Always a Retiree's Friend or Relative/Never a Retiree
Lately
I'm feeling very left behind. So many people I know have retired or will be in the next few months. This must be what it's like when you get to an advanced age and your friends all start to die, you look around and think, am I the only one over a certain age still around?
I'm feeling very left behind. So many people I know have retired or will be in the next few months. This must be what it's like when you get to an advanced age and your friends all start to die, you look around and think, am I the only one over a certain age still around? I know that retirement from a commercial sense has been overly glamorized, I know that Dennis Hopper isn't being totally honest when he invites me to visit or even live on the white, sandy beaches where he lives. I know I'll never have my picture on the front of AARP magazine. But I also know those who are retired frequently travel and seem to be doing just fine, to a person.
I think my problem is I started working by babysitting when I was 11 or 12 and beyond, then to picking berries then to working at a movie theater, then bookkeeping (not a fond memory except for Ellie), then B of A and then the rest is history, sort of. If my lousy math is remotely accurate, that means I've been working for the last 47 years and I'm just tired of it, pure and simple. It doesn't help anything that work, budgets, people and the environment in general keeps getting more challenging and just generally obnoxious. I feel like I'd be better able to cope if I were living backwards like Merlin or Benjamin Button so I'd have more energy now than I did when I was younger.
I guess that's why my time off is so very precious. Having a job that eats into my personal
time has gone beyond old, especially since it's been that way for so many years. It didn't take much for my husband and friends to talk me out of looking at e-mail while we were on our recent cruise. I was interested in seeing what was going on with the kids but knew if I looked I might also see e-mails from work. I stretched my time off to the very last minute, I even got my first and second ever massages.
time has gone beyond old, especially since it's been that way for so many years. It didn't take much for my husband and friends to talk me out of looking at e-mail while we were on our recent cruise. I was interested in seeing what was going on with the kids but knew if I looked I might also see e-mails from work. I stretched my time off to the very last minute, I even got my first and second ever massages.But for the time being, I have no options so I just need to keep plugging along. I'm definitely not one of those people who gets "joy" out of their work. But I need to dig deep again this weekend because guess what, I have work that has to get done. Ugh!
posted by The Future @ 4:51 PM
2 Comments:
Many of our friends who have not yet retired feel that they need to have the same income, or higher, in order to retire. The truth is that your expenses go down with retirement. We eat out less often and our cars rack up much fewer miles. The most significant barrier to retiring is debt; if you can clear out your debt, and not incur more, you are way ahead of the game. With more time on your hands you discover you need less "stuff" and so your purchasing becomes more thoughtful. The "luxury" in retirement comes in terms of quality of life, and less in terms of material things. The best part is having the time to live the life you really want to live. Still, the decision can be a bit scary... a leap of faith. Yet, I have never spoken with another retiree who has said they are sorry they retired.
Exactly, no one is sorry.
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