A superb New York Times piece by Paul B. Brown takes its premise from an unlikely source: the late psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whose famed naming of the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance–experienced by dying people has, Brown writes, much also to say about financial planning. We’ll excerpt his article in , well, stages.
Those stages, Brown writes, “describe perfectly my reactions when I read recently that, according to Fidelity Investments, my wife, Alison, and I will need to save eight times our current annual income to come even close to having the kind of retirement we want.”
Brown continues: “Here’s how I reacted when I got the depressing news, which came as I was assembling our financial records in order to do our taxes.
“DENIAL “That figure can’t possibly be correct. Eight times annual income? How can any couple possibly put away that kind of money? They can’t. Clearly, it’s a typo. Has to be. That’s it, someone has the number wrong. Good. Now I
feel better. I am not going to think about it any more.”
“But, unfortunately, countless people have cited that multiple, or even more chilling ones, as a retirement savings goal. Denial was out. What replaced it?
“ANGER “Those financial planners haven’t a clue what things cost in the real world! We had four kids to put through college. Then there is our home, an 1870 farmhouse that should have come with a live-in electrician, plumber and carpenter. And do you know what
we are paying in property taxes? We have been conscientious about saving for retirement, and now you tell me we aren’t even close! This is America. There has to be somebody I can blame for this.
“Ranting made me feel better — and I pretended that I didn’t hear Alison mumble under her breath that I was acting like a toddler long overdue for his nap. Once I wore myself out, I figured that there was some way I could cut a deal or figure out an angle. That eight-times-income figure must contain some wiggle room. “
Up next: bargaining and depression