Posted on Friday, 17th May 2013 by

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Many obsess about what they will do in retirement and fear finding out too late – after they retire – that retirement isn’t for them. Most retirees discover early on that their time remains a cherished commodity and you will wonder how you ever worked and got anything done.

I’ve been retired going on 9 years now and this past year has been a blur.  We moved, sold our previous home ourselves savings thousands in real estate commissions, and we spent a year getting things organized and updated in our new home.  Plus we were blessed with our first grandchild in January and our daughter just announced her engagement. All in all my retirement has worked out well for my wife and I however there were many speed bumps along the way.

Retirees have the time to explore, manage projects like selling your home by owner, remodeling  projects, researching the best place to move to or vacation in retirement, rediscovering a hobby or interest, or simply learning how to best manage your TSP and finances now that you are retired and most likely living on a fixed income. I still find that I don’t have the time to do all that I desired mostly because I’m still managing my business and always researching one thing or the other. Life gets in the way and there are always things to do places to go, and people to meet and the nice thing about retirement is that YOU can tailor it to whatever you choose within reason.

What I like about retirement is that I can devote the time to interests unencumbered by the limitations you had while employed by others who managed your time to their advantage. Now, in retirement you determine what’s important, when to do it, how much of your time and resources YOU will devote to it. Retirement gives you freedom to pursue whatever you choose as long as you are in good health and had the foresight to save and plan for this life changing event.   Here are a few helpful articles and reports that you can use to effectively plan for your retirement:

One of my most interesting projects recently was selling our home through a For Sale By Owner (FSBO) program saving us thousands of dollars in real estate commissions. I will discuss this in depth in an upcoming article. Over the past 40 years I’ve sold 5 homes successfully through this route. Actually, it isn’t a difficult process as many realtors would have you believe especially with the new services offered by FSBO companies. One rather aggressive realtor called several times to tell me about the advantages of listing our home with them. Each time she called I reminded her that her company was listing a similar home just 8 houses down the street from mine.  I asked her why that home hasn’t sold yet with all of the advantages she proclaimed for her services!  We sold our home a month or so before the similar property down the street sold.  I held numerous open houses, used a local MLS lock box so I wouldn’t have to be there for showings, and our home was listed on the local MLS and on Realtor.com.

Federal employees are fortunate to have generous CSRS and FERS retirement and the THRIFT Savings Plan (TSP) plan to fall back on.  Both combined with Social Security can make your retirement financially secure. Unfortunately, I talked with several younger workers recently that aren’t contributing to their TSP.  I don’t think they realize just how important it is to fund their TSP accounts and increase their contributions yearly so they too will have a solid foundation to fall back on when they retire.

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Last 5 posts by Dennis Damp

Posted in ANNUITIES / ELIGIBILITY, BENEFITS / INSURANCE, FINANCE / TIP, RETIREMENT CONCERNS, SOCIAL SECURITY / MEDICARE | Comments (0)


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