Daydreaming a little . . . the Steven Sandell Grant Program

Last updated on: October 21, 2014 at 11:00 pm by Jane the Actuary

Daydreaming a little . . . the Steven Sandell Grant Program 2014-10-21T23:00:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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So the Center for Retirement Research tweeted about this yesterday: $45,000 grants available to researchers to support a year’s worth of research. And I thought: “just on a lark, it would be fun to write up a proposal and try to talk my way into a year’s sabbatical from work!” — but then I read the fine print: this is only for academics. Bleh.

But I’ve been playing around in my head with the question of, “if I were able to submit a proposal, what would I propose researching?” today. My “thing” has always been a comparative view of retirement, and what works and doesn’t work about retirement systems abroad, and whether we can learn from them. On a personal level, though, I have a different question in my head: “what set of factors enable a person to have a successful retirement?”

Because, look, I work at home, and I live on a street that, while it’s still a residential street, is a direct route that’s designated a bike route, and periodically some retired men’s bicycle group bikes past our house. And one of the riders, on a semi-recumbent-three-wheeler, passes by with his walker hooked onto the back of the bike. And I think, “when I’m old, I want to be him!”

And then, well, there’s my dad — who, in my mom’s telling, doesn’t use his walker for much more than the walk from the house to the car, and from the car to wherever the daily errand is, and back again. And often enough, there isn’t even a daily errand. (Remember, I’m blogging anonymously, and they don’t know I blog, and don’t read blogs in general anyway, so I can say this.)

And, yes, some of this is common sense. It’s not hard to find advice along the lines of “have a plan when you retire” (Dad’s plan was, basically, to work at a contract house after retiring from GM, but then the contract house work dried up), and “develop hobbies” (Dad’s hobbies were boating and skeet shooting, neither of which he can do any longer, plus options trading, which worries us – though thankfully they’ve got a very good pension in any case). I’m sure he never set out to have day after day with nothing but watching TV and logging onto e-trade, and my mom never planned on spending her days watching videos of animal shelters and rescue dogs on the internet (when she isn’t taking my dad to an appointment).

But — as I said, they’ve got a good pension and a healthy IRA balance (the last couple years, the stock market has treated them well). That’s not going to be the case for the next generation, for my generation when we retire. (I said “my generation,” not “me” — we don’t have a DB pension, but we save very aggressively, and our standard of living is much lower than our income would allow for.) And there are no signs of any reform of our retirement system, so, unless Andrew Biggs is right (from the AEI — last time I saw something from him, his schtick was saying that there is nothing to worry about and Americans are really doing just fine, retirement savings-wise), we have to move on to Plan B: enabling Generation X to have a decent quality of life in retirement, even if they don’t have a lot of cash on hand.

What does that mean? Longtime readers know I’m not a big fan of “stay in your house until you die.” (“I’m sorry, but “aging in place” is a piece of *@!%” from April.) Based on a sample size of two — my parents and my in-laws — I can conclusively state that you’re better off moving to a condo, with no outside maintenance, no stairs, and ready access to mass transit, before you need to, rather than getting released from the hospital and finding out you won’t be medically cleared to drive for half a year, and having nothing within walking distance.

I also think that continuing to work, with (perhaps substantially) reduced hours and in a low-stress role, is something that can not only supplement Social Security but keep your health up, again based on a sample size of two (long after Dad’s involuntary retirement, Mom continued to work limited hours at Macy’s, until just this past year, when Dad had his fall, and her health is much better than his).

And besides this question is the further, broader question of, how much money do retirees actually need at different stages in their lives? No, I’m not talking about pay-replacement models which calculate decreases in expenses while still maintaining the same standard of living (no 401k contribution, lower taxes, no commuting costs, and — models vary here — no need to support children, save for their college funds, and perhaps no more house payments). I’m talking about a more absolute sense. (Sample size of — well, I don’t know. My in-laws, as is common in Germany, live off their Social Security benefits; as for my own parents, someday we’ll have to scrutinize their spending to ensure it’s appropriate, but not yet.)

And maybe all of this knowledge is out there, already, and what I really need is just the time to leisurely read through the articles and monographs already written, combined with access to a research library and a subscription to all those articles behind a paywall.

So, what would you research?

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