I recently had a conversation with a newly retired client who said that her initial experience was close to research I had mentioned to her years ago. This research said that retirees go through three phases of spending at retirement:
- Initially spending tends to be higher than anticipated. All of a sudden you have free time to do things, and doing things can be expensive. And you have time at home to enjoy your house which leads to wanting to fix and improve those areas you barely had time to give a second glance during your working years.
- Then the health problems start to invade your lifestyle. This phase is where your spending declines since you are not out and about as much. Declining health has slowed you down but has not become expensive….yet.
- And that is the third phase where your budget suffers from the piling up of medical bills. A chart of your spending in retirement may look like an inverted Bell curve.
Right on the heels of that client conversation I saw that Hartford Mutual Funds has produced a series of articles to help people through the 8000 days (on average) that they experience in retirement.
The first phase Hartford discusses is the Retirement Honeymoon. We have attached the brochure on this for your convenience and will post more information on life after the Retirement Honeymoon soon.