What Are the Go-Go, Slow-Go & No-Go Years for Retirees?

Your retirement spending probably won’t stay level for 30 years. Adam Bornn explains why.

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You’ve used the expression many times before about the go-go years, the slow-go years, and the no-go years. And although it’s cute, it’s actually very effective. Like, I think it really does summarize what a lot of people… I just look at my parents’ friends, some of my friends who are a little bit older.

Walk our audience through that. It sound kind of somewhat self-explanatory, but walk us through it anyway because it really is quite accurate.

Yeah, so we call it, like, the laddered income strategy, and really it’s, we didn’t coin it. We’ve, we’ve definitely kind of pushed it to Canadians where, yeah, from the age you retire, the point you retire to about age 75. There’s a lot of data out there that shows age 71 to 73, you’ll start to slow down.

Doesn’t mean you can’t kind of travel and do those types of things, but it does start to slow down. So we typically will build out the go-go years to age 75, and then from 76 to 85, slow-go. Like, you’re still doing things, you’re still spending money, but it does start to tail down. And this isn’t just, like, our thought or feelings around this.

You know, I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and we’ve been seeing clients transition through these phases. And so, you know, really the idea with the go-go years is, is make sure you’re spending enough early. And again, it’s, it’s that psychological shift, but it’s also knowing what you can spend. So if you do a retirement plan and it’s, you know, you have $60,000 a year after tax adjusted to inflation until 95, maybe you wanna make it, like, 70,000, 60,000, 50,000.

Now, I’m oversimplifying that, but there’s this laddering income because we all have a bucket list. Dave, you have a bucket list. I don’t know what’s on. It’s probably something to do with sports and A&W fries or something like that. But…

Yeah, exactly. We all have a bucket list, and for most people, that bucket list past age 75, especially past age 80, really tough to check those things off.

So you have these, the, the window, uh, of time, 10 to 15 years typically, to do a lot of that stuff. So you’re going to need more money typically to do a lot of those things.

You’d said all that very well, and I think, again, it matches up perfectly to the experiences I’ve had with parents, friends, my own friends who are a bit older. And you know, it’s interesting how you say that 71 to 73, but I liked how you went all the way to 75 because it tends for some people to be a little bit later.

But very few people are still traveling aggressively in their 80s. Now, some are, but very few as a percentage. So that all makes a lot of sense.