Unless you have more money coming in than going out, you will run out of money. Most of us find the retirement-year itself to be difficult because all of a sud

Unless you have more money coming in than going out, you will run out of money. Most of us find the retirement-year itself to be difficult because all of a sudden there's a lot less money coming in, but there are still payouts that ensue from the previous months of your working life, such as income tax payments. And of course, those mortgage payments keep on needing to be paid, and on time. Also you haven't yet adjusted to the lower amount of money coming in causing changes in your spending habits. And you do panic over whether you can survive. In our retirement year, we ate out the freezer and the pantry of all that stuff that usually never gets eaten while we adjusted. We sold some assets that allowed us to get rid of some mortgages along with the monthly drain on finances that the mortgages were causing. In our worst month, one week we had nothing but a few maxed out credit cards, about 10 bucks in the bank and we were scrabbling for any health-insurance refunds we could find to claim on. The following week we had around $900,000 in the bank, which allowed us to finally clear the decks. It wasn't a nice time, but we got through it.