The Mantle of Responsibility – Planning Ahead

Most of us on the path to FIRE hopefully have at least some plans for what we want to do once we’ve reached whatever our magic number is.  I think that you want to be retiring to something you like rather than from something your hate (your job in most cases) because otherwise you’re probably going to find that retirement won’t actually make you happy.

Some people plan on spending more time with family and friends, or doing lots of volunteer work.  Bowls and golf also seem to feature pretty heavily, as does looking after grandchildren. 

On top of that day to day stuff a lot of people have a bucket list of things they would like to do, places they would like to go.  I’m a big college basketball fan so I’d love to go to the NCAA Final Four, and ideally tick off two boxes at once by seeing Duke play beat Carolina at the same time.  I’d also love to go to the Monaco Formula One Grand Prix and the US Masters Golf. 

On the travel front I’d love to go to Madagascar and see the wildlife there, head to Mont St Michel in France, Macchu Pichu in Peru as well as Petra and the Great Pyramids of Egypt.  It’d be great to do another huge road trip through the US like we did a while back but this time with the kids. 

I’ve been snorkelling in a bunch of places like Thailand and Cuba, but still haven’t actually been to the Great Barrier Reef and would love to go to Palau.  Then I’d love to be a passenger (and maybe a driver) doing a fast lap at a racetrack (ok that one I could probably do right now!).  Maybe see a rocket launch and go to the Kennedy Space Centre!  There’s a bunch of other stuff that I’d like to do on top of all that, but that’s enough for now.

The reality is however that even though we should have the money for all of this, it might not be so easy…

The sandwich generation

If you’ve never heard of the above term, well lucky you!  What it refers to is adults who have at least one living parent aged 65 or older, and also children under 18.  So my wife and I definitely fit into this category.  Our parents (including step-parents) are mostly over the age of 65, and our kids are in the early years of schooling and kinder.

Thankfully all of our parents are in good shape financially so there’s no need for us to support them on that front.  And at this stage all of them are able to live at home without requiring any support from us, and are leading entirely independent lives.  At some stage though there is a decent chance that they will need help, and hopefully we’ll be in a position to provide it if necessary.

At the other end of the age spectrum our kids definitely need support at the moment, and will do for quite some time.  Given our youngest is still in kinder we’re got at least another 15 years until the end of high school.  After that both kids may go on to university, but they will hopefully be at least somewhat independent at that stage.

Planning ahead

You knew there was going to be a spreadsheet right?  Everyone loves spreadsheets!  Actually this could just as easily have been done in a table and it doesn’t actually use any spreadsheet functions, but I digress.

The below is a representation of all the major family members in most people’s lives that you may need to take into consideration so a family of two parents, their own children, and their own parents.  I’ve changed it from our actual situation but it’s similarish.  Depending on your situation you may need to add on other relatives that you’d be expected to care for etc such as step-parents, siblings you need to look after etc.

For any given year it shows the ages and lifestage for those that are working or studying, I’ve assumed that in this instance at least everyone who is 65 is retired.  Obviously that may not be the case in which case you could change the spreadsheet, this is for illustrative purposes only. 

It also has whatever major plans we have for that year, in this case I’ve just filled in holidays but could also put in any major expenditure like buying a car, moving house etc or any other major events.

Using a version of the above tailored for our own circumstances I can see when my wife and I be working, when we’ll be retired, how old our kids will be at that stage and what they’ll be doing, plus whatever we might have planned for that year. 

Hello school holidays

What this means is that even though my wife and I will hopefully be retired a number of years before the kids schooling is finished, we really can’t do any big trips with them unless we take them out of school. 

There are our summer holidays which is fine for any month long southern hemisphere trips, but given none of us are fans of the cold it makes it a lot tougher to do any extended northern hemisphere trips unfortunately.  So for the next 15 years or so trips to Europe or the US are likely to only be a couple of weeks long and over school holidays.

I mentioned above that one of the things we’d love to do is a huge road trip through the US, ideally with our kids.  We probably don’t really want to do it while they are still in school though, which means that the earliest would be when our youngest finishes high school.  Our eldest at that stage may be in a job, or could have just finished university depending on how things pan out. 

That’s probably our one shot where the timing actually lines up reasonably well for everyone though, and even then it means a fair amount of interruption to their lives, albeit hopefully something they would want to do!

If you don’t have kids obviously this isn’t an issue, or your kids may be older relative to ours and it is easier to travel with them, or you may just not want to take them with you.  So there’s lots of variables, but using the spreadsheet you can hopefully figure out what the timing of this might all look like and whether it is possible or not.

Parental care

Another big issue could be looking after our parents.  As I said above at the moment none of them need our help either financially or with looking after themselves at home, getting to medical appointments, doing the shopping etc.  I’m obviously hopeful for everyone’s sake that this will remain that way, but there are absolutely no guarantees that this will be the case.

Looking at the example spreadsheet above though which has some similarities to our situation, you can see that when the longer overseas trips are being planned is when the grandparents are in their eighties and are more likely to be needing help. 

Another issue for both us and any other potential FIRE devotees is that if your parents do start needing help at home, being realistic it’s most likely going to be the person who is already retired thanks to FIRE rather than the siblings who are still working, particularly if you’re all in your forties or fifties when most people are still working. 

You’re retired they’re not is likely to be the argument, and therefore in their eyes it’s only fair you should be the one who is responsible for caring duties rather than someone who is going to have to give up work and hurt their finances.  You can argue until the cows come home about what is “fair” for everyone involved but realistically it’s likely to be you.  This assumes of course that you have siblings which may or may not be the case.

Frogdancer Jones at Burning Desire for FIRE wrote this post a couple of years ago about her situation.  In her families case the responsibilities are being shared around a fair bit which is great, but not everyone is going to be in the fortunate situation of having a sibling with a flexible situation, particularly if everyone else is a long way from retirement. 

So looking after your parents is something else that you may need to take into account for your future plans.

Club sandwich generation?

I thought I was being original with that one but apparently it is already a term, in any case it refers to having your parents to look after, your kids to take into account, and looking after your grandchildren as well. 

If this does happen it will likely be in your 50s and 60s which might otherwise be your planned travelling years depending on when you are retiring, so it’s something else you may need to think about.

So what does it all mean?

It may well be that none of this is an issue for you at all.  If you retire when you’re 40 with no kids, your parents are 65 and in good health and stay that way for a very long time, well happy days! 

But for a lot of people their life in retirement may not be the relaxing time they had planned.  If your kids are still in school chances are pretty good you’re not doing a 12 month round the world trip.  If you’re the primary carer for your Mum or Dad, then depending on the level of care needed you may not be doing much holidaying at all.  And if you’re looking after your parents and your grandchildren at the same time, well you’re going to be a pretty busy bee.

Because of this I think it’s important to make the most of the opportunity to do any of the stuff that you’ve been putting off until FIRE while you can.  You also want to be thinking about the timing of any plans you have and the ages of the people involved.

Obviously there are lots of different family situations out there with different ages, relationships, dynamics and all the rest of it.  Which means that you need to think about what your own situation is like and whether or not any of the above is applicable or you can ignore it all. 

I think it’s fair to say that for most people though there are some potential issues that may affect you either already or down the track when you’re retired.  Some of them might be pretty nice problems to have to deal with like lining up when the kids can do a big trip with you.  But others are going to be a lot less fun like potentially caring for your parents.

Have you taken your future family situation into account when planning for FIRE?  Has this post changed your mind?  If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more like it please subscribe!