The New Retirementality: Planning Your Life and Living Your Dreams...at Any Age You Want, 4th Edition

Chapter 15

Calculating Income for Life

“There is in the act of preparing the moment we start caring.”

—Winston Churchill

We have come to the place where money meets life and heart, where we organize our financial expenses and income sources and attempt to bring them into alignment with the hierarchy of needs we discussed in Chapter 14. By going through this brief financial planning exercise, we can synchronously settle the emotional and financial ledgers.

In this chapter, I have provided simple worksheets for organizing your finances in a way that puts first things first, clarifies what you can and can’t pay for at this time, and offers peace of mind for the needs you can meet.

Many people have told me of going through life with a haunting, eerie feeling about their financial lives. They are afraid of those aching questions that never quite make it to the surface of a conversation: Am I walking a financial tightrope with my debt and spending? If my income took a hit, would my lifestyle fall like a house of cards? Is it okay to spend some money to have fun once in a while? Am I really living within my means? Am I going to be financially stressed and miserable in my later years?

Like a lost hiker in the mountains who discovers a global positioning instrument, just discovering where you are brings a degree of comfort—especially compared to the grinding fear in your belly that you are miles from safety. The exercises in this chapter will act like a financial global positioning instrument. ...