Still kind of on break

I was trying to find an article from FPANET the other day. I knew that I had referenced it somewhere in this blog, but I couldn't find it.

It's a good article, very useful. I figure if I could use it, maybe you could too: National Savings Rate Guidelines for Individuals by Roger Ibbotson, Ph.D.; James Xiong, Ph.D., CFA; Robert P. Kreitler, CFP®; Charles F. Kreitler; and Peng Chen, Ph.D., CFA

The key point from the article, at least with respect to what I was looking for, is embodied in this chart:


To figure out how much you should be saving to achieve an 80% income replacement level in retirement (starting at age 65), find your age in the left-hand column. Then select the income band that is closest to your current income from the second column. The third column tells you how much of your current income you should be saving. If you already have retirement savings, then divide the amount you have saved by $10,000, multiply it by the value in the fourth column, and subtract the result from the value in the third column.

For example, suppose that you are 45 years old, have an income of $100,000, and current retirement savings of $450,000. Your base savings rate is 26.2%. Since you already have $450,000 saved, you can reduce that savings rate by 17% (45 x 0.37%), giving you a savings rate of 9.55%.

Ordinarily, I don't have much good to say about financial planners, but I will say that the Journal of Financial Planning is a pretty good resource, and not just for professionals.

America fumes while W grovels

Poor George, no friends even at the Wall Street Journal:

Though the oil market's problems are complex and deeply entrenched, Mr. Bush likely can't escape some blame for the current price spikes. The U.S. invasion of Iraq reduced that country's oil production for several years, and added to the geopolitical jitters in the Middle East that have also helped support prices. The dollar's slide also drives up prices because oil sales are denominated in dollars and producers need more of them to make the same profit. The weakened currency stems partly from the rise in U.S. government debt in recent years.

And don't forget Ben Bernanke's contributions to high oil prices: Who would have thought that dropping rates would cause the dollar to soften so much?

Smile? What smile?

That's right. A nine hundred dollar heating oil bill. The same day the stimulus payment arrives.

A smile on my face and a spring in my step...

Time for a break

Ugh. Too much time spent thinking about money. I need to take a break. Losing sight of what's really important.

Hey, but if you like thinking about money, here's a pretty much awesome retirement savings calculator: Retirement QuickPlan.

AARP -- It's for hotties!

Even though I'm not strictly AARP-eligible (11 months to go), when they sent me an invitation to join, I leapt at the chance. $39 for a five-year hitch.

What do I get for my forty bucks? Well, if they live up to their word, they'll be sending me a cool new wireless indoor/outdoor thermometer (sweet!). Plus someone to whinge on my behalf in Washington. And, they've got a great discount package for motorcycle and mobile home insurance.

Woot!

So what do you think about this?

Jane over at Boston Gal's Open Wallet is a top, top personal finance blogger. Focused, disciplined, and with real financial goals for herself. But this post of hers stopped me cold:

Every so often you hear about someone who has received an amazing gift of good fortune. They won a lottery, received a large inheritance, or obtained a job with crazy stock options that have made them millionaires. Basically, through shear luck, they have managed to leap frog into great wealth and early retirement. But these are the rare exceptions. Most of us will never be that lucky.

For the majority there are no short cuts. Getting ahead requires hard work, steady employment, evolving skills, delayed gratification, life-style compromises, spending hours, months, years in jobs we don't particularly like, prudent investing, increasing savings, and on and on. Eventually, if we work hard enough and save long enough, we reach the day where all of our efforts have paid off and we can retire our stresses and worries and support ourselves in our golden years.

Now maybe it's because Jane is a New Englander, but man is that a grim view of life. You have to slog your way through a joyless existence at a job that sucks, never getting what you want, until one day -- long in the future -- just as your teeth rot out and your vision goes, you can finally enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Like this poor dear:


who didn't get to smile until it was too late.

On the run

I've got this stack of e-mail drafts, pieces of paper, and ideas floating around in my head for blog posts, but I have no time to do anything about it.

The $100,000 Quandary
One of the most popular topics in this blog (based on traffic stats anyway) is the whole question of what it's like to try to raise a family on $100,000 per year. We've been tracking our expenses much for carefully for the past 9 months, and I have some new data to post (and some new observations).

Scamfotainment
I saw this link (save money by refinancing your car loan) in the Globe (ha!) a while ago. It's even worse than the cr*p that they syndicate from bankrate.com.

The Medical Costs Meme
In my last post, I wrote about health costs and how lucky we are not to be in Bright Side of Debt's situation, being chased by collectors on medical bills, even though she and her family are insured. Yesterday there was a feature in the Times on that very subject:

Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be — often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.

With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline.

P.S. Thanks as Always to Claire
I've just got to say, it always makes me happy when my feed reader says there's a new post over at Tired But Happy. Maybe it's the fact that she and her partner are older parents like me, or that their kid is about the same age as my eldest. Or maybe that hers is the road not taken. After we got married, Mrs. Bluebird and I thought, for maybe 5 minutes, about staying in the somewhat funky, transitional Boston neighborhood where I was living. But a shorter commute, and the chance to live in the midst of a lot of recreation-friendly open space won out.


But we could have been like Claire.