Retirement planning, with actuarial data

[drwex]

If you're even close to my age you should be thinking about retirement. If you're younger, you should be saving for it.

Here - https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/files/resources/research-report/2019/viability-spend-safely.pdf - is a report from the Society of Actuaries, based on their research project looking at the success rates of over 200 variations on retirement plans. The PDF is a bit long, but quite readable. It's focused on people who have under $1 million in savings at retirement age and are largely going to depend on Social Security.

Major recommendations:
- Delay taking Social Security as late as possible. Age 70, currently
- Generate more income by using minimum distributions and investing those distributions in low-risk vehicles

Comments

Re: cross syndrome?

[flexagon]

Weirdly, the image search results are far better than the web search results:

https://www.google.com/search?q=upper+and+lower+cross+syndrome&tbm=isch

Both are patterns of activation and repression in the body, caused by sitting and especially slumping, that lead to anterior pelvic tilt and a forward head (along with pain, plenty of pain). They're bad. I agree with you about manual repetitive labor, but I don't agree about being on feet all day... people are made to be on their feet, as long as they're walking (alternating pressure / moving) instead of standing (constant pressure).

If you're interested in helping to alleviate or avoid these things, without caring to look up all the details, I recently saw a fairly pleasant video on the topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9OMBumkgiM

wow

[drwex]

That's a remarkably accurate description of my body :(

Re: cross syndrome?

[jducoeur]

people are made to be on their feet, as long as they're walking (alternating pressure / moving) instead of standing (constant pressure).

Yep -- I switched to a standing desk about five years ago, which has been *very* good for my body. But a good pad is critical, and I've found that encouraging my feet to fidget, rather than just standing in one place, is important...

[drwex]

Dance! (says the man who's re-listening to some sets in order to post another music entry)

[jducoeur]

Ayep -- can't always have music playing, but that's often part of it.

(Right at the moment, I'm listening to the mammoth Spotify playlist that underpins everynoise.com; thanks for the pointer! Almost by definition, it's an interesting list for times when I am feeling like variety.)

[drwex]

Yay! I'm glad you're liking it. I have a Pandora station called "Wex Eclectic Radio" that I created years ago with a couple of highly disparate seeds that is my go-to in such situations.

[jducoeur]

My primary work iTunes playlist has something like 10k tracks (just shy of a continuous month of play), so I'm rarely *really* hurting for variety. But stuff like this is fascinating for discovering new-to-me music. After several hours, I'm just now up to the first track I've ever heard before -- "More Than a Feeling" by Boston, of all things.

I might give Pandora another shake at some point. Last time I tried it, it gave me way too much sameness, and I got bored with it...

[drwex]

Yeah Pandora can be very hit-or-miss depending on what you seed with and how much you curate it.