How does your retirement equation work? When you finally retire, does your financial life go on autopilot, subject to precise mathematical rules?
Or, is the retirement equation more a guideline than prescription? So your financial life after retirement is subject to a set of variables, but the end result — exactly how your wealth will grow or decline — is never precisely predictable….
In my experience, talking with many people nearing retirement, and hearing how they are advised by financial professionals, I see a stronger tendency to the first view of retirement than the second.
Financial advisers like to project certainty: They collect all your relevant financial numbers, punch them into the computer, and give you a 50-page printed report complete with graphs and projections. So financial independence and retirement become a “yes” or “no” proposition. Either you have enough, or you don’t.
But that’s not my experience of retirement, or the experience of many other early retirees that I know. Retirement is not a static equation with a simple “yes”/”no” answer. Rather it’s a journey or process.
