60 days ago, I tossed a letter on my boss’s desk as I dashed by his office on the way to the coffee pot. He looked up at me with a slightly annoyed look and inquired as to what it might be. As I retreated toward the mid-office kitchen coffee pot, I responded to him over my shoulder with a “you might want to read that one…”.
When I came back with my cup of coffee, he was sitting there with an astounded look, kind of like a kid who had just been told school was starting six weeks early. It isn’t like I hadn’t been warning him – retirement was in my thoughts, and at the end of May, 2015 I would be eligible to start withdrawing money from my 401K fund. I guess he never thought that I would retire before that point.
Thanks to a generous stock plan (although not quite so generous as it was a few years ago), and some investment in real estate, and a firm commitment to myself to stay out of debt, I am retiring on September 2nd of this year – about 8 months ahead of when I thought I might be able to retire a couple of years ago, and way ahead of what I thought might be workable 10 years ago.
Of course, I have doubts. I have never not worked on purpose before. All my upbringing taught me that as long as you are able to work, you should. While I do have some physical ailments, primarily the back of a 98 year old lady, it’s held together reasonably well with a lot of titanium, and most everything else can be taken care of with a daily dose of something or other. Yet, 58 seems to be pretty young to be calling oneself retired, especially since I’m not an ex-CEO or a trust-child.
I joke that by this time next year I could be eating beans and rice and living out of my truck. I guess that is a fear that all of us have at one point or another. Do I have enough money to last however long I’m going to live? The answer always has to be “I don’t know” – none of us know how long we will live. If I drop dead at Christmas, then I’ll have died a fairly rich guy by any standard of most of my relatives. However, if I live to be 95 – then I may end up looking like this poor fellow on the left here.
I guess that for at least a short time, I’ll treat retirement like a vacation, but sooner or later I’ll need to settle into some sort of daily routine. I’ll need to pick activities that don’t cost much or are free – perhaps I’ll start visiting libraries again, although from what I understand – the library of today is nothing like what it was back in my youth. They are evolving fast – or going extinct.
We plan on spending winters at our condo in Pompano Beach, Fl. I used to like to fish – so I can take up that hobby again – although decent fishing gear isn’t necessarily cheap, but you only need to purchase most of it once. Maybe I’ll invest in one of those folding boat contraptions I’ve seen – that fit on my truck or in a holder on the side of the RV – for canals and smaller lakes.
My partner John has wintered in Pompano that past two seasons, and there seems to be a very busy social life available. He’s a lot more social than I am, and I can see that while I enjoy some of it, there will be times I’d just as soon be off somewhere contemplating my navel. I plan on taking the travel trailer down with me – I found a great gay resort out at Clewiston that will store it for me for an affordable monthly fee – while at the same time it may also be a place I can go for a few days now and again just to be alone – or at least for a change of pace. While John and I get along great for the most part – we do have different interests and we are not siamese twins who have to, or even necessarily want to be with each other 24/7 around the clock. I’m not sure it’s good for one to be tethered to another person like that anyway.
There is always volunteering. I did that off and on when I was single in the 90’s and early 00’s. At one time I was a certified AIDS counselor and worked on a hotline. That was the early 90’s – and a very scary time for a lot of us. I’m so very lucky – I mean, for the most part I had no sex life at all during that period – it’s hard to catch AIDS if you are only having sex with yourself – but I think about what might have happened had I had a lot more confidence in myself back then.
Then there is Genealogy. It’s been an on-again, off-again hobby of mine for over 30 years. I have oodles of data that I’ve collected over the years (http://roots.jimr.com) but there are still some dead-ends, and a lot of points that need verification or some other work. I could make that a big project that would certainly kill a lot of time too. Rainy days, or very cold days or very hot days – nice indoor work I can put on my schedule.
Looking back over all the names in those pages, I see very few of them that would have been “retired” at age 58. Most of my ancestors were blue-collar folks at best, in fact most of them aspired to be blue-collar. I would bet the vast majority of them were working the day they died, or at the very least not long before they died.
What would they think of a descendant who decided to call it quits so early? I wonder if they would be proud, or stupefied.
I’ll have to revisit this as my retirement progresses – and write notes to myself so I can compare how I feel today, with how I feel later.