soon. If this wasn’t the perfect opportunity to give myself permission to spend in retirement, when would be?
I reasoned this would be a perfect test of flexing my retirement spending, putting the generosity line on the spreadsheet into real-world practice. Thinking about this, I considered the other outcome that people might have chosen in the same situation. After years of carefully saving for retirement and being careful with their budgeting, it’s not a given that this spending muscle would be ready for its task, and the offer of bridal help may never have happened.
I’ve read and seen a few real examples of people never fully embracing this phase when they enter retirement, living a life far below their means. They let their spending muscle atrophy through fear of running out of funds in their later years, or from simply being unable to shed the psychological shackles of frugality ingrained through their working years.
How can people overcome this problem? Say, for example, you start a program at the gym, you trust the instructor to professionally craft a weights program to suit your goals. Similarly, you should trust your retirement advisor and financial plan when they tell you your spending is ready to lift the heavy weight of retirement spending.
Start small if you need to, just as you would in the gym. Go for a nice meal or a short vacation to slowly become accustomed to spending, but use that muscle to the best of your ability to enjoy your retirement. Just as physical exercise becomes easier with practice, so too will your ability to spend without fear in retirement become second nature.
On a similar note, I’ve never enjoyed public speaking, but unfortunately, I need to practice this art because I have to give a short speech at the wedding we’re soon to attend. My speech will praise the bride and compliment her beautiful dress. Although I purchased it, I have no idea what it looks like. That privilege was only given to the bridal party and my wife, Suzie, who, unfortunately for me, is really good at keeping secrets. My own little secret is I’m hopeful my suit will be forgotten when packing for the big day.
I wonder to myself… Have others paused and reconsidered over impactful spending decisions because of retirement spending fears?
I would venture that we’ve all had the worry of whether we might run out of money in retirement. When I retired at 66, this was a central concern in figuring out how to invest our retirement funds. I don’t know that I will ever stop worrying, but 11 years later, we have more than we started with and have not lacked for anything. Part of this may be attributable to how our moneys were invested, but perhaps the most important factor has to be that we aggressively saved while we worked and started retirement with a nest egg that was more than likely to last. We consider ourselves lucky as not everyone can do this. So, now that we are on the short end of life, do we feel free to spend more? Probably not, but we do spend more freely on travel and entertainment than we did when we were younger.
When i approached retirement I pondered what it would mean to make a shift from accumulation to decumulation. Like cleaning out one’s lifetime of collected detritus I found this to be freeing. It has been easier than discarding all of the mementos I accumulated in business and during my years of volunteering. Those physical things represented a significant aspect of my identity and 50+ years of accomplishments. However, I decided it was better to live in the “now” and let all of that go. Divestment continues. Yesterday we visited the storage locker in Illinois and discussed approaches to emptying it.
Hi Mark. I enjoyed your telling of the wedding dress for your daughter by another mother.
A little over 46 years ago my wife and I married. Money was really tight then and my wife had sewing skills so she made her own wedding dress.
Fast forward to about nine years ago when our daughter was getting married. The dress my wife made and wore at our wedding was repurposed by disassembly and professionally recreated into a new wedding dress for my daughter. I was happy to pay the seamstress for the wonderful new dress and the memories doing so has created for us. I expect you will cherish the memory of your generous act and maybe some future day the dress you funded will be given new life again. You may even be called upon for a second speech.
Mark, in your last question you mention “impactful spending decisions”. Were you thinking about spending that impacts one’s future retirement spending plan, or the impact of the spending on someone else? Or both? I believe that thinking about any meaningful amount of spending (and that amount is individual) is worthwhile. Enjoy the wedding.
Rick, When I mentioned “impactful spending decisions,” I was indeed thinking about spending that positively affects others, rather than one’s own retirement plan.
In the USA it is important to not, “look rich”. This sentiment was well decorated in the book, “The Millionaire Next Door”. Being overly, obviously generous can be too tempting to those of unconstrained desires. I suspect that this advice would apply worldwide, don’t you think?
Tread lightly…
When I read your post, Mark, I wanted to mention that this week we are flexing our retirement spending muscles a bit and doing a staycation in our town. It means we are doing things we don’t normally do, like taking a tour of our local state house. We are also eating out once a day at restaurants that are new to us or that we don’t usually go to, like the Indian/Nepali restaurant we tried yesterday (it was fabulous). Of course, our favorite day so far was visiting some local thrift stores new to us and coming home with a men’s blazer for $3.50 (orange tag 75% off) and 2 boxes of 6 LED flood lights for the basement rec room. This great purchase of 12 lights was a grand total of $2 at the local Habitat for Humanity Re-store, which we had never visited, but it is definitely on our list now. Chris
If I make it back to Ireland again, I’m looking you up Mark and I’m bringing a list of things I’d like to have. It appears your effort at curtailing random acts of generosity is off to a shaky start.
Have you been taken in by Die with Zero?
Have you ever wondered if your generosity may be taken the wrong way at times like showing off or flaunting what you have?
Your question is valid. I purchased the dress eight months ago. Suzie and I have been close friends with the bride’s mother since before the bride was born into a single-parent household. For at least the past 20 years, the bride and her two sisters have given me Father’s Day, birthday, and Christmas cards and gifts. They went to school with my daughters and treat my grandchildren as their cousins. The bride’s younger sister is getting married in 18 months and has asked me to walk her down the aisle and give her away.
Take from that what you may, but to me, my wedding dress purchase was not flaunting. As for showing off, perhaps I was showing my near-fatherly love for her.
I missed the single parent part. Well done.
Mark,
Thank you for posting your beautiful and loving story.
May God continue to bless you and your wonderful friends.
I’m also doing the father of the bride speech at the wedding tomorrow.
I assumed a situation like that or else that you’re the Don Corleone of the Antrim coast.
How lovely to have an extended family like that. Guess you’ll get looked after in your dotage.
The daughter that’s asked me to give her away has promised to get me a mobility scooter with flashing lights. Apparently it suits my personality 😂
Surely you’re entitled to your own relaxation of the dress code for having funded the important dress? Though no doubt Suzie wouldn’t see it that way.
Nice thread and a useful companion to Jonathan’s Money thread just opened – chimes with my concept there of how do we deploy our financial potential energy in retirement. We’ve spent a long time pushing that water uphill – how do we let it flow now?
To torture my analogy you’ve let some flow to water a beautiful rose bush. I guess we don’t want it all to flow out and water a desert to no purpose or get only fleeting one day blooms.
…or how about an an analogy of, “you have to keep a continuous flow from the dam to keep the environment (your lifestyle) below thriving?”
I’m just hoping I’m not making a mistake in continuing my plan of delaying replacing our deck with a three season porch (for our future no go years) until I can complete a total Roth conversion of my wife’s traditional IRA before claiming Social Security at 70. I do believe it’s the right plan financially, as otherwise we would have to empty our brokerage account to fund the project to limit our tax liability, but….
David,
We added a 3-season, screened-in porch to our PA home a few years before we moved. It was my favorite part of the house and I wish I had done it a decade earlier. It became the place were we, and guests, would hang out. I tried to use it for at least a few minutes every day, even in snow. We love a good porch!
I suspect the reality there is that trying to tax optimise that spend won’t really matter in the big picture so it’s more a matter of what feels most comfortable or preserves best optionality for you.
Or put it another way you’d probably tap funds if you needed a replacement car tomorrow, but the porch project is longer away in terms of need.
Regarding your second paragraph: it’s actually the reverse scenario. We already completed the car portion. We bought new with cash a ‘20 Toyota Tacoma with 42 K miles, and a ‘25 Toyota Crown Signia which we bought in November of ‘25, so no debt there. Expect both to last 15-20 years and go at least 150K miles. What portion we finance with a HELOC in three years would most likely be paid off in 5 years. Don’t expect to buy another vehicle for at least another 10+ years.
There you go – you could have done the porch for cash if you hadn’t done the cars (assuming a little that you don’t live in the Carrington mansion – throwback reference there for younger readers ;))
Well…
The previous Tacoma was 18 years old, cost $13K, and when I had to replace the control mechanism for HVAC in it they had to get one from a junk yard as that was the only option. Sold to brother for $2K and he is still using as a commuter/dump run vehicle (much better fuel efficiency than his old huge Dodge Ram pickup). The Subaru was 12 years old, had electrical problems setting on and off dashboard warning signs and needed $1K in rear end work. So it was time for both, RIP.
Fill the oil, check the gas.