Alex and Ramona came into the office with the usual pile of papers and folders.  Ramona started the talking.  She seemed the most animated and invested in our work together, as she had the most at risk.  Her heart was no longer in her job and she wanted retirement as soon as possible.  Alex, on the other hand, was quiet until after his wife had made her case.

After telling me the basic story about wanting to stop working as a nurse practitioner, a very tiring job, as she described it, she gave me a list of their current investment accounts.  Would this be enough, she wanted to know, to retire in the next year or two?

Ramona told me she had a 403(b) at her current employer, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.  (That’s a similar type of tax-deferred account as a 401(k), but for non-profit organizations.) She had lost a lot of money in it in the 2008 crash, but the current value was still $315,000.  She was sure it was invested badly.

She also had a Roth IRA with 35,000 in it as well as a couple of old 403(b)s from previous employers years ago with combined savings of 40,000.  At age 62, Ramona had had many years to build up her retirement savings, and she had been making regular contributions through automatic withholdings from her pay.  She believed that she had saved responsibly, but that the volatile markets may have ruined her chances to retire when she had hoped.

Alex was not quite 52, and still was working steadily as an editor for a publishing company.  He had been saving in his employer’s 401(k), but hadn’t been able to save as much annually as Ramona had.  His current 401(k) was worth $85,000, and he also had a Traditional IRA at Domini that he had contributed to in the 80’s and never looked at again.   It had $20,000 in it now.

Combined they had $495,000 in retirement savings.  This is a significant amount of money, but I calculated that it was not enough to maintain their current standard of living if Ramona were to retire in 2010 or 2011.  Ramona was very discouraged at first, but I assured her that we can still brainstorm ways to make things work other than just continuing as is.

When they come back, we would look at how to increase their savings rate, to decrease their spending, and to consider options of part time work or taking a different job.  I was sorry to end the meeting at this point, but it could also be a good time for them to go home and discuss options that they might consider.  At least when they left they seemed more on the same page.  Ramona was not going to quit impulsively until we had a workable plan, and Alex wanted to help Ramona find a way to make her working life more tolerable so that they could both continue saving towards a secure retirement.