The Many Stages of Retirement

Confused about retirement? Welcome to the club.

Don’t think for a minute the confusion ends when you retire. It won’t.

It continues. I offer myself as a case in point. I think about retirement all the time. It’s kind of my job — except I no longer worry about salary reviews and don’t have a paycheck. Also, I could decide to go fishing at any time.

The problem? I don’t like fishing. Never liked golf. I don’t watch professional sports on TV. And I seldom drink beer.  If Dave Barry were a therapist, he’d tell me that I’m totally unfit for retirement.

So, don’t feel bad. There are millions of us. Whether male or female, we find the whole topic akin to entering a room full of squeaky blackboards.

The Vocabulary of Retirement

Our only defense is to find a way to talk and think about the subject. Let’s start with phrases that are probably familiar. Financial planner Michael Stein divided retirement into three stages:

• (1) The Go-Go Years from when you retire to age 70,
• (2) The Slow-Go Years from age 70 to age 80,
• (3) The No-Go Years from age 80 on.

The Go-Go Years are what we all long for. They’re also known as the Bucket List Years. They’re what we see in advertisements for cruises, regular trips to Europe, adventures in Asia or just working on a lower golf handicap: smiling, handsome and beautiful faces in elegant surroundings being served (insert your favorite cocktail here).

The Slow-Go Years are what happens when the thrill of travel wears off. That usually happens when some of our basic body part warranties are void and we need a med for this or that. We may also discover that hefting a travel bag is harder than it was or find ourselves on constant restroom watch because… well, you know why.

The No-Go Years are best characterized by any advertisement on morning TV – whatever ails you, there’s a pill for it. But the pill’s most likely side-effect, other than those silly sudden deaths, is that you really can’t go anywhere or do much. You’re ailing physically and worrying about when your kids will put you in memory care.

My description may sound cavalier, but for most of us a touch of cavalier helps. Get too serious and conversation can turn to tears.

Those three stages are overlayed by five distinct financial stages. According to financial planners Cody Garrett and Sean Mullaney, we face five clearly defined periods of financial opportunity/danger. These stages are related to taxes and health care.

Many people blow this off because they believe their finances are so minor that tax and health care planning will have a trivial impact on their lives. But they are usually wrong.

Here are their five stages:

• (1) Retirement through age 65.
• (2) The Golden Years, Age 66 through 69.
• (3) Age 70 to the Start of Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs).
• (4) The RMD Years.
• (5) The Widower’s Years.

In each of those time periods there are actions you can take that will help you minimize your lifetime tax burden while maximizing your lifetime spending or your estate. We should never forget that all these “opportunities” exist only because lawyers make life complicated rather than simple.

The Perils of Smooth Marketing

We can navigate these perils with the help of a financial planner. Just make sure your planner acts as a fiduciary. Otherwise, planning is an excuse to sell high-commission and expense-burdened financial products. (Yup, the same old same old.)

We can also do it with help from sophisticated software. My personal favorite is economist Larry Kotlikoff’s Maxifi – I’ve been using it for many years. The three books I co-authored with Kotlikoff made extensive use of it. (www.maxifi.com )

Here’s how the Stein periods align with the Garrett & Mullaney financial planning decision periods:

The Go-Go Years face two major decisions. When to start taking Social Security benefits and the related possibility of doing a Roth conversion. Some people call the same period the Bucket List Years or the Just Do It Years.

The Slow-Go Years also face two major tax-related events—the years from age 70 to the start of required minimum distributions and all the RMD years to the beginning of the No-Go Years. This period might also be called the “All things considered; I’d rather stay home years.”

The No-Go Years — 80 and over — are renamed the “Widower’s Years” by Garrett & Mullaney due to the probability of becoming single. This can result in major tax rate changes. It also brings up concern for long-term care and personal safety. I think of them as the “Space Odyssey Years” because it can be the entry to a whole new stage of living that often lacks ongoing health metrics and tends to be “off the charts” of experience.

What are those “Space Odyssey Years”?  The “Space Odyssey Years” is a reference to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” particularly the final scenes involving an aged Keir Dullea living in quiet splendor.

While it is entirely possible to think of the No-Go Years as a terrible time, I learned otherwise in a recent visit with a friend. She had just moved into a luxury continuing care community in Dallas. In her early 80s, she quickly introduced me to her new friends. A few were in their 90s.

In fact, those dreaded No-Go Years can be a new and very different period of life. Millions of people will experience this because millions of Americans will live into their 90s, and beyond. A longer life is more than just waiting to die.

It’s a new life stage, a whole new experience.

Related columns:

Scott Burns, “Fees and Chance Can Ruin Your Retirement,” 9/13/2025: https://scottburns.com/fees-and-chance-can-ruin-your-retirement/

Scott Burns, “Centenarians and the Cup of Life,” 5/27/2024: https://scottburns.com/centenarians-and-the-cup-of-life/

Scott Burns, “The Next Top 1 Percent,” 2/26/2023: https://scottburns.com/living-beyond-90/

Sources and References:

PopulationPyramid.net: U.S. age distribution: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2100/#google_vignette

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – Beyond the Infinite Scene (5/6), Movieclips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfje9_QRQbk

This information is distributed for education purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, product, or service.

Photo with thanks to Luzmaria Guillen Antonini, Angel Falls, Venezuela 2025

(c) Scott Burns, 2025