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December 4 - 17, 2020
wilmingtonbiz.com
Greater Wilmington Business Journal
SPECIAL FOCUS: RETIREMENT
BANKING & FINANCE
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Planning proves key to retirement
o matter the amount of your assets, the key to funding retirement is planning – ideally, starting in the years before you clock off the job, according to DaJENNY vid Shucavage, president and investment adviser representative at Carolina Retirement Planners in Wilmington. “I am shocked at how many people come in with investments but no income plan,” he said, pointing out that new retirees need to shift their focus from earning money to managing it. Wilmington residents Duncan and Laura McCabe have had a plan since they married 40 years ago. “We lived on one paycheck; lived below our means,” Laura McCabe said, recalling the couple’s decision to be frugal for the first 10 years of their
CALLISON
PHOTO C/O DUNCAN AND LAURA MCCABE
Active retirees: Duncan and Laura McCabe began planning for an active retirement early on in their 40-year marriage.
careers as engineers at DuPont. The McCabes slept on the floor, and then on a hide-a-bed, for a year before buying bedroom furniture. They brown-bagged it for lunch at work.
The McCabes started their planned 10 years of frugality when they were still in graduate school. This front-loading of their savings, and a habit of careful money man-
agement, allowed Laura to retire when she was 51 and Duncan to follow suit five years later, at 56. These days, they vacation internationally and pursue their many interests locally. “We knew exactly where our money was going, and so we figured out how much money we needed to live on,” Duncan McCabe said. “That’s a comfort in deciding when to retire: You know how much your lifestyle costs.” Even though the couple eventually relaxed their spending, intentional frugality and tracking every expense became part of their pattern. For example, Laura McCabe says she can tell you exactly how much she and her husband have spent on wine since the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. “One of Duncan’s sayings is that there are three steps in your financial life,” Laura McCabe said. “The first is wealth accumulation, saving early as much as you can so that it has years to grow. Then it’s wealth
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