How Not to Retire

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generalzodschicken
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How Not to Retire

Post by generalzodschicken »

A Pulitzer winner details exactly how not to retire early:

http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_art ... 7c.twitter

Or a cautionary tale: how you can easily fall out of the middle class via magical thinking and a lack of planning. Always good to remind yourself why exactly you are hanging out at this forum.
GenXer
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by GenXer »

Wow. Thanks for the link. I'm not sure I would have come across this otherwise. What a thoughtful, sobering and well-written essay.
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VictoriaF
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by VictoriaF »

Thank you for the link.

It is a sad story, but early retirement is not its chief culprit. McPherson's assets were depleted by his margin account and medical expenses. He would have lost this money even if he has not taken the early retirement package.

The article starts with a generalization about the rich:
McPherson wrote:The rich are all alike, to revise Tolstoy’s famous words, but the poor are poor in their own particular ways.

Any reasonably intelligent reader could blow that generalization apart in the time it takes to write it. But as with most generalizations, a truth lies behind it.
I can "blow that generalization apart" just by pointing to the diversity of the Bogleheads who have widely different lifestyles, sources of money, holdings of money, use of money, notions of frugality, notions of value expenditures, and many other areas.

Victoria
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Grt2bOutdoors
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by Grt2bOutdoors »

VictoriaF wrote:Thank you for the link.

It is a sad story, but early retirement is not its chief culprit. McPherson's assets were depleted by his margin account and medical expenses. He would have lost this money even if he has not taken the early retirement package.

Victoria
I disagree, the true source of his misery was in his own words "I didn't squander money, I just spent it a little too enthusiastically". In other words, he had a major spending problem and finally realized how dire a situation he was in when the bank accounts read "zero" but the bills kept coming. You can't spend what you don't have, but he failed to realize that early on and that was his major downfall. He simply thought the gravy train would never end, but end it did.
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Taylor Larimore
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What it is like to be poor.

Post by Taylor Larimore »

generalzodschicken

Because of your link, I will never look at the poor the same way.

Thank you and best wishes.
Taylor
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Grt2bOutdoors
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by Grt2bOutdoors »

generalzodschicken wrote:A Pulitzer winner details exactly how not to retire early:

http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_art ... 7c.twitter

Or a cautionary tale: how you can easily fall out of the middle class via magical thinking and a lack of planning. Always good to remind yourself why exactly you are hanging out at this forum.
I must say, even the best of planners sometimes can not escape all of the land mines that litter the road called life. We for the most part are only one major setback away from losing it all. If you think otherwise, you are just kidding yourself.
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bhsince87
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by bhsince87 »

So what's the actionable point to this story?

The closest I can figure is Social Security and a pension might not be enough to sustain one's previous lifestyle.

And I had to read a lot of words to get to that. Am I missing something?
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mwm158
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by mwm158 »

What I got out of it is you can be an idiot and other people will give you money because of it.
goldendad
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by goldendad »

Good article. Something for all of us there.
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cheese_breath
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by cheese_breath »

bhsince87 wrote:So what's the actionable point to this story?
Possibly nothing directly, but the education it provides may prod some into developing longer range financial plans for their retirement years than just assuming everything will just work out forever because it's OK today.
The surest way to know the future is when it becomes the past.
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seeshells
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by seeshells »

GZChicken, thanks for posting this insightful article.
Last edited by seeshells on Sun Nov 16, 2014 10:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bhsince87
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by bhsince87 »

cheese_breath wrote:
bhsince87 wrote:So what's the actionable point to this story?
Possibly nothing directly, but the education it provides may prod some into developing longer range financial plans for their retirement years than just assuming everything will just work out forever because it's OK today.
That makes sense. Thanks.
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. William Penn
pointyhead
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by pointyhead »

Thanks for the article. I feel that I am extremely lucky. And this article reinforces my feeling. But it also makes me realize, if you have to be poor, the U.S. is a good place to be.
hiddensee
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by hiddensee »

bhsince87 wrote:The closest I can figure is Social Security and a pension might not be enough to sustain one's previous lifestyle.
Yes I think this is it. An upper middle class person can end up lower middle class or 'upper working class' (his description) if they retire early without any savings. So, don't do that I guess.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by TradingPlaces »

bhsince87 wrote:So what's the actionable point to this story?
1. Don't retire early if you don't have the means to weather certain adverse scenarios,

2. Don't give discretion of your brokerage account, with margin, to anyone. Don't use margin yourself, when you think you have retired. In fact, maybe just don't use margin at all,

3. Confusing hobbies with self employment is a big money drain. This man had a hobby that did not pay, but he thought that he had an opportunity for employment,

4. Inflation can be higher than what you think,

5. Fixed-income, literally, pensions are not worth much. Heck, they are not much worth at all if you have a remaining lifespan of over 20, 30, 40, 50 years,

6. At 50, you might think that you can retire early. However, there can be changes in law that affect your retirement,

7. Healthcare is a b*(ch, but more so when you are old. Health care issues can bankrupt you, but the impact is much worse when you have "retired",

8. Even if you retire early, you need to have a Plan B for returning to the labor force,
dimdum
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by dimdum »

Great Article, very insightful.

Affirm the notion of SWR which we talk a lot on BH.
Manage your SWR carefully and don't touch capital in early years.
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mlebuf
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by mlebuf »

That's a very sad story. This man had enough intelligence, education and drive to become a Pulitzer Prize winning writer but neglected to take the time to learn how to manage his money. Credit him for understanding and admitting that he has no one to blame but himself. It's a sure bet he wasn't a Boglehead.

Unike many of us on this forum who have accumulated a substantial net worth over time, my parents had no net worth to speak of. They always lived in rental housing and had no home equity. They lived from paycheck to paycheck and spent their senior years living on Social Security. It was a stark lesson in what not to do.

Fortunately, I had an Aunt Sarah who taught me at a very early age that saving is the key to living comfortably and it begins with taking a portion off the top of every paycheck before spending a dime. Many years later as my 50th birthday approached, my net worth reached the 7-figure mark and I had just signed a book contract with a multi-six-figure advance. At first I had enormous feelings of euphoria. I thought to myself, "At last, my ship has come in and I'm not at the airport." However, I then had a second thought. A voice inside of me said, "Michael, if you ever go broke, you will have taken stupidity to a new level." How much or little money one makes is far less important than how well we manage it. As my late friend and mentor, Richard Stillman once said, "Dollars are not responsible for the pockets they end up in."
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SGM
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by SGM »

Maybe he would have been better served by his English teacher if he had spent more time on David Copperfield and the character Micawber's statement on happiness.

Pulitzer prize winning Washington Post writer knows little about economic reality until it smacks him in the face. Why am I not surprised? Didn't he know about the effects of inflation when he took early retirement? :oops:

Giving someone else discretion with a margin account and then going off to Europe? :shock:

Thanks for posting.
carolinaman
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by carolinaman »

TradingPlaces wrote:
bhsince87 wrote:So what's the actionable point to this story?
1. Don't retire early if you don't have the means to weather certain adverse scenarios,

2. Don't give discretion of your brokerage account, with margin, to anyone. Don't use margin yourself, when you think you have retired. In fact, maybe just don't use margin at all,

3. Confusing hobbies with self employment is a big money drain. This man had a hobby that did not pay, but he thought that he had an opportunity for employment,

4. Inflation can be higher than what you think,

5. Fixed-income, literally, pensions are not worth much. Heck, they are not much worth at all if you have a remaining lifespan of over 20, 30, 40, 50 years,

6. At 50, you might think that you can retire early. However, there can be changes in law that affect your retirement,

7. Healthcare is a b*(ch, but more so when you are old. Health care issues can bankrupt you, but the impact is much worse when you have "retired",

8. Even if you retire early, you need to have a Plan B for returning to the labor force,
I agree with your list but I think it can be summarized as a failure to plan his retirement. With a good plan, he could have had a reasonably comfortable retirement. He would have continued working and delayed spending his money. This is the plight of many.
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Chan_va
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by Chan_va »

Me thinks a little perspective is in order for this gentleman. I grew up in the middle of grinding 3rd world poverty.

He travelled through Europe for decades. He now has a roof over his head. A guaranteed income stream. Guaranteed healthcare. Decent clothes. A laptop. A cellphone. He can afford to buy gelato for strangers.

If he were to be randomly placed in any time and any place in the world, he would be better off in the position he is in now over 99.9% of the time. It just goes to show how lucky we all are to be living in this place in this time.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by hiddensee »

He is simply a not very practical man who happened to have an exceptional skill in a very narrow field that was not related to financial planning. No one with the wherewithal to find this board is going to come close to making any of the juvenile mistakes he made, and which he still doesn't seem to have fully accepted were obvious with easily predictable consequences. It's one thing to rely on a company pension scheme that goes bust, quite another to go freelance without bothering to divide your savings by the number of years you expect to live first. And is he really claiming he didn't know what inflation was as a national journalist in the mid 80s?!

Furthermore the purpose of the article is clearly not to offer practical personal financial advice but to offer a thinly veiled paean for changes in economic policy; probably exactly the same policy changes he advocated when he thought he was rich. On that bombshell I withdraw from the thread...
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market timer
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by market timer »

hiddensee wrote:No one with the wherewithal to find this board is going to come close to making any of the juvenile mistakes he made
Well, I certainly can't agree with this statement. Fortunately, it's easier to overcome loss when one is still employed than after retiring. I'm reminded of a quote from The Way of All Flesh that Nisiprius often posted a few years ago:
No man is safe from losing every penny he has in the world, unless he has had his facer. How often do I not hear middle-aged women and quiet family men say that they have no speculative tendency; they never had touched, and never would touch, any but the very soundest, best reputed investments, and as for unlimited liability, oh, dear! dear! and they throw up their hands and eyes.

Whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recognised as the easy prey of the first adventurer who comes across him; he will commonly, indeed, wind up his discourse by saying that in spite of all his natural caution, and his well knowing how foolish speculation is, yet there are some investments which are called speculative but in reality are not so, and he will pull out of his pocket the prospectus of a Cornish gold mine. It is only on having actually lost money that one realises what an awful thing the loss of it is, and finds out how easily it is lost by those who venture out of the middle of the most beaten path. Ernest had had his facer, as he had had his attack of poverty, young, and sufficiently badly for a sensible man to be little likely to forget it. I can fancy few pieces of good fortune greater than this as happening to any man, provided, of course, that he is not damaged irretrievably.
Angst
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by Angst »

I'm not wealthy person, my earnings are barely average, and neither do I think I lack compassion, but this essay somehow annoys me more than anything. I'm well aware of the hard luck people can run into, both with the recent economic problems and generally speaking as well; events can simply conspire. The writer here however does not seem to have fully come around to a clear understanding of his situation. Simplistically perhaps, I would not now be buying gelatos. And rather than complaining about the cost of a cell phone, I would have purchased one of the a dirt cheap cell phone plans you can get if you research it. I don't know. Perhaps it's the audience he's writing for. But something in the way he tells his story inspires more annoyance than sympathy. And please believe me, I am very sympathetic to people who lack the financial (and sometimes intellectual) means necessary to keep them afloat. Something about his delivery just doesn't work for me.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by whomever »

It just goes to show how lucky we all are to be living in this place in this time.
Indeed. I recall visiting my grandparents in Missouri in the 1960's. Indoor plumbing hadn't arrived - you went to the outhouse, carried water from the well, and heated it on the stove to take the weekly bath in the galvanized tub brought into the kitchen for that purpose. After college, I lived in my car for several months working itinerant construction jobs before finding a career that would put a roof over my head. A scant hundred years ago, childhood diseases would have already killed half the people reading this.

After a lifetime of a 50% savings rate, my wife and I are about to retire in our late 50's. We certainly hope that plan A works out - the happy retirement with fun vacations and no money worries, or at least the plan B of selling all but one old car, tending the vegetable garden and clipping coupons but staying in our own house. But I think we need to be ready, if luck runs strongly against us, to implement a plan C of moving to a small apartment, selling the car, making it on social security alone and enjoying life as much as our health lets us, even if that means no entertainment other than library books and sitting in the park on sunny days. It's still a way nicer life than much of the third world.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by livesoft »

Yep, thanks for linking this very inciteful article that is making the rounds of the web nowadays. This guy has a talent for writing, so why isn't he working and writing more, and getting paid to do so? I will guess it's because he makes enough money to support his lifestyle. Sure, that is not the lifestyle of the middle class, but so what?
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by Grt2bOutdoors »

livesoft wrote:Yep, thanks for linking this very inciteful article that is making the rounds of the web nowadays. This guy has a talent for writing, so why isn't he working and writing more, and getting paid to do so? I will guess it's because he makes enough money to support his lifestyle. Sure, that is not the lifestyle of the middle class, but so what?
He might have to give up his subsidized HUD housing, I believe you are asset and means tested to receive the subsidy.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by lululu »

That's technofox from the War On Debt thread in another 20-30 years.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by lululu »

livesoft wrote:Yep, thanks for linking this very inciteful article that is making the rounds of the web nowadays. This guy has a talent for writing, so why isn't he working and writing more, and getting paid to do so? I will guess it's because he makes enough money to support his lifestyle. Sure, that is not the lifestyle of the middle class, but so what?
I'm not sure how much money writers can make nowadays. Note that the NYTimes has gone through several rounds of layoffs.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by VictoriaF »

Grt2bOutdoors wrote:
livesoft wrote:Yep, thanks for linking this very inciteful article that is making the rounds of the web nowadays. This guy has a talent for writing, so why isn't he working and writing more, and getting paid to do so? I will guess it's because he makes enough money to support his lifestyle. Sure, that is not the lifestyle of the middle class, but so what?
He might have to give up his subsidized HUD housing, I believe you are asset and means tested to receive the subsidy.
Take a look at the bottom of the linked article. It states:
The article about William McPherson at the end wrote:William McPherson, a novelist, critic, and journalist, was the editor of the Washington Post Book World and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. His first novel, Testing the Current, was recently republished by New York Review Books Classics.
He has just re-published a novel. This article will generate interest in his novel.

Victoria
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by TheTimeLord »

I couldn't figure out exactly how much he made annually with his SS and pension but it sounds similar to the approximately $24,000 (today's dollars) my widowed MIL has lived on for the past 20ish years. Of course she has been to Europe about a half dozen times and a cruise every year. Now she did own the house she had lived in for 40+ years before retirement (purchased for $16,500) and when she retired I took her immediately out to buy a new car for cash that she drove for almost 20 years (about 4,500 miles a year). She also has savings of about $160,000. Why do I mention this. From what I can tell the difference between the life the author is living and my MIL is separated by a sum of money and a few financial moves that could be easily made over the course of one's life. This is not to scold the author but to encourage the folks here that the effort and planning needed to avoid the author's fate is very, very achievable, especially if you start early. By being here and participating in this forum you are taking positive steps to avoid this being your story, but only you can make the decisions necessary to write your own happier tale.
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Dandy
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by Dandy »

Wow the man can still write. He captured the dark fears we might imagine if we let our minds go there. I got a taste of this from my parents who lived through the Depression. People standing on the corner selling pencils that had doctorate degrees, the shabby look of the houses since painting was too expensive for homeowner and landlords, etc. In the financial sense a depression is when GDP fails to grow - but it was a depression in many other ways too.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by VictoriaF »

TradingPlaces wrote:
bhsince87 wrote:So what's the actionable point to this story?
1. Don't retire early if you don't have the means to weather certain adverse scenarios,

2. Don't give discretion of your brokerage account, with margin, to anyone. Don't use margin yourself, when you think you have retired. In fact, maybe just don't use margin at all,

3. Confusing hobbies with self employment is a big money drain. This man had a hobby that did not pay, but he thought that he had an opportunity for employment,

4. Inflation can be higher than what you think,

5. Fixed-income, literally, pensions are not worth much. Heck, they are not much worth at all if you have a remaining lifespan of over 20, 30, 40, 50 years,

6. At 50, you might think that you can retire early. However, there can be changes in law that affect your retirement,

7. Healthcare is a b*(ch, but more so when you are old. Health care issues can bankrupt you, but the impact is much worse when you have "retired",

8. Even if you retire early, you need to have a Plan B for returning to the labor force,
These items did not have equal impact on McPherson's financial decline:
- If he made all mistakes on the list, EXCEPT #2 (margin account), he would be OK.
- If the ONLY mistake he made were #2, he would still end up with negative net worth.

McPherson's health problems have magnified his financial misfortune. He would have had issues with his health and insurance even if he had not retired in 1986. Thus, as I stated above, early retirement is of minor consequence to his story. Other factors were so significant that they dominated the decline of his fortune, literally and figuratively.

Victoria
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by livesoft »

lululu wrote:I'm not sure how much money writers can make nowadays. Note that the NYTimes has gone through several rounds of layoffs.
I will guess between $200 and $500 for articles such as this one or about a $1 a word. So I guess he really is still working.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by livesoft »

TheTimeLord wrote:I couldn't figure out exactly how much he made annually with his SS and pension but it sounds similar to the approximately $24,000 ....
I think much less, maybe around $15K to $18K. I have seen several commentators double-count his SS because of the words he used, but read those words carefully.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by livesoft »

VictoriaF wrote:McPherson's health problems have magnified his financial misfortune.
His health issues appeared to have occurred later in his life while he was over age 65. However, I often stereotype the vices of writers which would lead to severe heart disease.

What is actionable from this story? Easy: Give up drinking and smoking. Exercise more. Read and try to follow the book "Younger Next Year" and some of the other things listed by others. :)
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by VictoriaF »

livesoft wrote:
VictoriaF wrote:McPherson's health problems have magnified his financial misfortune.
His health issues appeared to have occurred later in his life while he was over age 65. However, I often stereotype the vices of writers which would lead to severe heart disease.

What is actionable from this story? Easy: Give up drinking and smoking. Exercise more. Read and try to follow the book "Younger Next Year" and some of the other things listed by others. :)
You are up to something. McPherson states that he has spent a lot of money traveling in the post-Wall Eastern Europe. At that time, one could travel in Eastern Europe on a shoe string. However, getting Eastern Europeans to pour out their souls required pouring in inordinate amounts of vodka.

Victoria
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hiddensee
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by hiddensee »

market timer wrote:
hiddensee wrote:No one with the wherewithal to find this board is going to come close to making any of the juvenile mistakes he made
Well, I certainly can't agree with this statement. Fortunately, it's easier to overcome loss when one is still employed than after retiring. I'm reminded of a quote from The Way of All Flesh that Nisiprius often posted a few years ago:
No man is safe from losing every penny he has in the world, unless he has had his facer. How often do I not hear middle-aged women and quiet family men say that they have no speculative tendency; they never had touched, and never would touch, any but the very soundest, best reputed investments, and as for unlimited liability, oh, dear! dear! and they throw up their hands and eyes.

Whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recognised as the easy prey of the first adventurer who comes across him; he will commonly, indeed, wind up his discourse by saying that in spite of all his natural caution, and his well knowing how foolish speculation is, yet there are some investments which are called speculative but in reality are not so, and he will pull out of his pocket the prospectus of a Cornish gold mine. It is only on having actually lost money that one realises what an awful thing the loss of it is, and finds out how easily it is lost by those who venture out of the middle of the most beaten path. Ernest had had his facer, as he had had his attack of poverty, young, and sufficiently badly for a sensible man to be little likely to forget it. I can fancy few pieces of good fortune greater than this as happening to any man, provided, of course, that he is not damaged irretrievably.
He didn't do everything right and get wiped out by luck. He didn't even do most things right and a few things wrong that sabotaged his good efforts. He did almost everything wrong and the outcome was just the expected one, not bad luck. Even then one gets the impression he is not what most would call poor; he is just complaining that other people won't give him an upper middle class lifestyle he did nothing to deserve. Maybe this behaviour is common in the world at large but not on this board.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by TheTimeLord »

livesoft wrote:
TheTimeLord wrote:I couldn't figure out exactly how much he made annually with his SS and pension but it sounds similar to the approximately $24,000 ....
I think much less, maybe around $15K to $18K. I have seen several commentators double-count his SS because of the words he used, but read those words carefully.
My income is above $11,670 annually, which, in 2014, puts me above the poverty line for a single person. My Social Security comes to more than that.

So I am assuming SS in excess of $11,670 and a pension of around $800/mo. But maybe I am misreading it.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by VictoriaF »

hiddensee wrote:Even then one gets the impression he is not what most would call poor; he is just complaining that other people won't give him an upper middle class lifestyle he did nothing to deserve. Maybe this behaviour is common in the world at large but not on this board.
McPherson's is not "complaining" and he is not asking people "to give him an upper middle class lifestyle." He is describing his downfall. He is also describing other people at the bottom of the social ladder and the challenges they are facing.

Victoria
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by livesoft »

@TheTimeLoard, his SS income is more than $11,670 is the way I read that. If his SS income is $13,000 a year, then his income is above $11,670. Is $11,670 the 2014 poverty line for a single person? I'll have to look that up. (Yes: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/14poverty.cfm , do you see where $11,670 comes from?)
Last edited by livesoft on Mon Nov 17, 2014 8:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by Call_Me_Op »

Seems to me that his biggest mistake was letting someone else handle his money.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by livesoft »

He has given us something to discuss and think about. For that we should be thankful. He is also still alive. My folks were dead at his age. Perhaps his next article will be a wonderful celebration of the joys of being alive.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by TheTimeLord »

VictoriaF wrote:
hiddensee wrote:Even then one gets the impression he is not what most would call poor; he is just complaining that other people won't give him an upper middle class lifestyle he did nothing to deserve. Maybe this behaviour is common in the world at large but not on this board.
McPherson's is not "complaining" and he is not asking people "to give him an upper middle class lifestyle." He is describing his downfall. He is also describing other people at the bottom of the social ladder and the challenges they are facing.

Victoria
It is a wonderfully written article but since he fell into his situation he misses many of the pitfalls the working poor actually face. Like paying 1% to have their paychecks cashed or a lack of credit. I worked in a homeless shelter years ago an many people got there because their car broke down and it was either fix it so they could keep ther job or pay the rent. At the time the average American had approximately 3 weeks income saved but higher income people could use credit to avoid those kinds of choices.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by siamond »

Thanks a lot to the OP for sharing. This was a good and touching read.

Sure, McPherson made major mistakes that could probably have been easily avoided (heck, I did too, was just lucky that this wasn't as consequential). But I have a lot of sympathy for the guy. He's clearly driven by passion, fascinated by words and by human beings, and... a little bit impulsive and math-challenged. Would I want to meet the guy and hear stories about his very full life? Sure, I would, he seems like a truly fascinating character. And his writing touched a chord with me.

I suspect some of us are actually much poorer than he is. Not money-wise, but about in terms of the richness of our life. I wish him well.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by Crow Hunter »

livesoft wrote:He has given us something to discuss and think about. For that we should be thankful. He is also still alive. My folks were dead at his age. Perhaps his next article will be a wonderful celebration of the joys of being alive.
This +1000.

My Father never got to travel to Europe or even fly in a plane. He sounds like he is 5 or 6 years older than my Father, who turned 50 in 1992 and retired in 2000 only to be struck by colon cancer the following year and passes away at 62.

I would personally be happy to be living in HUD housing at the poverty line if I could go and spend the weekend with my Dad again.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by flyingaway »

I do not understand the purpose of this article. Compared to many people on the streets, I think the author is OK. He has steady income, although not very much, subsidized housing, subsidized insurance, etc. What else he wants? He already spent many years in Europe and other places (that is the travel in retirement that many of us are talking about here).
He could be in a better place, but he is OK.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by generalzodschicken »

I'm glad some people got something out of it. As with anything, what you do (or don't) get out of it depends on your perspective. As others have pointed out, he did just about everything wrong financially, but everything he did is very typical: timing the market in individual stocks, letting others manage his money (on margin!), little understanding of basic things like inflation, no real long-term plan, etc. He is the prototypical American "investor."

Why this strikes a chord is that he humanizes these mistakes. And they are the mistakes of an otherwise intelligent, upper-middle class professional. How many of us know people like him? Or WERE him at some point?

Also, one thing no one commented on that struck me is the element of hubris here. He won a Pulitzer at a major national newspaper. When offered early retirement, he figured he'd have no problem making money in the future, without any real plan, in a field in which it is notoriously difficult to make a stable living - no matter how skilled you are. I don't doubt that his pride partially led to his current predicament.

Ultimately, you can be otherwise a very intelligent, educated person, but if you make even one or two fundamental financial mistakes, you can be ruined.

That is what I got out of it, anyway.
Last edited by generalzodschicken on Mon Nov 17, 2014 9:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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siamond
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by siamond »

This is very well said, general. Thanks again for sharing.
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by VictoriaF »

generalzodschicken wrote:Also, one thing no one commented on that struck me is the element of hubris here. He won a Pulitzer at a major national newspaper. When offered early retirement, he figured he'd have no problem making money in the future, without any real plan, in a field in which it is notoriously difficult to make a stable living - no matter how skilled you are. I don't doubt that his pride partially led to his current predicament.
I was thinking about this, too. McPherson has retired in 1986, well before the proliferation of the web and the associated free information flow. In the middle 1980s his skills were more valuable and transferable than they are now. McPherson's Pulitzer Prize was for Criticism. Likely, he wanted to transition from writing critique to writing original articles and saw the opening up of the Eastern Europe as an opportunity to make his mark.

Victoria
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Re: How Not to Retire

Post by TheTimeLord »

VictoriaF wrote:
generalzodschicken wrote:Also, one thing no one commented on that struck me is the element of hubris here. He won a Pulitzer at a major national newspaper. When offered early retirement, he figured he'd have no problem making money in the future, without any real plan, in a field in which it is notoriously difficult to make a stable living - no matter how skilled you are. I don't doubt that his pride partially led to his current predicament.
I was thinking about this, too. McPherson has retired in 1986, well before the proliferation of the web and the associated free information flow. In the middle 1980s his skills were more valuable and transferable than they are now. McPherson's Pulitzer Prize was for Criticism. Likely, he wanted to transition from writing critique to writing original articles and saw the opening up of the Eastern Europe as an opportunity to make his mark.

Victoria
Wasn't 1987 the start of the longest bull market in U.S. history?

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Last edited by TheTimeLord on Mon Nov 17, 2014 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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