Go-Go, Slow-Go, No-Go

A few weeks ago, my family and I took a trip to Copenhagen.

If you know me, you know I can't sit still. I'm not a sit-on-the-beach-with-a-book kind of guy, and Copenhagen turned out to be the perfect city for someone like me. About ninety-five percent of the people there don't own a car. They ride bikes. Everywhere.

So we did too.

We pedaled over bridges, along canals, past colorful rowhouses and cafes in the district of Nyhaven spilling out onto the sidewalks. We covered more ground in a day than we ever would have on foot, and I loved every minute of it. It wasn't just efficient — it scratched an itch I didn't even know needed scratching. I had to move. I had to keep going. And for a week, I did.

Then I came home.

One week later, I was stretching before a workout — trying to be careful, trying not to get hurt — and I pulled a muscle in my back. That was it. Game over. It put me on my butt for the next five days, and I'm still slowly working my way back through physical therapy as I write this.

A trip built entirely around movement, followed almost immediately by a reminder of how fast movement can be taken away.

That contrast has been sitting with me. And it keeps bringing me back to a framework I talk about often in retirement planning: the go-go years, the slow-go years, and the no-go years.

Three stages, not just one retirement

We tend to talk about retirement as one long, flat stretch of time. It isn't. It has seasons and they don't all look the same.

The go-go years are when you have both the health and the freedom to do the things you've been putting off — travel, hobbies, volunteering, grandkids, bike rides across a foreign city. For a lot of people, that stretch runs from the fifties through the sixties and into the mid-seventies.

The slow-go years come next, typically the late seventies into the mid-eighties. You're still living life, still enjoying it, but the pace changes. Trips get shorter. Days get quieter. The body starts sending you memos it never used to send.

And eventually, hopefully much later than sooner, we reach the no-go years. For many, that's the nineties. For others, it comes earlier than anyone would choose.

Where the money meets the moment

Here's why this matters beyond just a nice way to describe aging: these three stages don't cost the same, and they shouldn't be planned for the same.

The go-go years are usually the most expensive, because they're the years you're actually spending on the life you saved for. The slow-go years tend to ease off. And the no-go years often bring a different kind of expense entirely — care, support, medical needs — even as the desire to spend on experiences fades.

These three phases put together can look more like a check mark when it comes to spending. A retirement plan that assumes flat spending every single year, straight through from sixty-five to ninety-five, misses this completely. It can leave you underspending in the years you actually have the health to enjoy it, all in the name of preserving money for years when the itch to travel, to move, to do so simply won't be there in the same way.

Pulling a muscle stretching before a workout isn't exactly a serious health scare. But it was enough to remind me, in a very physical way, that the go-go years aren't guaranteed to last as long as we plan for. None of us know exactly when our own slow-go years begin. Some of us get a preview one week after a vacation.

Don't wait to live in the go-go years

I'm not writing this to scare anyone into spending recklessly. I'm writing it because I sat on my couch for five days, unable to do much of anything, and had way too much time to think about how much I wanted to be back on a bike and on the move again.

If you're in your go-go years right now, use them. Take the trip. Do the thing that scratches your itch, whatever that itch happens to be. The plan should be built to support that, not to quietly discourage it in favor of a massive balance that looks good on paper decades from now.

And if retirement still feels far away, it's worth asking the question early: when do you expect your go-go years to be, and is your plan actually built to fund them with the lifestyle you want to live?

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-        Copenhagen – Nyhaven District

The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or firm.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Securities and Advisory Services offered through LPL Financial, a Registered Investment Advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC.