Warning: this post is more of a rant and a plea for sympathy than it is thoughtful or informative!
So as you know, I retired on July 1. Or did I? I retired from two university systems and was supposed to get one pension check from each starting August 1. On August 1, I got…nothing. And it was my birthday, too!
I already knew I wouldn’t be getting one of the checks that day; my retirement application had been in limbo for a while (not my fault) and is allegedly being processed.

In an earlier article, I described my unexpected decision to use fixed-term immediate annuities (FTIA) to form a floor for my expenses over the next ten years. I thought you might find it of interest if I expand on this, relating to the balance of our income needs and how this might play out over the longer term. To be clear and upfront this strategy is “Prioritizing Income Generation Over Capital Preservation” but not in a reckless way and could change over each 10 year block.

Well, I tried to stay up until midnight to pop a cork, but it just wasn’t happening. So today I woke up as a retired person!  If you’ve read my articles from 2024 on the topic, you know this didn’t sneak up on me.
My road through the logistics of retiring from two university systems and applying for Medicare went…somewhat smoothly. I was pretty meticulous in my preparation. I attended webinars for both systems last year and put the application dates on my calendar.

Retirement sounded so great to me a few years ago. Now as I face the reality of it, I find myself having panic attacks. “No more income? I will end up a homeless bag lady on Main Street….” I find myself thinking.
All irrational thoughts since I will have a COLA pension supplemented by my savings and will receive social security in 18 months.  These revenues will come close to matching my current net pay when I start social security.

Well, mostly FI, but some RE. (FIRE standing for Financial Independence, Retire Early). Christine Benz from Morningstar recently attended a CampFI event in Spain, and wrote about her experience here.
She comments that “A lot of people have a caricatured perception of the FI community. They assume that everyone is trying to live on $10 a day in order to hang it up at age 35.” While she met some young people, she met older people as well.

Dear HD readers:  We had so much fun with the original version of this post, that I thought it might be fun to add a 3rd possible route to funding retirement at $138,000/yr.   Of course, there is no reality in this, no real personal info, it is just a scenario.  And, most important, any legal route that get you to your desired retirement income is the right one for you.
 
One of my friends is hitting 73 in August and we were discussing his need to do an RMD this year. 

I’m 58 and my wife is 56. We’ve been planning our retirement with care and intention for years—no debt, solid retirement savings, a well-diversified portfolio, and a liability-matching plan (LMP) that covers us until Medicare kicks in. We’ve talked through our priorities, run the numbers, and built our plan together. The core approach to our plan was heavily influenced by Bill Bernstein and Wade Pfau’s writing and we are content with a good funded ratio.
One thing we agreed on early: when one of us loses or leaves work,

I always thought the glowing stories of FIRE folks were a bit dodgy. Much of the time they aren’t even retired in the traditional sense. Sometimes they go too far sharing their acquired wisdom for cash.
I followed one blogger for several years. She shared her frugal ways, extreme in my view like buying her two-year olds shoes in a second hand thrift shop. She wrote a book, gained a lot of publicity, was featured in news articles and gave advice. 

Based on the feedback I have received on HD over the years mostly directed at my failure to budget or track expenses in detail using spreadsheets, my selection of some high expense investments and to not pay much attention at all to our investments, failure to use financial or retirement planning services, retaining life insurance in retirement, beginning Social Security at FRA while working, buying cars for cash, retiring at age 67(part of my income replacement strategy),

I have expressed my opinion on the need for and desirability of a steady income stream in retirement, as guaranteed as possible. Next Friday my pension will be deposited in our bank account. On the second and forth Wednesday each month our Social Security will be deposited. All that has happened each month for the last seventeen years.
I don’t worry about withdrawal strategies, withdrawal percentages, guard rails, tip ladders or any similar strategy. The IRC tells me what I must withdraw from my IRA. 

My view is that nothing will be done to fix the funding of Social Security through 2028 thus leaving people with concern for their future and to ponder rumors and misinformation. The latest report from the Trustees that should have been released by now is not available yet, but here is a summary from the last in 2024.
My opinion is to be conservative when planning your retirement in the next few years, and use 80% of your current projected Social Security benefit.

I find the “liability matching” concept as outlined in Dr. Wad Pfau’s “Funded Ratio”  helpful based on our household-specific inputs I provide.  This analysis, while based on different inputs than those of Monte Carlo simulation, has given me another way to project whether we expect to have adequate financial resources for the remainder of mine and my spouse’s life.
I have used Mike Piper’s simplified funded ratio example spreadsheet to “run the numbers” using the following inputs for each year of our expected life spans:

1) Select a conservative,

I’ve had April 1 on my calendar since last July. Today is the day I can apply for a July 1 retirement date from my university. It also happens to be the date I can apply for Medicare because of my 65th birthday on Aug. 1.
I knew how to sign up for Medicare and what to do because we just did so for my husband, who turns 65 in May. Last week, I reviewed the materials from the retirement webinars I attended at the university so that I’d be 

I spent 30 years working for a US megacorp: however, I joined the company in the UK. I was on the UK payroll for about six years, and therefore a very small part of my pension is paid by the UK company (with COLA). I was astounded, when I applied for Social Security, to find that the US government was going to reduce my benefit by the amount of my UK pension.
How did that make sense?

Last year I earned $16.68 an hour – sort of. That’s more than the minimum wage in all but the District of Columbia and for California fast food workers who earn $20 and hour. Fast food workers are mostly part-time, I on the other hand are no time.
That hourly rate is my dividends and interest converted to a equivalent full-time employment. 🤑 I suspect capital gains would boost that a bit- or maybe not this year.