Couple planned clean break to escape into retirement

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Mar 16, 2008 | by Robert Frick Kiplinger's Personal Finance

Dianne Belk and Larry Calder decided that only a clean break would let them escape the fate of a traditional retirement at 65. Belk owned an engineering company in Los Angeles, and Calder owned an import-export business. Belk remembers thinking: I'm working 1,000 hours a week and my husband is working 1,000 hours a week. How will we know when we're done?

So the couple created a list of things to do to extricate themselves from their complex ties to companies, possessions and habits. And what a list it was: a staggering 4,000 items. For starters, Belk and Calder decided to leave high-priced California to become residents of Nevada, one of seven states with no broad-based income tax. Now they live in Florida, another no-income-tax state.

Once they knew where they would live and how they wanted to spend their time -- mostly traveling and doing volunteer work they could work up a financial plan. Using data they had gathered for several years on Quicken, they developed a budget for future expenses. They also consolidated their investments. To simplify their financial picture, the couple winnowed their brokerage accounts from half a dozen each to two apiece. They also reduced their stock portfolios from a total of about 60 companies to 15 companies each.

The list was also a road map to long-distance caregiving for Belk's mother, who was living on her own in Arizona but was financially dependent on Belk. She and Calder planned an extended getaway to kick off their new lives, so she helped her mother get a credit card, gave her post-dated checks to cover monthly expenses and arranged with a lawyer to provide her mother with extra funds if necessary.

She and Calder also divided their possessions into "must keep," "sell" and "donate" categories. They ended up keeping china, crystal, silver, paintings, books, photos, wine and some furniture. They thought they'd pruned back considerably. But after traveling extensively, they had their belongings shipped to the house they had recently purchased and promptly said, "What were we thinking?" Says Belk, "We didn't like the furniture, and we didn't need the clothes."

After five years of planning, the couple kicked off their retirement in grand style by circumnavigating the globe on a freighter with just five other passengers. Today, Belk, 60, and Calder, 56, divide their time between volunteer work and play, with an emphasis on the former.

But Belk's main passion is acting as a trustee for the Ringling College of Art and Design, in Sarasota, Fla., where she uses her business experience to help the college's expansion project. Says Belk, "To me, that's not work -- that's fun."

Robert Frick is a senior editor at Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. Send your questions and comments to moneypower@kiplinger.com.