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The Double Whammy of Required Minimum Distribution in a Recession
Why we Need a Universal Basic Income
I turned 72 this year and decided to retire at the end of February. I’d had a long career as a self employed consultant doing troubleshooting for Unix systems and various other things, but had recently given that up and had worked at an Apple retail store for the past four years. I retired because I was exhausted from working that job and caring for my partially disabled wife and also because of the looming threat of COVID-19. I felt that I could be risking my wife’s life and my own by continuing to work in a retail environment.
I wasn’t sure that I had enough money. We have cash, 401K’s, annuities and stocks that not in retirement funds. All together that was worth about $400,000. With our Social Security income and the little bit that I make from the writing I have done over the years, every retirement calculator I used implied that I could expect to have an after tax income of about $50,000 a year in today’s money. With conservative assumptions of growth and less conservative assumptions about inflation, the calculators agreed that could continue for 30 to 40 years.
That seemed long enough to me. Statistically, we are unlikely to live that long and if we do live longer, then we would need some help from our kids or…
