Boing!

[susandennis]

10 years ago, I decided to leave IBM. I had about 3 months of knowing I was leaving, IBM knew I was leaving, I didn't have much of a job left and all of the IBM benefits to use or lose. One of those was investment counseling. IBM paid for something like $500 worth of investment counseling and you got to picke from a handful of different places to go. Being the sharp knife that I am, I went with the first one on the list, American Express.

I landed in the office of this white haired Republican who was very nice and very kind and very patient. He's been working for me ever since and he's done a great job. He wouldn't let me buy Krispy Kreme stock so I opened up an Ameritrade (again with the alphabet) account and bought it myself. But, he did make me cash in my Microsoft options and sell my Microsoft stock at the perfect time. And he's still patient and kind and nice. And I have a really pretty nice little nest egg.

Today he told me that he's changing the way he handles his practice. He's dropping a lot of clients, keeping a few, providing them more services and charging them more for them. He's keeping me and it's costing me $800 a year but, honestly, between what he's done for me in the past and will do for me in the future, it's well worth it. I am not investment saavy and I don't want to be. I want a Republican to do it for me.

I told him today that I wanted to us to look at retirement - seriously. A lot of what I have now is in IRA and 401K and other retirement thingies. He said that if I wanted to retire before age 59 and a half, we'd have to do some fancy footwork and the nums might not look too good. But, if I was ok with 59 and a half, then he thought we were in pretty good shape.

59 and a half is almost exactly 5 years from now.

One hour after he left, the office manager whispered to me that they are looking at moving these offices to a new location - more room and nowhere near here. The place they are looking wouldn't be the worst commute but not the best either and, honestly, any commute is going to suck.

I think maybe I'll spend some of my own quality time with my budget. I'll bet I can crank up the savings end and increase my options...