For as long as we can remember, all our Uncle Fred and his wife Ginger talked about was the blissful day when they could retire from their jobs, sell the house, and travel the country in an RV with a mural of wolves in the moonlight painted on the side. When the big day came, we threw them a big party and watched them happily drive off into the sunset.
But things don’t always end up going the way we think they will. After a year on the road, Fred was starting to worry about money and Ginger was bored out of her mind. So they drove back into town, bought another house, found new jobs, sold the RV, and threw themselves a returnment party.
“Returnment” is when retirees go back to work, whether it’s for money, for fun, or, as in Aunt Ginger’s case, just for something to do during the day. People live longer and longer these days, which means retiring at 60 can leave folks with decades of life left to be lived (and paid for). And even though many of us would love the option to retire at 60 (or earlier), the truth is that retirement isn’t always the pleasurable panacea of fun and freedom that we think it’s going to be. Sometimes the best option is...to go back to work. See: Brett Favre for details.
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Finance: What is sequence risk, and how ...2 Views
Finance Allah Shmoop What is sequence risk and how can
it derail retirement All right people You worked as a
plumber The requisite You know butt crack growth started when
you fell in love with non light Miller beer in
your early twenties And it grew as you did in
direct proportion With your savings you put as much as
you could into your four Oh one k overtime You
grew a plumbing in parts business nicely You owned a
small building you invested in stocks that paid a dividend
If you bought bonds that matured at different times you
bought a last to die life insurance policy for your
kids and you paid off your home mortgage Yeah So
at the end of your working career you have a
whole mess of assets which you will gradually sell off
the hey for Hawaii resort bills to pay from my
ties with pink umbrellas in him And you know to
pay for his and her massages for you and your
wife of forty three years So where does sequence risk
come alive in this otherwise beautiful American dream story Well
let's start with the bonds When you were fifty three
you put ten grand into a six percent corporate fund
coming do twenty years later at seventy one Now with
only two years ago until that bond matures Well you
know you have a few more interest payments due coming
to you And then that bond pays ten grand in
two years It's original principles being returned to you Luckily
you bought one of these bonds every two years in
your fifties and sixties such that you knew they would
come to our rather pay back your original principle of
ten grand every two years for a decade in change
You have all this cash cash Ola coming to you
from other places as well It comes in the form
of dividends from your stocks and the likely sale of
your building and a whole bunch of other little assets
that you'll slowly pull out of Your four Oh one
k pay taxes on it So where does sequence risk
then Come in Like what's wrong with all this Well
for you Joe the plumber you've done an excellent job
diversifying the cash liquidity needs that you'll have to fund
the rest of your life together You know with your
wife The cash comes in waves gentle waves of ten
grand here twenty grand there of stream of dividends So
you always have cash handy to pay your bills It's
really easy right Well what about Bob Bob the plumber
not the builder He made the same money you did
but has everything in growth stocks and one big fat
building He owns no bonds no other cash producing entities
That's it So he's been doing just fine selling shares
Obama's on Facebook Google Netflix And if you have a
growth stocks would performed well But things never work out
so well in the real world After President Oprah decided
to regulate Silicon Valley those stocks all got cut in
half and then worse and kept falling and falling and
falling And well now Bob has no liquidity because he
depended on selling growth stocks to fund his life Even
though the stocks are crazy cheap now he still has
to keep selling them Pay taxes on well any gains
he may still have left from when he bottom a
while ago and then use those cash proceeds to hopefully
be able to fund his life He also has that
building which is in a bear market now and it
can't really sell so he'll get only a third for
it If he has to sell it right now can
he borrow against it Kenny margin against his stocks Really
risky If you start doing that because of stocks keep
going down then your margin executes a call provisions and
basically you lose all of your stocks meaning if stocks
go down and your margin rates are more than fifty
percent the broker's likely will force you to sell even
more stocks And so you lose even more money and
it means probably a lot fewer mai tais for Bob
So sequence risk is all about retirement planning so that
retirees have oodles of cash coming in regularly safely to
fund the lives they want you know in their golden
years there Why Well because most hotels won't take flush
valves or trap vents or toilet seats as payment eh
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