Celine, we hardly knew ye

Her heart will go on, but her career may not.

Now that Celine Dion has announced her indefinite hiatus from the music business, the 31-year-old French-Canadian singer will be joining the ranks of young retirees who have acquired serious wealth, including a crowd of sports stars and high-tech multimillionaires.

Ms. Dion, whose already considerable fortune rose even higher on the latest sinking of the Titanic –she sang the movie’s wildly popular love song — has announced that she is retiring for at least the next few years to spend more time with her ailing husband and family.

If Ms. Dion decides to make hers a permanent vacation, she could face half a century or more in retirement.

What can she and other young retirees do to make their dough last?

“Someone like Dion is in her own category; she’s never going to run out of money,” says Michael W. Moon, a financial planner with Shute Financial Group in San Diego, Calif., which manages over $500 million.

Indeed, by at least one estimate, Ms. Dion’s personal wealth is more than $200 million, not an unreasonable figure considering that Forbes magazine estimated her 1998 income alone at $55.5 million. (Her people declined to get in touch with our people for comment, but her website says she has sold 100 million albums, more than anyone else in the ’90s.)

“Her issue is going to be boredom,” Mr. Moon predicts. At least that has been the case with many of his younger clients who have recently become multimillionaires at the San Diego-based high-tech hotshot Qualcomm Inc.

Frank M. Gleberman, a chartered life underwriter, financial planner and principal of Century Benefits Group, a Southern California firm catering to highly compensated executives, business owners and estates, agrees. His wealthy early retirees get the itch to be active again typically two years after leaving their careers.

“There are a lot of things that people don’t think about when they retire,” says Mr. Gleberman. “They’re thinking about sleeping in late.”

Yet boredom isn’t likely to be Ms. Dion’s most immediate problem. She plans to spend more time with her husband and manager, R‚n‚ Angelil, who is 26 years older and in remission from skin cancer, and with a close family that includes 13 brothers and sisters and 28 nieces and nephews.

“I’m looking forward to having no schedule, no pressure, to not caring about whether it’s raining or not, just visiting with family and friends, cooking at home, trying to seriously have a child,” Ms. Dion told Billboard in November.

At this point, her non-music business interests are limited to a restaurant chain called Nickels.

a million here, a million there

Still, she will have to think about her money. Ms. Dion is known to be generous. One year, she gave an estimated $1.36 million to her close family as Christmas presents.

Mr. Gleberman advises his wealthy clients to first draw up three budgets — a core budget for food, clothing and shelter; a business or avocational budget, for new ventures, and a have-fun budget, for toys.

For many, this will be the first time they make up a budget since they got rich. He also prompts his affluent athlete, media and entertainment clients to look hard at their personal risk tolerance.

“A lot of these folks come out of pure poverty,” he notes. “They need to know that the money’s going to be there.”

And while media and entertainment figures may return to write another song or make another movie to replace sour investments, athletes often don’t get a second chance.

Finally, they should also come to grips with their aborted ego trip. After all, what can replace the experience of seeing your name in lights? “Remember how Lawrence Welk bought a bunch of apartment buildings in the San Fernando Valley,” recalls Mr. Gleberman. “He loved seeing his name on those things.”

$100 million to play with

Henry F. Hanau, who heads HFH Planning Inc. in New York which oversees more that $100 million, posits one scenario that might appeal to the songbird: Invest $100 million in laddered municipal bonds, that is, bonds staggered so that a fifth of them mature every year. In rough numbers, that would produce $4 million in annual income.

“If she can live a $2 million lifestyle,” notes Mr. Hanau, “she’s still got $2 million a year to distribute to her family.” The other $100 million, he suggests, could be invested through money managers in diversified equities, including large- to micro-cap stocks and real estate.

Based on the stock market’s long-term record, she could expect $10 million in annual income, which she could use to set up a charitable foundation. Ms. Dion could be a philanthropist and also gain tax and estate-planning benefits.

“It is almost inevitable for individuals with that size of wealth that some charitable structure would play a role in their overall investment program,” says Steve Bell, senior vice president and director of sales and marketing for Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp.’s wealth management group. Northern Trust administers $43.7 billion, of which $13.4 billion is actively managed.

And one big difference between the super-wealthy and those with mere $10 million nest eggs is the complexity of the financial and estate planning picture, says Mr. Bell, whose firm provides financial reports, analysis and back office services to families worth more than $100 million..

“At a certain level of wealth,” says Mr. Bell, “individuals or families begin to take on an investment and financial profile that would be more akin to an institutional investor.”

One result is that investments are made across asset classes and use as many as 15 money managers. This makes oversight critical, he notes.

Families he works with typically set up family offices, staffed by trusted professionals who not only oversee the investments but may also have staffers who function like hotel concierges — making travel plans, getting opera tickets, scheduling a limo.

“My understanding is that Celine Dion has worked extremely hard,” says Mr. Bell. “Typically, these individuals don’t want to spend their days with the nitty gritty, making sure their financial managers are doing what they said they were going to do. People at this level want simplification.”