Wife’s Contribution
Perhaps this isn’t the right place to discuss my Wife’s contribution to our retirement plans, since it’s a web site for us TSP owners, and she was not a Fed. However, it doesn’t seem right to discuss MY retirement plans without including the “Big Picture” of her contribution...we’re a Team ! It may not be relevant to you all, but it is important to us and our decision-making ! I suspect, like many others, your Spouse also has a “career”, and has contributions to the finances, so any “retirement” discussion should include ALL the factors ! Anyway, my Wife has no interest in managing the investment portion of her retirement $$$, so she’s left that up to me, anyway.
Since we both come from modest backgrounds, and we don’t have expensive tastes, our only retirement goal has always been : “We don’t want to retire like our Parents did, living from Social Security paycheck to paycheck.” That has lead us to stash money in our retirement accounts at a decent rate, but, perhaps unfortunately, made us VERY conservative in our investments to date. We HATE to lose a nickel ! At this point, with both of us about to be retired (me, age 57; her, age 60; in 2012), we’ll both have an old-fashioned pension check, and a combined retirement pot in the mid-six figure range. Once SS kicks in for her in 2 years (but that's a whole 'nother discussion, isn't it ?), we should be more than able to meet our current life style expenses, and do some traveling and other stuff we want to do !
As I’ve noted before, my Wife retired after 34 years teaching with 3 different school districts, in 2 different States. Her first 10 years teaching (BM...”Before Me” !) got her vested in that State’s retirement system. Her remaining years were in a different State, but we didn’t “buy back” the 10 years...too expensive ! Thus, she gets a small pension from her 24 years, and an even smaller one from the 10 years...between the 2, it’s enough to pay the mortgage and the electric bill !
After we were married, we opened her 403(b) account. The School Board changed providers, so we ended up with 2 accounts with 2 vendors. We’ve rolled her 2 accounts into a self-directed IRA with USAA so that we could manage the investment, and draw on it as needed, with a minimal amount of hassle. Her last chunk just hit the USAA account, so we have to figure out what to do with it !
I suppose I should start a new topic in the “Investment Portfolio” thread to discuss the specifics of what we have done with her IRA so far, but right now, we have individual dividend-paying stocks and some mutual funds : SWK, MKC, BMY, PAYX, CMC, GE, MCD, IP, POM, and T. We have 3 USAA products, 2 bond and 1 stock funds : USISX, USAIX, and USIBX.
The beauty of our Plan is...she’s eligible to withdraw from the IRA , without penalty, now ! When I retire in April, I’ll roll my TSP over to my USAA self-directed IRA, but I won’t be eligible to touch it without penalty for a couple of years....in the meantime, we can tap her IRA, as needed, to get us through the next 2 years !
Based on my calcs, this should work !
Stoplight...
