Ellen Rinaldi has held a variety of leadership positions since joining Vanguard in 1997. At present, she serves in our Planning and Development division, where she is responsible for protecting client information, among other key responsibilities.
The headline “He Wants to Retire … but She Doesn’t” was one of the most popular articles in the April 9 Wall Street Journal.
What struck me most was the author’s comment that many of the people she interviewed said the issue of when to retire was a point of disagreement with their spouses or partners. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a decision fraught with land mines. The question being asked isn’t just when to retire and where to do it, but something more fundamental—should we retire. And that question is being asked with much more frequency than I can remember.
Nowadays, e-mail inboxes are routinely flooded with scams—from missing pet and child notices, to official-looking IRS refund communications, to the infamous Nigerian money solicitations. Social media has opened up private lives to public viewing and also significantly aided identity thieves. I field numerous calls on this topic every week. In fact, I received an inquiry from a Vanguard crew member just the other day related to what has become a very common e-mail scam. Read more »
I was having lunch the other day with a retired colleague and friend. We catch up periodically, filling each other in on our children’s activities and our lives. This time, he really wanted to spend some talking about the retirement experience.
He’s not your ordinary retiree. In his last several years with Vanguard, he studied for and passed all the Certified Financial Planner™ exams, because he thought it would be helpful personally and as an alternate career option.
In my last post, I asked if you have a specific number in mind when it comes to saving for retirement, how you arrived at that number, whether you’re on track to reaching it—and, if not, what it would take to get you there.
Your response was tremendous, with more than 300 of you writing in. As Philip Moeller wrote in his blog, “the responses to Rinaldi’s blog post are uniformly thoughtful and heartfelt. Rinaldi learned a lot from them. So did I. So can you. Enormous amount of information, wise counsel, and guidance shared.”
I’m at the stage in my career where I’m willing to contemplate the fact that retirement is on the horizon—probably in the next 10 years or so.
Increasingly, I find myself talking about “retirement readiness” with friends and colleagues who are in the same situation. Recently, I had a chance to discuss retirement with a group of Vanguard clients. I found their comments to be quite telling, and pretty much in line with what I’ve already heard from others. Read more »
