Yeah, it’s been the discussion at our house for the past few weeks (months, years) – Is is time to retire.  The moves in the stock market have added that “extra padding” that I was looking for and the stress of two working parents while raising a family is just the push Jill is looking for.  So we’ll see.  But the question remains, “Is it time to retire”?

I’ve run all sorts of calculators.  Believe it or not, most retirement calculators associated with financial institutions won’t let you put a retirement age less than 55.  My favorite is the Flexible Retirement Planner.  It lets you put in all types of data for, taxable, non-taxable, and tax-deferred savings.  It also lets you select the investment rate of return and the inflation rate with values for the standard deviation of each.  It then runs a Monte-Carlo simulation to determine the probability that you’ll reach your retirement goals.  I’m really short-changing the power of this thing since it has many, many, many more features.  I’ll post more a different time.  All the calculators give us the thumbs up – so now what.  Prolly get a second opinion.

I’ve booked some time with a financial advisor and the appointment is tomorrow.  I only wanted a fee-based advisor because I don’t want anyone selling me anything.  I’m just looking for a second opinion.  When I started looking it was tough.  Everyone wanted full control and a percentage of assets as a mangement fee.  I’m of the belief that if the advisors were that good, they’d be retired.  We’ve done well enough to retire early on our own but I’d like someone else to take a look, maybe give tax tips, advice on health care, and in general, raise a red flag that we may have missed.  It took a while to find one.  Actually, the source came from NPR.  I was mindlessly listening, stopped at a light, and the add came on for letsmakeaplan.org.  At first glance, it looks like a place for Certified Financial Planners to post their services.  It was nice because I could fin fee-based advisors close to me.  After looking at some reviews, I decided on one.  I’ll give the name after tomorrow’s meeting.

I’m pretty excited and at the same time, scared to death.  If they tell us to keep working, no problem, it’s what we know.  But what if they tell us we’re safe to pull the plug?  That there’s enough to last until we’re well into our 90’s?  Holy Shit!  Then what.  What if what we’ve been planning for all these years becomes a reality.  Then what?  Guess we’ll see tomorrow.