Finance/Children

Hey Taylor I’m suddenly on the fence about retiring. I’m 52 and had been planning to cash out this year, Taylor but the Kovar pandemic has me a little nervous about making the change. Should I hold off or stick to the plan? - Olivia

Hey Olivia - This has become the big question for a lot of people. In the last three months, the Dow has traveled about 15,000 points in either direction, making investors feel anything but safe with their retirement funds.

In theory, you need to have enough in savings to withstand these downturns. That’s not always the case, but it’s what we should prepare for. Let’s talk about what you need to feel comfortable in your decision. table for retired people, you could get pretty bored without a job. Assuming you keep the position and earnings for another year, that lets your savings go further and also gets you a year closer to when you can start pulling from retirement accounts as needed.

How flexible can you be? Anyone looking to retire needs to address this, not just those doing so while facing economic turmoil. Do you think you’ll be able to adjust your lifestyle enough to weather a 3050% drop in your portfolio, or will that have you running out of money too quickly? Do you have prospective sources of income like consulting or a freelance trade that can supplement your savings? Is part-time work something you might lose on account of the pandemic? Trust that the economy will recover, but also take stock of how adaptable you can be in the short term.

What can you use now? If you’re retiring at 52, you must have money beyond your traditional retirement account to keep you afloat for the next seven years until you can withdraw without penalty. A lot of early retirees plan to live off of 4% of whatever they have in their brokerage accounts, since that theoretically allows you to take earnings without touching the principal. If you have, let’s say, $5+ million available, you should be able to withstand the downturn long enough for things to recover. On the other hand, if you have less than a million, you might be cutting it close at a time when people really can’t afford to cut it close. Trust the systems, but don’t let too much ride on hope. Work if you can. With things as tumultuous as they are, if you have a good, safe job that provides a useful service and brings in significant income, you might want to stick it out for another year. Especially with travel being on hold and so many of the normal luxuries off the It’s hard to adjust to the things outside of our control, especially when they threaten our livelihood. Whether you continue with the retirement plan or work another year depends on what you’ve got and how much you need. Just be honest with yourself and you’ll find the answer. Stay safe!

Legal Disclaimer: Information presented is for educational purposes only and is not an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. To submit a question to be answered in this column, please send it via email to Question@GoFarWithKovar.com or via USPS to Taylor Kovar, 415 S 1st St, Suite 300, Lufkin, TX 75901. I have come up with a new psychological diagnosis, one that I won’t, however, be submitting for approval to the powers that be: simply, odd. My “odd” is to be distinguished from ODD, the acronym for oppositional defiant disorder, an invention that enables mental health professionals to obtain payment from insurance providers…but that’s another column entirely. Stay tuned! Odd is what all human beings are. Starting from the top down, all adults are odd. I am odd, you are odd, Bill Gates is odd, President Trump is odd, Barak Obama is odd (must have diversity, you know), and so on. Most people, by early adulthood at the latest, begin to identify their personal peculiarities and realize they must be concealed from the general public lest they cause social and employment difficulties. Adults who fail to conceal their oddities are prone to becoming known as “jerks” and other equally hobbling nicknames. Or, they become mental health professionals, politicians, and famous actors who win Academy Awards. Odd is unique to humans. Animals –take dogs, for example—only become odd when exposed to very odd humans for long periods of time. Just for the record, my dog, Mazie, is not odd, which is probably due to my wife’s influence. Mazie is simply cute and playful. Children, being human, are odd. Children, however, are not capable of the introspection necessary to realize they are odd. So, they let their oddness hang out rather indiscriminately. In my career as a family psychologist, I have come across a veritable plethora of odd kids. Take the four-year-old who played only with G.I. Joes, wanted to dress as his role model, and often insisted upon being called “Sargent Joe, Sir.” Sargent Joe’s parents sought the advice of a psychologist who wanted to assign him a diagnosis and take him into weekly therapy sessions where he could work out his “anger issues.” Wisely, the parents declined “treatment” for their very inventive and imaginative mini-Joe.

John

Rosemond They subsequently asked my opinion. I told them his fascination with G.I. Joe was not likely to last past second or third grade, which it did not. Mini-Joe did what is called “growing out” of something odd. When he realized that other boys did not all share his obsession, he let it go and moved on. Sometimes, a child’s odd behavior needs more of a push. It needs to be stopped, for the benefit of all concerned. Take the pre-school girl who started making clucking sounds with her tongue when she was a toddler. By the time she was in kindergarten, her clucking was driving her parents up the proverbial wall. Her teacher, furthermore, wanted her to visit with the school psychologist. She mentioned the ubiquitous “spectrum,” which probably applies to everyone. I told the parents their daughter’s clucking was simply an annoying habit that, unfortunately, was drawing lots of well-meaning but counterproductive attention. “Tell her she can only cluck in her room and if she forgets and clucks outside her room—at, say, the dinner table—you will send her to the downstairs bathroom for five minutes, where she can cluck the entire time.” Voila! Within two weeks, the clucking stopped—outside her room, that is. Is the little girl still slightly odd? Yes, but that’s life. Some things just take patience and a lotta love. Family psychologist John Rosemond: johnrosemond.com, p arentguru.com.

John Rosemond has worked with families, children, and parents since 1971 in the field of family psychology. In 1971, John earned his masters in psychology from Western Illinois University and was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society.