Let Them Eat Cake: Fritz Gilbert’s Guide to a Successful Retirement

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If you’re the average working American, who wants to retire in dignity, your financial life can be broken down into three distinct phases.

The first phase is the correction phase. This is where you get your financial act together. You get better at earning, better at subduing your appetite for stuff and status, and better at saving.

The second phase is the accumulation phase. This is where you take your hard-earned savings and invest that money in the stock market and build wealth.

And the third and final phase is the decumulation phase. This is where you voluntarily leave gainful employment and use the wealth you’ve accumulated over several decades to fund a hopefully joyous retirement.

For the longest time, Mrs. Groovy and I had a rather thorny problem. If someone in the correction phase of his or her financial life came to us for advice, we would merely direct him or her to Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. If someone was in the accumulation phase, we would merely direct him or her to J.L. Collins’s The Simple Path to Wealth. But if someone was on the cusp of the decumulation phase or already in the decumulation phase, we were at a loss. We couldn’t direct him or her to a learned and well-written book dedicated to this phase.

Well, thanks to Fritz Gilbert, the fertile mind behind the blog, Retirement Manifesto, all that’s changed. Fritz has penned a wonderful book dedicated to the decumulation phase. It’s aptly called the Keys to a Successful Retirement (KTASR).

Of Cake and Retirement

To say that retirement (i.e., the decumulation phase) is a complex subject is indeed an understatement. Longevity, inflation, income, health, amusements, IRAs, 401(k)s, RMDs, sequence-of-return risks, Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare—there are so many moving parts the mind boggles.

And this is why Fritz is so invaluable to the personal finance community and why KTASR shines. He has an uncanny knack for distilling the essence of a complex subject and then packaging that essence into a handy visual that anyone can immediately grasp. He makes the intimidating far less intimidating.

And what is that handy visual as far as retirement is concerned?

Cake. Yep—good old fashioned baked goodness slathered in icing.

Now, this handy visual might strike you as odd. How the heck is cake like retirement? Well, think about it. To successfully make a cake, you have to know what ingredients in what proportions to mix, and you have to know how long your mix needs to be in the oven at what temperature. There’s a science component to cake-making. There’s also a science component to a successful retirement. You have to know how much inflation-adjusted income you’ll need to cover several decades of living expenses. But science, whether you’re talking about cake-making or retirement, will only get you so far. Taking a beautifully baked cake and covering it with icing you loathe will render it anything but successful. A successfully made cake is a cake you look forward to eating. There is thus an art component to cake-making. Likewise, there’s an art component to retirement. If you only have enough money in retirement to eat, sleep, and rut—and you want more out of retirement than eating, sleeping, and rutting—then your retirement will be anything but successful.

Hail KTASR

No spoiler alert here. I’m not going to spill the beans on KTASR. If you want Fritz’s take on the decumulation phase, you’re going to have to buy it.

I will say this, though: Fritz takes his cake analogy and in five chapters, masterfully shows you how to get the science and art of retirement right.

In the science part of KTASR, you’ll learn:

• How to know if you have enough money to retire
• How to create a monthly income once you’re in retirement
• And how to protect that monthly income so it keeps coming every month of your retirement life

And in the art part of KTASR, you’ll learn:

• What separates a ho-hum retirement from an extraordinary retirement
• And what actions you have to take to make sure your retirement is indeed extraordinary—to make sure you never regret the decision to retire and you look forward to waking up each and every day

KTASR is the missing “recipe” for anyone approaching the decumulation phase or in the decumulation phase. And through it all, you’re fed delightful morsels of Fritz’s remarkable wit and wisdom. Here, for example, is how Fritz describes one aspect of his daily “grind” in retirement:

The one-and-a-half-mile trail through our woods has become my new retirement “commute.”

And here is how Fritz warns you that passivity is not your friend when it comes to a successful retirement:

The true joy in retirement is the freedom to draw whatever you’d like but also the recognition that with the freedom comes an obligation. You must draw.

And, finally, here’s my favorite quote from KTASR. In three pithy sentences, Fritz explains how a successful retirement is almost always accompanied by a very engaged—and a very introspective—mind.

Passion and purpose will be your keys to unlock a truly great retirement, the frosting on this cake. Pursue them relentlessly, and let curiosity guide your feet. Serendipity is my favorite word, for good reason.

Final Thoughts

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. Whether you’re approaching the decumulation phase of your financial life or are in the decumulation phase, you need to get your hands on Fritz’s Keys to a Successful Retirement. It’s a rollicking good yarn that will vastly increase your odds of having a kick-ass retirement. Peace.