What's Your Retirement Game Plan?
We’ve had a couple of posts this week touching on lawyers and their expectations for retirement. In the first, a 28-year-old Chicago lawyer looking at $200,000 in debt and not enough earnings available to contribute to a 401(K) went on American Public Media’s Marketplace last week saying he is “fairly convinced that retirement is a scant possibility” for him. He says he’s accepted this fate and wants to focus on his debt and getting his kids through college.
Meanwhile, a 64-year-old lawyer laid off by Holland & Knight in 2002 says that termination violated his partnership agreement, and that he is still entitled to the retirement benefits set forth in that agreement—amounting to around $5,000 a month for life. (In the meantime, this lawyer is still working.)
The disparity got us wondering: What’s your retirement game plan, and how do you feel about it? Are you staring down too much debt to consider it, or do you know at just what age you’ll be able to comfortably retire?
Answer in the comments section below.
Read last week’s question and answers about outlandish claims.
Our favorite answer from last week:
Posted by R: “I defended my agency against a pro se lawsuit brought by a plucky little old lady—first name of Thelma—who claimed to have been injured well over 20 years earlier. She refused to believe that there was such a thing as a statute of limitations.
She did all her own legal research and filed countless motions, stringing legal citations and quotes together with no apparent rhyme or reason: contract cases, criminal law, you name it.
She was completely fearless. We had a settlement conference in front of a kindly judge who tried to explain that she could become liable for attorney fees, but she held her ground and said what’s right is right.
My favorite motion was her “Motion to Squash.” Thankfully, it was denied.
She finally agreed to drop her lawsuit (with each side responsible for its own costs—she was judgment-proof anyway) on one condition: that I take her out to lunch. I readily agreed.”
