Page 42 - Ready Set Retire

Stephen J. Kelley

Through the Looking Glass

I call this section through the looking glass because I am
hoping to convince you to look at things in a different way,
which if successful, will open up a whole new world of
possibilities to you. In the past, you were taught to maximize
each asset. Your nest egg. Your other savings. Your pension.
Your Social Security. In every case the general belief is to work
to maximize each and every one.

It’s not so hard to understand why. As we moved from a
workforce of savers and became a workforce of investors, the
focus moved from income planning to growing the nest egg.
When we had pensions, and for those who still do, it was easy
to think about retirement planning as building up a stream of
income, because that’s what we were doing. My father never
worried much about building a big retirement account as he
had pensions he knew he could rely on. Later, when he started
consulting and his income grew substantially, he did more of
that, but as much as anything else it was to reduce his tax
burden. But his focus was always on building a source of
income, not a pile of money.

Our focus has been on that pile of money. As such, we tend to
look at each pile and each asset as a separate item that has to
be maximized. Unfortunately, this can have the impact of

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