Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

Dear Advisor,
I’m 49 and have $2.5 million in my 401(k) as well as $200,000 in a high-yield savings account. I earn $350,000 per year and put $35,000 of that in my 401(k)/403(b) plus a company match of 10%. I would like to retire at 57. Beginning at age 62, my wife and I will collect Social Security and I plan to withdraw $10,000 per month from my 401(k). Is this a good plan?

Concerned,
David

Dear Concerned David,
Wow! It sure sounds like you’re on the right track! In fact, it sounds like a track I’d like to be on! My only question is, “Is your place of employment hiring?” I’m kidding, but seriously, a 10% match — $35,000 — isn’t that far off from my yearly salary! So there’s that. I swear though, I’m not bitter. Really, good for you. And may I add just how wonderful it is that you’ll be making more than $150,000 per year… in retirement! With annual raises of about 3%, I’m scheduled to make that much in 2073!

P.S., I notice you don’t mention your wife’s income and only reference her once. You keep saying “I, I, I.” If things are not going well for you, might I suggest you write to our sister column, “Dear Lovevisor?”

Dear Advisor,
I’m 31, make $175k per year, and just hit the 401(k) millionaires club (depending on what the stock market is doing on the day I check the balance lol!) I own my own home and the mortgage is paid off (thanks Dad!) My question is, should I buy a vacation home as an investment, or should I stick with the stock market? Frankly, I’m a little bored with the market. 

Thinking about Florida,
Dan

Dear Dan Thinking about Florida,
Boy, that lol you included at the end of your “depending on what the stock market is doing…” statement really had me lol’ing too! Because that’s what the market does, doesn’t it? It goes up, and it goes down, up, then down. That crazy market! But I can see how after making your first million you’d be bored with it. Me? I’m not quite there yet. You see, my dad died when I was 14 and left us with nothing — less than nothing, actually. He didn’t even have a life insurance policy, even though he had the option to add that benefit for just a few dollars a paycheck (thanks Dad! lol!) But dad thought he was invincible, and at 14, I thought he was too. So it was a rude awakening when mom said he’d died in a car crash along with his other young son and wife. And get this: he had a life-insurance policy for his second family! Talk about lol! Lolololol!

Anyway, Dan Thinking about Florida, I think you should go for it. Get a place near the Everglades in alligator country. Then grab your SUP or whatever you kids are using these days and spend a day in the swamp with a leg of lamb tied to your fucking ankle.

Dear Lovevisor,
My husband, David, is a liar and a cheat. He recently wrote to a financial advice columnist (claiming to be 49 when he’s 54) about our finances and said that he makes more than $350,000 per year. In reality, he makes $30,000 per year if he’s lucky as an adjunct “professor” in perpetuity at a public university that has been threatening to hire him for more than 15 years.

To be clear, his work there accounts for about half his income, and the rest he makes driving Uber on weekends. I, on the other hand, do make $350,000 per year. So I bought him a Tesla because he said it would increase his profit margins, and I’m sure it does since I pay the electric bill and he always charges it at home. Frankly, I think he wanted the Tesla because he likes to hang around campus on weekends and pick up coeds. We were in love once, but the thrill, as they say, is gone. The problem is, if I divorce him, he gets half.

The Thrill is Gone,
Ashlyn

Dear Ashlyn The Thrill is Gone,
I actually know a little about Teslas, and did you know that they come with excellent air filters? In fact, if you trigger Bioweapon Defense Mode, the vehicle becomes virtually airtight. Were you then to bury the vehicle under, say, 10 feet of dirt, no sound or smell could ever escape its interior! Did I mention I recently inherited a small plot of useless land so far out in the middle of west Texas that a Tesla could make it there, but not back?

Ashlyn, for what I assure you is a fee much less than the cost of a Tesla, I would be happy to take care of this problem for you!

BTW, would you like to discuss this over dinner?

Dear Advisor,
I’m 46 and used to write a financial advice column (even though I wasn’t a financial advisor) for Yahoo Finance. I live in a 6×8 room that I share with Lawrence, who has absolutely terrible gas from all the pruno. My lease is up in 2073. Last week my only friend Marty got shivved and I guess my question is, would Yahoo be interested in a “Life-in-prison” advice column?

Dear Life-in-prison…

My self-critique of this piece:

1. Any humor piece should get into it quickly, with a strong “joke” up front. I didn’t do that here, partly because I didn’t see a way to do it beyond the headline, as I was parodying the question-first, answer-second format of these types of fake, terrible financial advice columns. Possibly I could have led with a reply from the FA narrator to a previous column to kick it off. Why didn’t I think of that?
2. Humor pieces like this should generally build in intensity throughout the story, and in just the second reply I suggest that the writer should commit death by alligator. That’s actually a pretty big leap from the reply to the first question. I should have made it more gradual.
3. Each “Q” and each “A” take up too much space. That could have been helped with a really short, somewhat innocuous reply to the first question with just a hint of something slightly off with the FA narrator.
4. I’m not quite sure the ending works, but I’d probably spent around 3 hours on this, and I was really tired of it. I don’t think I was committed to the idea because it didn’t feel all that original. Even if no one had done a fake financial advice column, it’s obviously derivative of a ton of stuff just like it out there. Still, I had fun with it and laughed out loud to myself while writing some of it, so it was a good exercise and it’s not terrible.