Posted by Robert on July 11, 2011
This is a guest post by Robert, who lives in Calgary and works as a financial adviser retired at 34. He is married, has three kids. Robert and his wife then plan to return to school and become teachers, eventually living and working overseas.
I never really planned to retire at age 34. When I first thought about retiring young from my career, with the idea of moving my family overseas, I was thinking of age 42. As a financial advisor, owning my practice, that should have been easily possible, especially given that my family doesn’t spend a lot from month to month. I was fortunate to profit from the real estate market in Calgary, increasing around 80% in the five years after I bought a house. But my business colleague, when he heard of my plans to leave, offered to buy my business much earlier. That really moved up my schedule, possibly a little more than was comfortable. I have enough investment income to cover my expenses, but I really would have liked to spend a year doing a “dry run”, watching whether our spending will fluctuate or not and finding out how stable the investment income is.
I still get asked to help out at work two or three times a month. While I didn’t mind the commute while I was working, now I wonder how I could stand spending almost three hours a day on public transit. I got more reading done then, compared to now. And I don’t take a lot of time to read at home, because we still have young kids. So being retired feels a lot more like being a stay-at-home dad, half the time, anyway. My wife loves the change. She now gets to spend some time each day on things that she wants to accomplish for herself, and I get to spend more time with the kids. I get outside a lot more, playing at the playground or biking or doing yard work. Over the summer, that will be a great benefit, but I’m not looking forward to six months of dark, cold winter.
I spend more time on the things that are meaningful to me. I spend more time researching my investments and planning my trades. I spend more time reading and thinking about public education and the way our education system in Calgary is working. And I’m able to attend more community events, getting to know the people who live in our neighbourhood. But there is a drawback to trying to accomplish a lot during the day. By trying to juggle the needs of the kids, my wife, the car and activities that we have planned, I sometimes get to the end of the day with the feeling that I haven’t accomplished any of my projects I had planned to do.
I feel like I’m more relaxed. I don’t have nearly as much pressure of trying to balance my schedule between work, commuting and meeting the needs of myself and my family. I’ve even been able to grab an afternoon nap, on occasion. Being more relaxed translates into more patient interactions with my kids and a better relationship with my wife. But I also find it easy to lose track of the date. Especially now that the kids aren’t in school, there’s hardly a difference between a Monday, a Wednesday and a Saturday. For now, that’s not so bad, but I can certainly imagine it dragging on if the weather isn’t so nice.
It’s a good thing we don’t go shopping as recreation. We now have an income that doesn’t allow for much variation. On the other hand, we have quite a pool of capital. In my case, I could dip into it and be okay, since I plan to return to work in a couple years. I originally planned to return to university for a teaching degree as soon as I stopped working. But because I was pushed out of my business earlier than planned (but after the registration deadline), I have a year off. I don’t worry too much about my retirement income, knowing I can replace it by working later, but it gives me new appreciation for elderly people who have to live on a tight budget, knowing there’s almost no wiggle room and that something like a major car repair could derail their entire plan.
Being retired certainly has benefits, but it also has challenges that I didn’t anticipate. What do you look forward to about retiring early? What benefits do you have from continuing to work?
Posted by Canadian Dream on July 8, 2011
Some people approach their vacation as a license to spend money. So they don’t really pay attention to what they spend since they consider the same as getting off a diet and you can do what ever you want. I’ve never been able to do that, even when it’s ok to spend more I tend to still save somewhat. So often my vacations come under budget, yet still somehow I feel happy with the entire experience.
So how do you keep costs under control and still have fun? Well there are lot of different ways to do that, but here are a few ideas.
- Control your distance. The further you travel the higher your costs are going to be so consider why you need to travel far and what you want to do carefully. We tend to rotate vacations from close to home one year and father out another to keep the average cost reasonable.
- Watch where you sleep. Accommodations can suck up money very fast depending on where you stay. Yet if you never spend any time in the hotel room, why do you insist on sleeping in a really nice place? I personally tend to go for clean, decent bed and reasonable price most of the time when I travel. I also do splurge once in a while for a particular experience like the odd theme room or perhaps being really close to where we plan our activities to save on ground transportation costs.
- Skip eating out breakfast. We often just eat our morning breakfast in the hotel room since we aren’t big breakfast eaters. We tend to just eat muffins, toast, cereal and/or fruit. We do eat a ‘big’ breakfast once a week with eggs, pancakes or french toast. So we do eat that meal out, but save the cost on the rest of the week.
- Don’t assume free = crappy. Free events and attractions or activities can often be a lot of fun and get you to try out new things. Yes do spend money on those things you really want to do, but balance those off with a walking tour or hike as well or something else you like.
- Borrow Travel Guides from the library. I haven’t used travel guides much in the past, but gave it try when I was in Hawaii. I didn’t regret it as the guide helped us find lots of great places to eat in a range of prices and what was worth seeing. Best of all after we got back we just returned to book to our library. Or another option is to borrow a book from a friend if possible.
So how do you keep your vacations costs down and still have fun? Or what items do you think are worth spending money on?
Posted by Canadian Dream on July 6, 2011
So what happens when you apply economic principles to your marriage? Well beyond getting a fun book to read, like Spousonomics (by:Paula Szchman and Jenny Anderson), you also get some surprising answers to some of the most common areas of conflict in a marriage. So regardless if you just want to have more sex, argue less over the dishes or finally get your spouse to fix something that they promised six months ago you need to read this book.
I will confess here, that my wife found this book and laughed so much while reading it I had to pick it up after she had finished. While the book didn’t provide any earth shattering insights into my own marriage I never the less learned a few new tricks and approaches on how to deal with issues in a more proactive approach.
I personally like the advice on sex…you need to consult your standard negative sloping demand curve. Pardon? In a nut shell, sex always has a cost with it. You don’t pay in cash for it with your spouse, but depending on the amount of energy discussing it, debating it or planning for it. For example, are the kids in bed? Did you have to buy a gift to finally have some? Or do you only get some on a vacation without the kids? So the higher the energy cost associated with sex the less likely you are do it. So to have more sex, you need to make having it easier and reduce the cost. Rather simple when you think about it, so next time you want some more sex with your spouse make it easy to do.
Perhaps the one theme that comes up over and over in the book is you have to communicate with your spouse. Yes, talking to your spouse about your life and keeping them informed can prevent hurt feelings and misunderstandings. I suspect this is why I’m still with my wife after 10 years. We always talk about everything: the funny, the frustrating, and even the ‘I don’t really care about this, but you do, so I will listen.’
So why is a blog about personal finance and happiness talking about marriage? Well in a nut shell if you are married (or even common law) let’s face the facts: your odds of getting a divorce is high and it is expensive as hell to do. Also a lot of your happiness will likely flow from a good relationship with your spouse. In a nut shell: staying married is good for your wallet and your heart if you can make it work and it is a good risk management tactic. I’m not saying all relationships should stay together, but you should give it an honest try.
Overall I do recommend reading Spousonomics as I found it funny and an enjoyable read while managing to teach me a few new tricks.
