Shaklee And Our Retirement Years

We have been involved w/ Shaklee since 1971, when we had 3 small children. Our story overlapped with Kay Ferguson's: we got started at a meeting in her living room. You can read her story under Leader Stories.

Someday I will write my Shaklee story in its entirety, going back to my introduction to the company in 1971. Right now I want to focus on what Shaklee means to us after 12 years of starting over and building Shaklee as a business, and its impact on our retirement.

These 12 years have made a big difference in our retirement, so I will start my story a little less than 2 years ago when John was offered a an early-retirement package.

After spending a year teaching English in China, our plan was to have John work (as a professor of Space Science at the University of Arizona) for several more years. Then we would see about what kind of new service project we might want to undertake. But his department chairman had other ideas. Funding cuts meant fewer professors, and as an older valued member in the faculty, he was offered an attractive package.

The question was whether we had enough in his retirement fund to sustain us. (This is certainly the essential question that anyone hoping or planning to retire asks!)

We added together our various income sources, including his Social Security and mine, estimates of interest from his retirement funds, the amount of principle we felt we could spend, rental income from some houses we owned, and some book royalties he had trickling in. Then we added up the expenses that would be new in retirement, having to pay for dental and health insurance being the biggest worry.

We decided to go ahead and retire, and set the date for June 30, 2007. It took a lot of work to get all the papers in order, but we got it done.

On July 11, the stock market, home of most retirement funds, went through a major crunch. And another and another and another, over the course of a year. The total loss was 20%. It would have taken us 4 years of living strictly off of retirement funds to spend that much. That was more than a year ago, and we're not out of the woods yet.

Up till this point, we thought of our Shaklee income as something we had in reserve, just in case. At the time of John's retirement, it was paying half our utilities, half our car expenses, all our telephone and cable and internet, and providing a dozen cell phones for various members of the family. It had also purchased 3 cars and several computers. And John and I had taken a few owner draws.

But even with these helpful contributions, we hadn't thought of it as a major source of income.

Our thinking began to change. We realized that if we drew out retirement funds during the stock market slump, we'd be locking in our losses, and also restrict the amount we could recover when and if the economy were to improve. That's when we turned to the Shaklee income to see what difference it might make.

Our Shaklee income was like everyone's: it began slowly and mostly paid for our own supplements in the beginning. Then gradually there was something in the Shaklee checking account after all the business expenses were paid, and we transferred some indirect business expenses to that account. Over time, the excess increased and often we were able to write a check to pay an actual salary.

That amount grew. It helped us invest in some rentals, and help the just-marrieds in the family. It allowed us to go to China without having to find renters for our home.

But what would it do for retirement?

Today we have a only a modest recap (list of sales leaders under us). And our business slowed down when we were in China - a whole year of not sponsoring anyone new. Whatever might have been, our Shaklee income was not setting any records.

But it was enough to match ourSocial Security income, and Social Security and Shaklee together were enough to keep us from having to use any retirement funds at all.

So that means we can wait out the stock market without having to lock in our losses by taking monthly draws. It means that we can rent out our houses that won't sell in this funky housing market without worrying about losing them. And it means that now we can look forward - in the near future - to doing another year-long service project to which Shaklee will have to take a close second. All without dipping into our retirement funds.

We live modestly. We don't eat out much and we don't go to the movies very often. We read magazines in the library and we wear out our clothes, for the most part. But we do travel when we want to, or fly kids and grandkids to us, and we still support our kids with cellphones. And we use every supplement Shaklee produces.

We're fine. Shaklee has made the difference. Someday John will be old enough to be required to take a minimum distribution from his retirement funds, and then we'll start dipping into them. But for now we have Shaklee.

I just don't know how it would have turned out without it. PL