Cash In: Retirement Scare for Us

admin May 15, 2014 Comments Off on Cash In: Retirement Scare for Us

Was onsite in San Francisco all last week and one of our printers is ready to sell. Reminded me of the two things we need to know before do so.

First, we need to know if we have enough cash to support what we are going to do next whether it’s retirement or something else. Second, we need to know what it is we’re going to do next. We have to taste it, feel it, know it and envision it. Otherwise we will malinger and quite possibly hose up the sale of the business.

On the subject of having enough cash, I ran across an older article a few weeks ago you might want to review.

Retirement CloserTeresa Ghilarducci is a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research and she published an article in the New York Times in 2012 that I thought was noteworthy.

In that article she wrote, To maintain living standards into old age we need roughly 20 times our annual income in financial wealth. If you earn $100,000 at retirement, you need about $2 million beyond what you will receive from Social Security. If you have an income-producing partner and a paid-off house, you need less. This number is startling in light of the stone-cold fact that most people aged 50 to 64 have nothing or next to nothing in retirement accounts and thus will rely solely on Social Security.”

Yes, $2 million which is a number close to what I’m coming up with for another article.

She also wrote, “Seventy-five percent of Americans nearing retirement age in 2010 had less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts. The specter of downward mobility in retirement is a looming reality for both middle- and higher-income workers. Almost half of middle-class workers, 49 percent, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about $5 a day.”

Now it that doesn’t throw a scare into you (me), I don’t know what will. Here is a link to her article so you can read the whole thing. It’s worth a few minutes of your time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/our-ridiculous-approach-to-retirement.html?_r=1&

Are you ready to go into retirement?

We do provide on-site valuations of businesses that include an estimate of value as well as include recommendations of “fixes” that will improve earnings and thus value. This is particularly valuable for owners with three, five or even ten year time horizons. If you are ready to sell right now, we can provide an arms’ length estimate of value for your planning purposes. Email me at tom@cprint.com and let’s see where you are.

Do you want to transition to son/daughter or employee? 

I work with many business whose owners are preparing to do this. Parents are in their early 60s and are a little light on their retirement funds. Son wants to take over so their consideration has to be what they can expect as income from the transition as well as how well trained is the son to run the business so that income can be guaranteed?

Yes we do that.

If you’d like more information on how our program can help you, please message me at tom@cprint.com

In the meantime, here’s hoping that all your trails will be happy ones.

Happy Trails,

Tom

Comments are closed.