Sensational Retirement Quotes for Smart People

Here are some retirement quotes that come from Retirement Quotes for Smart People webpage on Sensational Quotes for Smart People Website to put retirement in proper perspective:

"The new retirement reality may be a messy proposition"
— Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

"We have a manufactured vision of what retirement is, and that doesn't necessarily correlate with reality. Unless you have a well-thought-out scenario, you're going to be in for a shock at retirement."
— Paul Allen, 64, a self-employed software developer in Dallas

"Why shouldn't retirees expect some reduction in Social Security and Medicare benefits, and soon? Before we retired, or will retire, we lived beyond our means by voting for those congressmen who would keep taxes low and borrow from the trust funds to pay government bills. Woe to the politician who would ask us to fully pay the taxes necessary for the services we expected from government.
This large accumulated debt to the funds is coming due. So we have an obligation to help pay it off by accepting less from them or paying higher taxes on our retirement income. As retirees, we have no right to just pass our debt off on our kids. We certainly helped create it and should help pay it off."
— Werner Gruhl, Columbia

"I used to have dreams that I died at my desk.
Now that I've retired, I don't have those dreams anymore."
- Unknown retiree commenting on an online article about retirment.

"If you have debt and you are going into retirement, I don't think you are ready for retirement,"
— Gary Gilgen, a certified financial advisor and director of the financial
planning department at Rehmann Financial in Troy, Mich

For more retirement quotes and retirement sayings, see Retirement Quotes at the Retirement Quotes Cafe

Retirement Planning Idiocy at Its Best

A poll in late 2007 showed that 80 percent of Americans believed their standard of living would go up after they stopped working, even if they decided to retire early.

So many Americans believed in this illusion despite the fact that some 40 percent of Americans had saved absolutely nothing for retirement.

Talk about a stupid retirement plan.

Contrast this to 2008, when the recession and market downturn hit. Then 63 percent of Americans said they had given up on the idea of retirement altogether.

While that finding was interesting, in April 2010 the Employee Benefits Research Institute's (EBRI) Retirement Confidence Survey last found that this percentage had jumped to 70 percent.

Interesting. It appears that more Americans are starting to face reality and realize that it takes at least a bit of money to be retired.

On another note, this was an unusual letter titled Retirees owe it to their kids to ease U.S. debt to the editor of the Washington Post regarding the Social Security System in the U.S.:

Why shouldn't retirees expect some reduction in Social Security and Medicare benefits, and soon? Before we retired, or will retire, we lived beyond our means by voting for those congressmen who would keep taxes low and borrow from the trust funds to pay government bills. Woe to the politician who would ask us to fully pay the taxes necessary for the services we expected from government.

This large accumulated debt to the funds is coming due. So we have an obligation to help pay it off by accepting less from them or paying higher taxes on our retirement income. As retirees, we have no right to just pass our debt off on our kids. We certainly helped create it and should help pay it off.

Werner Gruhl, Columbia

For an interesting on article on Social Security by Ernie Zelinski see:

“Social Security Is a Secure Way to Find Great Pleasue in Being Terribly Deceived”

Here are some Sensational Quotes about retirement:

Money is what you make it. Depending upon who you are — and your frame of mind — money can be anything you want it to be. Money can be: the root of all evil; or that which answers all things; or something that burns a hole in your pocket; or a means to freedom; or an interesting concept; or even a stupid concept. Whatever value you place on money, you must take responsibility for it. If money is evil to you, you created it being evil. If money is a problem to you, you created it being a problem. If money is joy to you, you created this concept. Take responsibility for your concepts. And be clear that these are just concepts. Nothing more and nothing less.
— from The Lazy Person's Guide to Success

"It [retirement] was absolutely boring. You can't go and say, 'I'm retired now.
That's it!' It won't take long and you're really gone for good and someone
throws the last shovel of dirt on a coffin with your name on it.
That's the moment you're really retiring — when you die."
— Ozzy Osbourne

"I personally am taking my retirement savings seriously and have by living very frugally been able to increase my savings to 60 percent of my gross earnings. I’m targeting a very early retirement. Achieving this high rate has been partly achieved by watching my Lifestyle Creep as you identify in Point 5. As I achieve pay increases I have actively decided not to change my standard of living."
— Comment on an article about retirement planning

Webster’s Dictionary defines retirement as “withdrawal from active engagement in one’s occupation or profession.” It is in fact much more.
— LYNN ANDERSON, Kansas Senior Press Service

Saving Only 10 Percent of Your Income Is for Losers

Here is an excerpt from a retirement planning article about how hard retirees are finding to make it in this day and age:

"The man who runs Palm Beach Share-n-Care Centre, where retirees and the aged to gather for events and activities, said pensioners hit hard by superannuation funds had to pull back on their favourite pleasures.

"You can tell in the bingo, they're not spending as much as they normally would," said Mr McRae.

"That's normally a pretty good indicator of how well people are doing.

"There's a lot of pensioners doing it tough at the moment. There's probably a lot who have done money in the stock exchange."

Plans for overseas holidays have been cut indefinitely, largely because nest eggs have evaporated, and the number of those on the borderline to poverty has increased, he said.

Financial advisors advocate that you use a simple retirement calculator to determine how much retirement income you will need before you submit your retirement letter. The exercise in determining how much money you will need for retirement will not result in perfect information, however.

Even if people could come up with perfect information, most people won't make use of this information because they aren't about to increase their savings much, if at all.

There are two problems conditions that most North Americans suffer from:

1. A need is any luxury that their neighbor happens to have.

2. Instant gratification takes too long.

Ernie Zelinski has just started writing a book called How NOT to Retire BROKE in which he is going to make the point that saving 10 percent of your income is for losers and people should save at least 40 percent of their income so that they end up with an adequate retirement income.

I was delighted to hear that someone is doing even better with their saving rate than Zelinski proposes.

On January 17, 2010, in reply to a blog post "5 Reasons Why You Will Retire Broke and Unhappy," an individual who writes his or her own blog post called Retirement Investing today stated:

"I personally am taking my retirement savings seriously and have by living very frugally been able to increase my savings to 60 percent of my gross earnings. I’m targeting a very early retirement. Achieving this high rate has been partly achieved by watching my Lifestyle Creep as you identify in Point 5. As I achieve pay increases I have actively decided not to change my standard of living."

In short, knowing how much money people need to retire comfortably will do them absolutely no good if they can't handle money.

It was J.P. Getty who said, "People who don't respect money don't have any."

Check out David Letterman's Retirement Plan of David Letterman

Here are a few new retirement sayings

I have retired, un retired, and retired again all in the past 10 years.
— Unknown retiree

“We’ll rock till we drop. We have all agreed this won’t be the last time. Everyone’s rocking."
— Ronnie Wood, (in July 2010 at age 63, in response to rumors that the Rolling Stores were going to retire. At the time, lead singer Mick Jagger was 67, guitarist Keith Richards was 66, and drummer Charlie Watts was 69.)


"It [retirement] was absolutely boring. You can't go and say, 'I'm retired now. That's it!' It won't take long and you're really gone for good and someone throws the last shovel of dirt on a coffin with your name on it. That's the moment you're really retiring — whenyou die."
— Ozzy Osbourne