Guzzo the Contrarian

It goes without saying that for many of us, much of the planning, the hard work, the saving and the sacrifice we endure during our young lives is focused towards the goal of achieving a more comfortable retirement. We work, we save, we invest – and then we hope for the best. I say “hope” because realistically, things happen that we have no control over.

I’m pretty sure that what’s occurred in America this past few years cements my point. For lack of a better phrase – shit happens. As such, not all of us will be able to achieve the retirement goals that we expect. It’s not because we didn’t conduct ourselves responsibly, it’s because we can’t always be fully prepared for the unexpected.

Markets crash, jobs are lost, crimes occur, relationships fail, people get sick, governments change the rules.. the list is long. Any or all of these things can leave their mark our personal finances and cause us to take a hard look at our retirement planning.

I think that’s the issue being alluded to in the following Morningstar video about delaying retirement. Morningstar’s Christine Price and Christine Fahlund from T. Rowe Price discuss a few strategies on how to make delaying retirement more palatable.

The strategies being presented in this video are all good retirement planning choices when things go wrong. Christine Benz, Morningstar, T. Rowe Price and Ms. Fahlund have all provided good advice, ideas, and information about managing one’s wealth, and have even helped educate me over the years. So, it’s not my intention to criticize what’s being said in this video.

It’s what’s not being said that I think is important.

As illustrated in this video, we plan our goals with the mindset of supporting a certain lifestyle in retirement. If things interrupt our retirement goals, we then worry about not being able to support that lifestyle, and seek ways to delay retirement while finding ways to make working longer more palatable.

But those aren’t our only choices. While those strategies are good options, it’s only a part of the retirement equation. We could also consider altering the lifestyle that we expect to live in retirement.

Are those expectations too high? We also have the choice of lowering our lifestyle expectations instead of delaying retirement and working longer. There are plenty of ways to cut unnecessary costs, live frugally, and still be happy in retirement. We just have to decide which choice is more important.