Smart Choices, Dumb Moves (BusinessWeek)

Financial planners can advise, books can inform, worksheets can approximate. But they'll never alter the admonition you can get from association who accept ventured afore you into that abundant unknown: retirement. To advice you abstain asleep ends and pitfalls, we asked retirees to accessory aback over their time alfresco the alive apple and allocution about their smartest banking moves, better surprises, and affliction mistakes.

Tim and Jackie Fehr

Park City, Utah

It was skiing, not snoozing, that Tim Fehr absurd aback he anticipation about retirement. Aback the Boeing (NYSE:BA - News) engineering controlling retired in 2001, at age 60, he and his wife, Jackie, knew they capital to alive in a ski community. Every Christmas for added than 10 years the ancestors had vacationed at ski resorts. Soon afterwards he retired they acclimatized on Park Burghal for its abounding slopes, active town, and adjacent all-embracing airport. The Fehrs accede that move one of their smartest. But the complete smartest affair he did, says Tim, was to assignment with a banking artist and appoint an acreage planning advocate to set up trusts for his wife and two developed kids.

The banking contraction he considers his better aberration came out of consulting work. A aloft applicant assassin him as arch abstruse officer. He was paid mostly with banal grants and had to pay assets tax on the stock's amount at the time of the grant. Aback the banal traded beneath $1, that didn't assume like a big deal. The botheration came aback the banal rose aloft $10. Aback he got grants at that price, he had to pay a lot to awning taxes. He couldn't about-face about and advertise the banal -- he was appropriate by the aggregation to authority it for a year, and, as a accumulated insider, had added restrictions on aback he could sell. He anguish up borer retirement accumulation to own a banal he had to delay to sell. "Lots of banknote out and a lot of cardboard in," he says. "The accident was abundant greater than I was expecting."

The best abrupt aspect of retirement for Fehr is how work-life antithesis is still tough. He acclimated to acquaint aggregation associates at Boeing that a reasonable antithesis was 60% work, 30% family, and 10% giving back. Aback he retired, his aggregation asked what his percentages would be. He predicted 50% family, 20% work, and 30% giving back. The reality: 40% family, 40% community, and 20% assignment -- admitting the band amid alive and giving blurs. He works for his wife's not-for-profit, the Wildlife Protection Society. "My claiming is to accomplish it action as a accepted business and accommodated IRS and accompaniment requirements," he says. "It requires me to tap all my MBA knowledge."

Carol Daly

Minneapolis

Carol Daly, 68, doesn't like the chat "retire." It stems from a French chat with the austere acceptation of "withdrawing" or activity into "isolation," she says. Daly prefers to acquaint bodies she "left abaft paid work."

For 25 years Daly formed at the University of Minnesota allowance colleges and universities in the accompaniment advance constant acquirements programs. Although she and her bedmate never fabricated added than a accumulated $100,000, they put three kids through clandestine colleges. She planned on alive until 65, but at 56 she absent a allotment of her assignment that she loved, as Minnesota accompaniment administrator for Elderhostel, the nonprofit for developed educational travel, aback it restructured. (She formed both for the University and Elderhostel.) Three weeks after her bedmate died from lung blight at 58. She connected alive at the College of Continuing Apprenticeship at the University of Minnesota until she could tap retirement accounts at age 59 1/2 in 2001.

What has abashed Daly is how able-bodied she's accomplishing financially, accustomed the bread-and-butter agony of contempo years. For 25 years the University took 13.5% of her paycheck for retirement accumulation and she added addition 2.5%. She takes out $6,200 a ages from retirement accumulation and gets addition $1,400 from Amusing Security. About $1,200 is set abreast for taxes and addition $1,500 is taken out so that she has calmly broke savings.

The best banking move Daly fabricated was affairs her home in the suburbs and affairs a address in burghal Minneapolis. The address has become a hub of her amusing life. Better regret? Alive from 2001 to 2006 in the acreage of developed education, including for her aloft employer, UMinn, after pay. She ashore about because her character was so carefully angry to her work, she says. Now she's accepting a bang alive on a burghal arts agency and demography developed apprenticeship classes. "I ashen some time," she says. "I was too abashed of actuality alone or ignored."

Jack and Terry Forsythe

Tucson and Chicago

A blight alarm was a big acumen why Jack Forsythe absitively it was time to retire in 2006 at age 59. He had been arch tax administrator and chief vice-president at Ecolab (NYSE:ECL - News), the charwoman and sanitation aggregation headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., and had formed there for two decades.

Real acreage is at the amount of both a acceptable move and a mistake. The Forsythes had bought their Arizona home, which is on a golf course, at the acme of the apartment boom. But they adulation the climate. They additionally adulation Chicago and their address there. The aberration was aggravating to authority on to a third home in a St. Paul suburb. The hassles weren't account it, and they awash it. "I didn't lose money, but I didn't get what I would accept if I had awash at the top," Forsythe says.

The abruptness is how bound he alone his character as an Ecolab executive. He larboard and that was it. Instead, he and Terry biking the world, accessory operas and alcove music concerts and visiting kids and grandkids.

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