leisure

8 Signs It's Time to Retire

Tim Lemke — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 08:00:06 +0000

There will come a time when you consider making the shift from worker bee to retiree. But knowing the best moment to stop working is not always easy to determine. How do you know whether your money will last once you stop earning a salary? Is there a "magic age," when retiring makes sense, or do you just go with a gut feeling?

There's no science to knowing when to retire, but there may be some signs to follow. If most or all of these apply to you, maybe it's time to submit that resignation and begin the next chapter of your life.

1. You have enough money for the retirement you want

It's impossible to know precisely how much you'll need in retirement, but there are some basic calculations you can make to see how long your money will last if you stop working.

You must first calculate what your annual living expenses will be. Research shows that people tend to spend less as they get older, but be sure to factor in the potential costs of new activities like travel, eating out, and caring for grandchildren. Then, examine how much money you have saved, and what the return on that money might be as you age. Match those numbers up with your expected life span. There are other things to consider, such as whether you plan to draw equity from your home. There are many online calculators that can help you with these figures.

Generally speaking, if you take the annual expenses you expect and multiply them by 25, you'll be in the ballpark of what you need to retire comfortably. Once you are approaching this number, it may be a sign that you can stop working. (See also: 6 Ways You Can Cut Costs Right Before You Retire)

2. You must collect distributions from your retirement plan

If you have a 401(k) or IRA, there comes a point at which you are required to take distributions. For most people, this age is 70-½. You can delay taking 401(k) distributions until after you stop working, but not for the money in a traditional IRA. If you are being forced to take distributions, there's not much incentive to continue working.

3. You can collect the maximum in Social Security

The government incentivizes people to retire later by offering them more money from Social Security if they wait longer to collect it. You can begin collecting benefits as early as age 62, but those benefits will be higher if you wait longer. Those approaching retirement age can get full benefits if they wait until age 67, and may get additional credits if they wait until age 70. If you're already getting the maximum benefit from the government, perhaps it's a sign that you're ready to retire for good. (See also: 6 Smart Ways to Boost Your Social Security Payout Before Retirement)

4. Your expenses are the lowest they've been in years

Your house is completely paid off. The kids are out of the house and college is paid for. You're not yet at the point where you have high medical expenses. Your cost of living hasn't been this low in decades. Sure, you may have big ticket things you want to pay for (travel, for example), but your day-to-day existence no longer requires a bi-weekly paycheck. It's still important to assess whether you have enough saved to last, but if you've downsized your lifestyle to a super-low level, it may no longer be necessary to keep working.

5. You no longer get any pleasure from work

We've all heard stories about older people who continue working simply because it makes them happy. Often, working gives them purpose and a sense of satisfaction that can't be replaced in retirement. But what if you're not one of these people? What if the work itself isn't rewarding, and you find yourself drained rather than energized by it? Then it may be time to consider retiring, assuming that your financial ducks are lined up well. Life is too short to work at an unsatisfying job if you don't have to.

6. Your health is starting to decline

In a perfect world, you will be healthy and spry enough to take advantage of all that retirement can offer. You will be perfectly able to handle that long bike tour through the south of France, and those backpacking trips on the Pacific Crest Trail. You'll have energy to spend time and keep up with your grandkids. But, if you are starting to see your health fade, perhaps it's time to stop working before you're unable to enjoy retirement the way you wish.

7. Your spouse wants you to

If your significant other is done working and has an urge to begin the next chapter of their life, perhaps it's that time for you as well. Many of the happiest retired couples are those that retire at the same time, and make post-work plans together. How fun is your spouse's retirement going to be if you're still schlepping into the office every day? (See also: 5 Money Conversations Couples Should Have Before Retirement)

8. You are confident in your post-work plans

Many people continue working because they honestly don't know what they'd do otherwise. But if you have mapped out your retirement life, have a good sense of how you'll fill your days, and feel excited about what you want to do, that's a sign you may be ready to retire. If work is actually preventing you from moving forward on your plans, maybe it's time to think seriously about stopping work, assuming you are also ready financially.

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This article is from Tim Lemke of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Beat Stress With These 28 Inexpensive Pastimes

Dr Penny Pincher — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 10:30:09 +0000

Expensive activities are stressful for me because paying for them weighs on my mind. I enjoy cheap or free pastimes, and even some pastimes that make money. Here are some inexpensive pastimes that you can enjoy to stay blissfully preoccupied without spending much money.

Exercise

The payoffs for regular exercise are immense, not least is the relaxation.

1. Bicycling

Bicycling can be a very inexpensive hobby. I picked up a cheap used bike for $28, rode it for five years, and then sold it for $35! In addition to a bike, there are a few other things you’ll need to get started: a bike helmet and a bike lock to keep yourself and your bike safe. If you buy an older bike, you may need to change the tires and inner tubes, but you can do this yourself for only a few dollars. A cheap bike provides transportation, exercise, and entertainment.

2. Walking

Even if you don’t have any money at all, you can still enjoy walking. Walking is a convenient way to spend time outside and enjoy the seasons with no special equipment or planning required. When the weather is bad, I enjoy walking indoors in shopping malls.

3. Hiking

Sometimes I like to go to go hiking in a park or trail away from roads and sidewalks. Hiking takes a bit more effort than simply going for a walk near your home or workplace, but provides more opportunities to get close to nature. Most hiking trips are free, but I recently paid $10 to go for a five-hour hike among the redwoods in Muir Woods National Monument while visiting San Francisco. This was the most entertainment I have ever gotten for $10!

Cerebral Activities

After you've worked your muscles, challenge your noodle.

4. Reading

Reading can be free if you get books at a public library or find free classics to read on your electronic devices via sites such as Project Gutenberg. It seems like there is a nearly endless supply of new books coming along, plus the old classics to catch up on.

5. Writing

Writing has been a great pastime for me. It is exciting to see my work published, and I have even been able to make some money along the way from writing books, articles, and through advertising on my blog. If you are not ready to publish your work for the world to see, writing a journal for yourself or stories to share with your friends and family is a great way to get started writing.

6. Crossword Puzzles

Crossword puzzles help keep your mind sharp and some people seem to really enjoy doing them. I have tried doing crossword puzzles a few times, but it is too much like doing a homework assignment for me to enjoy. Maybe I need to find some easier crossword puzzles to build up my skills.

7. Brain Games

I have tried brain games on my computer, such as the free trial version of Lumosity, and I sometimes play Math Blaster on my Android device. There are all kinds of free brain games that exercise your skills and help you stay sharp as you try to beat your high score. Some games even allow you to compare your scores with others.

8. Educational Videos

You no longer need to wait until Sunday evening for NOVA to come on PBS. You can get a wide selection of educational programs any time on Netflix ($8 per month) or YouTube (free). I like to find TED Talks on YouTube to find interesting perspectives on everything from physics to social sciences.

9. Online Courses

There are all kinds of online courses you can take for free, including subjects such as computer programming, statistics, and science. Here are some places to check for online courses that interest you:

10. Jigsaw Puzzles

Some people get excited about doing jigsaw puzzles and like to receive them as gifts. Jigsaw puzzles can provide many hours of entertainment for not much money, and you do get a sense of satisfaction — or relief — when the puzzle is complete. You can pick up used jigsaw puzzles at garage sales for a dollar or two that provide hours of entertainment, but you might find out that there are missing pieces.

11. Ancestry Research/Genealogy

You can make a serious hobby out of researching your ancestry. It is easier than ever to research family history and find links to your family’s past. You can get a long way without spending much money and produce research on your family history that will be invaluable to future generations.

12. Learn a Foreign Language

When you learn a foreign language, you learn more than just a bunch of foreign words. You learn about another culture and open up opportunities to meet and learn about new people.

Nature/Outdoor Enjoyment

When you tire of puzzles and brain games, re-connect with nature.

13. Camping

Camping can be a great way to get away and see things from a fresh perspective. You can find places to camp for free, but even if you pay to stay in a campground, you can find places to pitch a tent for around $20 per night.

14. Fishing

Basic fishing equipment doesn’t cost a lot of money. You can get an inexpensive rod and reel good enough to catch your dinner for around $25. I still have a lot of the same fishing tackle I used when I was growing up. The price of a seasonal fishing license varies by location. I paid about $20 and was able to go fishing whenever I wanted all summer.

15. Bird-watching

It is hard not to watch the birds at my house. I have seen orioles, blue jays, cardinals, robins, hummingbirds, geese, and even bald eagles. I put out bird feeders to attract birds near my house for easy observation. Even if you don’t put out bird feeders, you can probably find interesting birds to watch and enjoy. Binoculars are useful to be able to observe birds high in trees or too far away to see easily.

Food-Related

While you don't want to use food as a coping tool, lots of the activities around food prep are satisfying and relaxing.

16. Gardening

You get to enjoy planning your garden, watching it grow, and then harvest lots of free vegetables. Gardening can be very inexpensive if you start your own seeds and make your own compost to use for fertilizer. Even if you don’t have a yard, you can grow vegetables in pots on a patio or deck. If you don’t want to rototill a traditional garden, you can grow vegetables in straw bales or build raised beds for easy access.

17. Cooking

Cooking is a great pastime since it reduces the probability that you will spend money on expensive restaurant food. Watch some cooking shows or videos to learn cooking techniques and get ideas for recipes you want to try out. You can get started cooking with only a few pans and utensils.

18. Canning Food

If you have a successful garden, you’ll need to do something with all of those vegetables. The first thing I remember canning was salsa we made with tomatoes, onions, peppers, and cilantro we grew in the garden. It was messy and a lot of work, but it was fun to make those cans of salsa to save for winter and to give to friends. If you have a freezer, you can use an inexpensive vacuum sealer to pull the air out of plastic bags and seal up your produce to freeze without getting freezer burned.

19. Grilling

You can start grilling with a $20 charcoal grill. If $20 is too much for you, you can even make a grill for free! My kids build a kebab pit for free using concrete blocks they found and it works great. I also have a gas grill which is more expensive, but very convenient. Grilling outside is one of my favorite activities, followed closely by eating the food that I grill.

Creative Activities

Nothing is as satisfying as zoning out while making something. The doing is its own reward — but you'll also be rewarded with some of your own handiwork.

20. Wood shop

One of my favorite pastimes is working in my wood shop. I like to repair things, build small projects, and just spend time in my shop organizing my tools and thinking. A wood shop does not need to be expensive. I built one of my workbenches from a kit and others using recycled kitchen cabinets and countertops. Many of my tools were used tools that people gave me.

21. Photography

You can take surprisingly good photos with a cellphone or cheap digital camera, especially in outdoor lighting. A quality digital SLR camera with a zoom lens runs around $300 and will allow you to take your photography to the next level, providing more control over the camera settings.

22. Musical Instruments

You can pick up cheap used musical instruments on Craigslist or at consignment or pawnshops. Of course, buying the instrument is the easy part — learning to play it well takes work and practice.

23. Sewing

With a sewing machine, fabric, and a pattern, you can make your own clothes. Collecting bargain fabrics is part of the fun of sewing.

Social Activities

It's a fact of life that other people can be the cause of so much stress. It's also a fact of life that other people are often the cure.

24. Volunteer Work

There are lots of opportunities available to volunteer some of your time working for a good cause. Volunteering can be a good way to do something you enjoy and meet other people with similar interests. Some ideas for volunteering: animal shelter, food pantry, political campaign, church organizations.

25. Visiting

If you get bored hanging around your own house, try going to someone else's house! Visiting friends or family is a cheap way to get out of the house and do something different for a change of pace. Having people come over to visit at your place can inspire you to get cleaning and projects done.

26. Playing Cards

Playing cards is a classic cheap pastime, as long as you aren’t placing bets. Poker, bridge, and euchre are some popular card games that allow you to play competitively with others.

Cheap Entertainment

Finally, it's okay to be a couch potato from time to time.

27. Sports Fan

Some people spend a lot as sports fans, paying big money for tickets to games and buying team jerseys and other paraphernalia. But being a sports fan doesn’t have to be expensive. I don’t subscribe to any TV service, but I can find many of my Iowa Hawkeye football games for free, either on over-the-air TV or on radio broadcasts. Sometimes I can find a free video stream of the game on the Internet.

28. News Junkie

I listen to National Public Radio (NPR) for about an hour every day to keep up on news and world events. When I miss my chance to listen to the news for some reason, I feel out of touch and usually end up going on the Internet to check news stories I am following. Keeping up with the news is a cheap pastime and makes it easy to have an intelligent conversation with anyone you meet.

What are your favorite cheap pastimes?

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This article is from Dr Penny Pincher of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

More Living a Life of Weisure - 15 Suggestions to Help You Keep the "L" In Your Leisure-Time

Fred Lee — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:30:23 +0000

There were some excellent points brought up a few days back in a previous post about "weisure-time," a euphemism coined when we increasingly spend our leisure time engaging in our work. A few people indicated that it would be helpful to have some tips or suggestions as to how, if living a life of weisure was not desirable, to better manage our time so as to avoid it altogether. With that in mind, I’d like to offer 15 helpful suggestions to meet that end.

Before I begin, however, I’d like to point out that for many of us, a life of weisure is what we aspire to. Some of us just love our jobs enough to want to fill every waking moment with our work, regardless of how our friends and family feel about that. And for some of us, we might not have much choice, as our professional circumstances require that we work long after we’ve left the office, or possibly lose our jobs.

But if replacing your free time with business related activities makes you unhappy and you have some ability to change it, which is most often the case, then there are some ways to help lower the prominence of weisure in your life, and it all boils down to time management.

And while I’m no expert on the subject of time management, I do have a couple of things that give me some semblance of credibility in the matter. First off, I was once in college, and spent a great deal of time at least feigning being organized, namely in the interest of passing my classes. I’ve also held a few jobs where I was in charge of a number of administrative issues, so time management was an integral part of my duties. Finally, I’m a parent, and as anyone with children knows, being around kids and getting them where they need to be requires organization for the sake of your very survival. For the record, having children and a family also have a wonderful way of instilling us with perspective and reminding us of why we work in the first place.

But it has to come from us, and the sooner we acknowledge that, the sooner we can work towards achieving better balance in our lives, and here are some helpful suggestions to begin that process.

1. Define your role with your employer at the beginning, and then set your schedule accordingly. A life of weisure is usually something we evolve into. Most of us don’t seek out jobs knowing that they will require us to work 60 to 80 hours a week. They generally begin with reasonable working hours, and over time, we gradually build up to it. So set the proper precedents and work hard to maintain them.

2. Keep your job in perspective, and remind yourself why you’re working in the first place. This help you to define your goals at work as well as at home, then establish an acceptable amount of time exclusively for work or play.

3. Be organized (part 1). I realize this is a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how a little organization goes a long way. Set up a schedule and stick to it, letting others know that you won’t give in to exceptions. This also includes keeping your work space tidy. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted searching for something lost in the mess of my desk, not to mention the frustration and aggravation that ensues.. And lists can be your best friend.

4. Keep a journal of your time. History is a great teacher. By knowing how your time was spent in the past, you can gain a much better understanding of how to optimize your time in the future.

5. Learn to delegate. This is a complicated issue, because for some of us (myself included), the insecurity of wanting to know we’re needed turns us into martyrs who refuse to let others do our work, thus giving us the illusion that we are indispensable. In certain instances you may be the best person for the job, but for the most part, work can be shared with good results. If you still feel that only you should do the work, then you’re really not in a position to complain when it was a self imposed circumstance.

6. Learn to say no. One of the hardest things I learned at work was that I had a right to decline a task if it was with good reason. In fact, duties were often prefaced with an inquiry as to whether I had the time to do something. Of course, I foolishly said yes to everything, even when I had the right to say no.

7. Prioritize. Tackle the most important jobs or the hardest ones first. With the heavy hitters out of the way, you can almost find enjoyment in doing the lesser trivial things, almost like a mini vacation (I know, it’s a stretch). Also, group similar tasks together and do them concurrently to maximize efficiency.

8. Break up big jobs, if possible, and finish them over the course of more than one day. Chipping away at the stone helps make big tasks more tolerable. Don’t try to do everything in one fell swoop if possible. Also, breaking things up will often give you a fresh point of view when you return to it, which might ultimately help you do a better job.

9. Communicate. Be on the same page with other important people in your life. This includes your boss as well as your friends and family. We often are incapable of seeing how our lifestyles are affecting us and those around us, though your boss won’t hesitate to let you know. Like any relationship, constant communication will relay to you how your time spent is affecting your professional and personal relationship.

10. Deal effectively with distractions and interruptions. Unless you lock yourself up in your office (assuming you have an office) and unplug the phone, things are going to interrupt the flow of your work. The question is how to deal with them. When possible, take a message or promise to call back, whatever it takes to shorten the duration of the interruption. Also, don’t make yourself too comfortable during a distraction (I read somewhere it’s good stand up during a phone call) and keep the important task at hand in plain sight to remind you to keep it short.

11. Be organized (part 2). Set aside a block of time to return calls or respond to emails. Don’t try to take on everything that crops up, including phone calls, emails, and inquiries. Unless it’s urgent, which it usually is not, tactfully let people know that you will address certain things at certain times, and stand your ground.

12. Give yourself a cushion. Don’t schedule every working minute because things never work out exactly as you plan them. A break in time will give you a margin for error that can compensate for lost time due to complications.

13. Give personal or family time the credit it deserves. That doesn’t mean you have to pencil in time with your spouse in your calendar, but when you set aside personal time, give it the importance that its due. Don’t think of it as time that is easily sacrificed because it’s not as important as your working time. And try to do without cell phones for the few short hours that you spend outside of work. For most of us, there won’t be any negative consequences.

14. Consider compromising time in one place to have more in another. In other words, less time at lunch or in the break room might translate into more time at home (for some people this may not be desirable). This may not guarantee that you can leave work early (in fact, it probably won’t), but it might mean you won’t have to stay later.

15. Defend your own time. Others will feel that their needs are greater than yours. When you multiply that effect over many people, it can simply overwhelm you, and it’s a slippery slope when you start compromising your own time to attend to everyone’s issues. So let them know (again, tactfully) that it’s not okay to interrupt you and don’t accept the preface, “I know you’re busy, but…”

As always, if you have any of your own suggestions or experiences that you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you.

In the end, the situation and the need vary from person to person. Only you know your own circumstances, so act accordingly. It’s your life, and the impetus ultimately lies with you to decide whether or not you wish to maintain the “L” in your leisure-time, or replace it with a "W."

This article is from Fred Lee of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: