retirement readiness

What Is Retired Husband Syndrome?

What is retired husband syndrome?

I first heard of Retired Husband Syndrome (RHS) at a book signing in 2013. From across the book section in the exhibit hall, I saw a young man with jet black hair staring at the back of my newly-published book, The Mindful Money Mentality: How to Find Balance in Your Financial Future. He turned it over, opened to the table of contents, flipped a few pages, and turned it over again.

Until that point, he acted like other book-browsers – look at back, flip to front, open to table of contents, flip to back, flip again. Some would then take the book to the register. Others set it back on the shelf. The whole decision took less than 2 minutes.

But this young man took so long reading, I wondered if he might consume the whole book right there. Then I quit watching, distracted by conversation with another attendee.

When I turned back to look for him, he was gone. Figuring he had decided against it, I was surprised a couple of hours later to see he was the first in line at the book signing.

Retired Husband Syndrome – in South Korea

Approaching with an enthusiastic smile, he said “Hello” in a heavy Asian accent. He was from Seoul, South Korea, and said that he thought my book would be helpful to his male clients. Unsure why he was excluding the female ones, I readied my pen to sign, but asked him to tell me more.

“In Asia, we have Retired Husband Syndrome (RHS),” he said.

“I’ve never heard of that. What is it?” I asked, putting the pen down.

“Some husbands spend their whole lives working for a company, and when they retire, they are at home, and it is not good for the marriage. The husband loses his identity because he is not in his job anymore, and he wants to be home with his wife. The wife has been at home her whole life, but she doesn’t like the husband being there, doing nothing.”

“So sometimes the retired husbands do…nothing? They don’t have hobbies or hang out with their friends?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Wow. So you must see a lot of marriage problems in your practice?”

“Yes! And it is too bad. They have a pension, but the couples never spend time planning what they will do.” He explained more about the strain on the marriage; the sadness he sees at a time when there could be great joy and celebration; and the effect on their children and the families.

“This makes me sad. Sometimes I am going to be the only person outside of the family who might see it. All of the financial advisors in Seoul could help people with this. This is preventable.”

Retirement Planning Is About More Than Money

I once heard a conference speaker say, “We spend more time planning what we’re going to eat for lunch than how we will spend a 30-year period of our lives.” In the U.S., it’s not only pre-retiree husbands, but also wives, singles, straight, and LGBT pre-retirees, admitting they are at risk for something like RHS.

It helps to clarify how you might spend the bounty of time that increased longevity will likely bring. If you need help planning a fulfilling retirement, find a financial professional or coach who takes as much interest in your time as they do in your money.

You can help stop the spread of one type of preventable international syndrome, and help your future happiness even more.

For more on the psychology of money prior to retirement, tax tips, and a monthly dose of fun, enjoy the free award-winning e-letter, “The View From the Porch.” Subscribe at this link: https://bit.ly/3t2uwfn

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The Retirement Answer? A Blank Stare

blank stare emoji

The Retirement Answer? A Blank Stare

I had just asked a 59-year-old, “You said you can retire in 3 years. How will you spend your time after that?” Expressionless, all he gave was a blank stare.

“I never thought about it,” he replied.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the first 59-year-old with that answer. “I don’t know” is a more common answer than most think. 

More To Retirement Life Than Money 

According to a study by United Capital, when asked about their financial life stories, most people talked about working and spending, not saving and investing.

Over the decades of our working lives, we tend to follow a formula: Work. Spend. (Save). Repeat. We do this knowing one day those (savings we try not to think about or touch) should equal a nice sum, hopefully enough to reach the nirvana of “financial independence.”

Along the way, we can get trapped into planning meals and vacations, but not a potential 25-year chapter of our life. If nothing trips up the formula (divorce, premature death, disability), then a milestone birthday, the loss of a parent, or the arrival of a new boss may cause one to someday dial up a financial planner and ask, “Am I there yet?”  

Are You “There” Yet?

To which the answer is usually, “That depends.”

That depends…on where “there” is. “There” = how, with whom, and where you will find purpose, meaning, and happiness in life after Work-Spend-(Save)-Repeat.

Once that’s known, “there” can be translated into real financial goals. If you don’t know what “there” looks like, then attempts to answer the question are merely rough guesses. More importantly, if you don’t know, you’re not likely to enjoy that supposed nirvana time nearly as much.  

There are many thought leaders contributing to discoveries about the time of life past “Working” and before “Old.” That time of life, which will be 25 or 30 years for a lucky few, goes by many names: Your Third Age. The Third Stage. The Encore Years. Your Life’s Next Chapter.

Examples of such leaders include Dori Mintzer and Mitch Anthony.

According to experts like these, retirement planned well has the potential to be a time of peak fulfillment and meaning. Not planned well or planned at all, potential paths lead to boredom and, in the worst cases, clinical depression.

Real Retirement Planning 

Many people think “retirement planning” means “IRA investments” or “401K rollovers” or “pension options.” Those are certainly part of it. But the best, yet sometimes the most difficult, kind of retirement planning is not found on your retirement account statements. It’s found inside of you. 

Begin with a blank stare, and build your “There.”

Not sure where to begin? Check out this free download: https://www.hollydonaldsonfinancialplanner.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Beyond-the-Numbers-Whats-Retirement-Money-For.pdf for a questionnaire about what kind of retirement lifestyle choices are ideal for you.  

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A Buckets Approach To Retirement Income

buckets

A buckets approach to retirement income: One of the most common questions financial planners receive from pre-retirees is, “What’s the safest way to give myself a paycheck once I quit working?”

Those who have been around long enough probably know someone who retired close to a particularly bad market year, like 2001, 2007 or 2008. Because that someone had to, or chose to, sell some investments at that terrible time, they ended up living off of much less than they originally thought. This can be a scary thing to watch. It makes some wonder, “How do I make sure that doesn’t happen to me?”

The Buckets Approach

Enter the buckets approach to retirement income. Below is a link to a video excerpt from the online course, “Retirement Readiness,” outlining a buckets approach in more detail. (A link to the course can be found at the bottom of this article and here.) A description for each of the buckets follows below.

https://youtu.be/mkeqzgJfeFc

Bucket 1 – Cash and Money Market Accounts

The first bucket will provide your paycheck. The rule of thumb is to
1) calculate any retirement income you will have (pension, Social Security, dividends, interest, rental property, for examples);
2) figure your annual recurring expenses (do not include one-time expenses such as replacing a car, roof, or paying for a special trip or wedding);
3) subtract 2) from 1); and
4) keep 1 to 2 years of that difference in Bucket 1.

For example, Justine retires at 65. She expects to live past age 82 so she is waiting until 70 to claim Social Security. She has a pension of $800/month. Her recurring expenses are $70,000 annually. The annual difference is $70,000 – $9,600 = $60,400. To start retirement, she decides to keep 1.5 years of the difference in Bucket 1 so $60,400 x 1.5 = $90,600. She puts that in a high-yield money market account and sets up an automatic transfer of $5833.33 monthly to her checking account. Voila – she has a new paycheck.

When she turns 70, she will collect $45,000 in Social Security. At that time the annual difference will fall to $70,000 – ($9,600 + $45,000) = $15,400. She decides to keep 2 years of the new difference in Bucket 1, so $15,400 x 2 = $30,800. She reduces the monthly transfer from the money market to $1283.33 per month.

Bucket 2 – Bonds, CDs, and Bond Funds

The second bucket replenishes Bucket 1. As the paychecks come out, the principal in the money market account will naturally decrease. When the balance reaches a level you have predetermined, a transfer is made from Bucket 2.

Bucket 2 is comprised of a combination of CDs, bonds, and or bond funds. CDs and bonds have maturity dates, so they are structured in a ladder (staggered maturity dates usually 6 to 12 months apart into the future). As each one in the ladder matures, the principal is either transferred to Bucket 1, or redeployed into a new CD or bond with a maturity date at the end of the ladder. If bond funds are used, they are laddered according to the duration in the fund, and the funds are sold as needed to replenish Bucket 1.

Bucket 3 – Stocks and Stock Funds

Bucket 3 replenishes Bucket 2 through harvesting gains in stocks. To do so, the general rule of thumb is:

  1. Review Bucket 3 on a regular but infrequent schedule (at most quarterly and at least annually). I
  2. f there are gains, transfer those to replenish Bucket 2.
  3. If there are no gains (i.e. the market is in a correction), then do nothing until the next scheduled review.

In this way, stocks are not sold at the most inopportune time. With up to 5 years of paychecks in hand, the first two buckets provide a secure cushion from market corrections.

Final Notes

It’s worth noting that whether the buckets are held in a tax-deferred account or a taxable account makes a difference. Buckets may be spread across accounts in different combinations to minimize taxes.

The goal of the Bucket approach isn’t to generate the best returns of any retirement portfolio on record, but rather to help prevent retirees and pre-retirees from selling at an inopportune time. Thus, a new retiree could use the bucket concept to replace their paycheck without worry about what markets are doing that month.

For a short online course on how to speak “finance” about retirement readiness, see Simple Finance Retirement Readiness: https://bit.ly/3p3BkXE.

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