Essentials of Personal Financial Planning

CHAPTER 19 APPLICATIONS IN PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT

CASE STUDY

Hope and Jay Williams are both age 55. They married late in life and have no children. They also have very few major expenses because they own their home and both their cars outright, and they have no debt at all. Never much for travel, they are more than content to spend weekends at home watching sports on TV, taking only occasional trips to visit friends and relatives in other states. It’s fair to say they have a very modest standard of living, even though they both have good jobs that pay well.

Jay is project manager for Johansson, Morgan & James, a provider of management and technology consulting services to the U.S. government. Jay’s area of specialization is information technology for the IRS. Although all of his friends assume he must hate consulting for the IRS, Jay actually loves his job and looks forward to coming to work every day. He has no desire to retire anytime soon and plans to work until he turns 70.

Hope has a very different employment story. She spent the last 30 years working for a local defense contractor in the aerospace industry, x-raying the inside of aircraft wings using neutron radiography. But crawling through the fuselage of aircraft on the midnight shift has taken its toll on Hope. Arthritis has started to set in, the odd sleeping hours have wreaked havoc with her immune system, and she ...