If you’re reading this, you connect to the internet somehow. Technology offers us a wonderful variety of entertainment, communication, and educational outlets. Over time, my beloved and I have accumulated two PC’s, two laptops, an e-reader/tablet and two cell phones, and a few “peripheral devices like scanners, printers and backup drives.. There are also the TV, DVD player, and my camera. The trouble is, these things won’t last forever (some of them are rapidly reaching retirement age). and over time, on a limited budget, we will need to decide which to replace and what to replace them with.
Here’s the thing – my techie needs are evolving along with what’s available to me to meet those needs. I want to do more work on my family tree and photos; I want to keep blogging. I need to keep track of my finances better. I may do some other writing.
In retirement, how connected will you want to be? You’ll certainly want a phone and internet connection. How many devices will you need? In the future, a smart phone or tablet may do most of what you need. How much or your budget are you willing to spend to stay connected? Do you expect to spend the same amount of time with your electronics? More? Less? What technology will accompany you into retirement, and what will you use it for? (Ideas: movies, hobbies, reading, blogging, photography, staying in touch?) How do you feel about the move toward Cloud computing?
As part of my retirement theme, I offer this weekly Thursday “Future Challenge” to get people of all ages thinking in general about their futures and/or retirement. Each challenge goes with a post of my own on the same general topic. Hopefully we’ll start some interesting discussions!
If you’d like to share what you think, or post on it, that’s great – and I’d love it if you’d share those thoughts in a post or comment (please tag posts TRS Future Challenge and link to this post) so others can also see them.
If you choose not to share them, that’s fine too – but with any luck, you’ll still gain some insight on where you’re headed (or would like to be), and how you can get the most out of your own journey.
I like doing the USA Today puzzles. Because they aren’t on the Kindle edition, I sometimes pick up the paper version. Although I don’t rely on this for all my hard news, I do enjoy reading the news snippets from various states, baseball stats (in season), and the sections with travel, tech, the TV/movie pages – oh yeah, and those puzzles.
In last Friday’s edition of the paper, a few articles caught my eye. There were a couple about general hacking techniques and recent Chinese hacking of US systems and servers. Another article was about Google’s new Chromebook laptops and their reliance on “cloud” storage and technologies. Does anyone else see a potential disconnect between these topics?
OK, I’m going to back up here and admit I’m old. I remember when computers crashed fairly often and business backups were on big tapes or disks that dwarfed frisbees – they looked like cake plates. I remember punching key cards. I remember programming parts of my own IBM-clone system in DOS. I remember the TRS-80, the Commodore 64, and the TI99 (which we bought our son in the 80’s, and on which he learned to program “if-then” propositions and created his own games.)
I’ve been a big fan of backups for twenty-five years. I used to need a whole packet of floppy disks for each backup. Now I own a couple of portable external hard drives (each smaller than a stack of “floppies”) that I use for backup and storage. It will take me quite a while to fill them. I despair of being able to buy a new computer in the future that will allow me to keep my own software, data, and written thoughts privately, though.
Of course, I know that e-mail, search engines, online shopping and banking, social media, and blogs are all part of the cloud – and I’m pretty careful about what I choose to access or share online. I remember, many years ago, reading that Bill Gates envisioned a time when we would “rent” software like Office so we could always have the current versions, and we would no longer need to buy large amounts of storage on our own computers for such programs. We would even be able to store our personal files and photos (can you say Flickr?) in cyberspace, so we could get to them from any computer. That time is here (welcome to Windows 8®), and it’s got the nice, friendly name of cloud computing.
But, well, here are my questions about the cloud. Although our data will probably never be lost to us (though formats and vendors/fees may change), how can we really be sure it’s always available ONLY to us? Hackers access military, financial, and social sites – and just think about how (for example) some hosts can mine our files for tags, email content, etc. The various different host sites on the cloud will put layers of protection around our data (as hacked military, financial, and social sites have done), and store it in more than one place, because after all, this is all about storage, and we’re trusting these folks not to lose our stuff. So how do we know if a host is trustworthy?
And security aside, what happens if I’m not able to access the internet? We’ve had several power outages here in the past few years – internet and even cell phone access have been lost. On those days, I was glad I’d loaded some of my Kindle books right on my device and not on the cloud. Do I really want to lose access to all my files (and programs) if internet access is interrupted or lost?
Also (I really don’t know), can I ever absolutely completely delete something that’s stored on the cloud? Will I ever know if somebody else accesses it? And here’s a bonus question: When was the last time you updated your Facebook, Google, WordPress, and other passwords?
I probably should digress again here and confess that I’m not any kind of tech expert, just a relatively fearless end-user. I have no idea how hacking really works, or how excellent my firewalls and clever passwords really are, or how concerned I should reasonably be. We Scots (even second generation) love our technology and inventions, but we’re also a skeptical (we like to say canny) lot. There’s always that tiny suspicion that we’re doomed.
I realize I’m swimming upstream, and the rapids coming at me may soon wash away my ability to buy and load programs onto my own devices. I hope I’ll be able to continue buying hardware storage devices for my files and data for a quite a while though, and in the meantime, I will be somewhat discreet about how and where I share things in my social network, including my blog.
I no longer routinely save personal data on my C drive – I now set up my programs to default to an external drive which is not always connected, because I’ve read that a lot of hacking goes right to memory. That means my own computer isn’t necessarily any safer than the cloud – and is maybe even less so, since (as confessed above) I don’t really know what I’m doing. So what am I to do? I’m not going to stay offline because something bad might happen, any more than I’m likely to stop riding in cars because I might be in an accident.
Somewhere out there certainly lies the potential for loss or unlawful use of my data. And the cloud is a really big, complex unknown. After all, everyone hopping onboard and failing to say the Emperor has no clothes doesn’t mean he’s fully dressed.
But maybe that’s just my Scottish heritage suggesting doom is lurking around the corner. Maybe I’ll be just fine and the Emperor really has some wonderful new clothes. Time will tell.
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Just in case you want to read more from a variety of sources about this stuff, because you like to worry and all, here are some related articles, videos, and posts:
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The way we budget our money and plan for the future necessarily changes over time. When we’re younger, we often take on some debt for education, to buy houses, or to otherwise invest in our long term goals. In mid-life, we hopefully approach our earning peaks and pay down (or off) our old debts while raising our own families (often taking on new debt). Once our nests are empty, we can start looking in earnest at how we want to retire. Hopefully, we’ve been putting away something for this time as we moved along.
Our ideas about retirement are likely to change over time, and really change when we start to make a budget for our “fixed income” years.
Think for a moment about your vision of retirement. To start, add up 25 years worth of realistic retirement income and add your other assets (social security, IRA’s less taxes, plus savings and other investments like home equity, stocks, and collectibles), then divide by 25 to get a rough average annual available allowance. Now think about your annual expenses (housing, food, transportation, recreation, and medical including insurance). Can you stay in your current home? Will you be able to buy a new car when you need one?
So what things are non-negotiable in your retirement budget, and what can you do to assure you will have them? What things do you think you might change to make retirement more comfortable? (Ideas: a smaller home or car, shorter vacations, eating more meals at home?)
As part of my retirement theme, I offer this weekly Thursday “Future Challenge” to get people of all ages thinking in general about their futures and/or retirement. Each challenge goes with a post of my own on the same general topic. Hopefully we’ll start some interesting discussions!
If you’d like to share what you think, or post on it, that’s great – and I’d love it if you’d share those thoughts in a post or comment (please tag posts TRS Future Challenge and link to this post) so others can also see them.
If you choose not to share them, that’s fine too – but with any luck, you’ll still gain some insight on where you’re headed (or would like to be), and how you can get the most out of your own journey.
All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey stopped to scratch his nose.
Pop! goes the weasel.
A penny for a spool of thread, a penny for a needle – That’s the way the money goes,Pop! goes the weasel.
Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
– from an Old English Nursery Rhyme
In our game of Financing Retirement, our reduced Money In amounts aren’t likely to grow much once my beloved retires, so we’re trying to get a handle on Money Out. What are we spending now, and what will we want (or need) to continue spending on later?
I’ve come up with a little four part process for this. Whether you’re looking at retirement or some other life change, I hope this will be helpful.
1. Get a handle on the status quo. If you use personal financial software like Quicken®, you may know exactly where you’re spending now, since you can divide each charge. For example, you can break down that Visa charge at Kohl’s to show how much was for clothing, for accessories and for housewares. You can see exactly how much each car is costing you, and how much you spend annually on liquor or lunches out, as long as you set up the categories that way.
It’s a real eye opener! The standard software is about $60, and if you are looking at making a big change in your future, it might be worth doing this for a while first to see where your hot spots are. You can set goals, watch your investments and loan balances, and use a variety of reviews and planning models there. You can even figure out if, on balance, your old car is costing you more than a new car payment.
There is also a free basic online option for much of this at Mint.com (also by Intuit), if you’re comfortable using the cloud for this sort of thing. Either way, if you’ve never looked with a microscope at where your money goes, and you’re willing to take time to do detailed entry for a while, I guarantee you’ll see something that surprises you, positively or negatively. And no matter how you do it, it’s important to understand where your money goes now, before you can make adjustments.
2. Where can I cut back? OK, so once you have a handle on your current expenses that you’re comfortable with, the next step is to consider what might have to change. If your new situation (we’ll use retirement as the example) will give you only 70% of your former annual income, what 30-35% of your expenses will have to go?
If you no longer commute to work, gasoline or train costs my go down, lunches out may go away, and clothing needs may be much lower (it turns out I spent a small fortune in pantyhose while I was working.) You may stop buying books and start using the library; you may need one less car; you may want a smaller home…. you get the idea. We have decided that we need to move to somewhere smaller and less expensive to maintain, possibly in a state with a more senior-friendly economy. We will keep two cars for the time being, and for at least the next five or ten years, we still want to travel.
3. What else will I need? We know some things can be cut back – but wait! There’s one more piece of the puzzle. Some expenses may actually go up. You may need a different kind of transportation. Housing might eventually mean assisted living. And medical care is another major item of Money Out that will go up with changing needs.
In our family, we have isolated three things as our largest anticipated expenses in our new circumstances: housing, travel, and medical expenses (including insurance.) To some extent we can control the travel and housing costs (although we’re watching the fate of the U.S. mortgage interest tax deduction with great, well, interest.)
Medical, prescription, dental, and vision costs are another thing entirely. Our costs have been contained up until now by good insurance, subsidized by employers. Really good insurance. My various cancer treatments took a paltry amount from our own pockets. Medicare will cover much less, and supplemental coverage will cost much more, than our current plans. Our out-of-pocket expenses will likely be several times what we spend in premiums and co-pays now, if our health stays stable. If we get sick, it will be even more. I’m, just sayin’, this has to be factored in.
4. Build a cushion, even if it’s small. Try hard to keep something aside for a rainy day – Like a major car repair, a broken heater, an exceptional travel opportunity, etc. If your budget is too tight, you will either add debt (another cost) or do without things that you really want or need. We are working to set up an “untouchable” fund that we would never use for normal monthly expenses. As we start planning, we’d really like to have about $25,000 to avoid having to pay back the fund too often. We’ll see if we can manage that, but we both think this is really important, regardless of the amount we settle on.
Because, you know, everything will be going along fine, then you stop to scratch your nose, and… Pop! goes the weasel.
Here are a few related posts and articles to further your thinking:
Remember when you were little and fell down? Usually more startled or scared than hurt, you would run to the nearest grown-up – often Mom, for comfort. And she would kiss it and make it better. The placebo effect of this action was remarkable (and helped Mom diagnose if there were a more serious injury.)
There’s something magical in a gentle touch. A connection, the knowledge that someone cares for you.
It usually doesn’t take much to comfort a startled or anxious child. A soft voice, a familiar routine, a calm reassurance.
Or just a kiss.
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This post was written in response to the WordPress Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Kiss. To learn more about this challenge, and to see other bloggers’ responses, click here.
The Retiring Sort 
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