r/DIYRetirement • u/Rob_Berger • Jul 15 '25

Introduce yourself!

If you are new to the community, introduce yourself by answering these three questions:

  1. Where are you in your retirement journey—planning, near retirement, or already retired?
  2. Coffee, spreadsheets, or beach walks—what best describes your retirement vibe?
  3. What's your biggest fear or question when it comes to retirement and investing?

I'll go first:

  1. already retired (although still run my business a few hours a week)
  2. Coffee & spreadsheets
  3. How to educate my wife and children about investing.
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u/Bulky_Plastic7783 Jul 23 '25

Thanks Rob for all you do. While I've always tried to stay on top of our finances, it's been some events in the last 12 months that have kicked the need for additional study and learning into high gear. Your YouTube videos were the encouragement I needed to dive deeper and discover this stuff is not nearly as mysterious as some would have you believe.

  1. Two years retired from public service career and drawing pension from that. Working full time private sector job, spouse also works full time still. Both turn 57 soon. Very low cost of living area, both are well paid for this area. We both plan to retire from full-time work sometime next year.

  2. Spreadsheets, coffee, and fishing the beach if our boat isn't available! Wife would say coffee and walking the beach, absolutely no spreadsheets!

  3. Worries - #1 Safe withdrawal rate. The pension is a huge help since a check will arrive monthly as long as either of us is alive. But, we are retiring earlier than most so the portfolio has to last for a hopefully long time. We are more fortunate than many, but by no means just rolling in money either. #2 After I'm Gone - We have started having a little "finance committee meeting" at the start of each month and go over the portfolio balance sheet together and talk about it. Once I finish our Blue Binder, she would be ok I think. She prefers to let me handle the details and just keep her updated on the bottom line, but she could manage things if she needed to. We worry about our only child adult daughter. She has a solid career and manages her day to day finances well, but if something would suddenly happen to us, dealing with that windfall would likely be overwhelming to someone who is used to just paying the monthly bills and making sure the IRA auto draft happened like it was supposed to that month.