The agonizing over making a life changing decision can be excruciating...something like....
Learning how to skydive. That feeling of stepping out of the plane for the first time...but since I have never done it and can only imagine, it would be more likely I would be getting pushed out by a well-meaning, but questionable friend over and over.
Or, being the passenger while travelling fast and taking hairpin road curves on a motor bike. Not to mention you are wearing a helmet that's so heavy you can barely hold your head up...and you happen to suffer from anxiety with dizziness and diarrhea. Here you are, now at the mercy of your other questionable friend, the maniac driver.
Or, learning to skate later in life when your bones are brittle..and you wind up breaking both wrists.
You may not be able to tell, but I'm trying to find a comparison to making the decision to retire..because you wouldn't have to do any of those aforementioned things, would you?
You may not be able to tell, but I'm trying to find a comparison to making the decision to retire..because you wouldn't have to do any of those aforementioned things, would you?
I always thought it would be such an easy decision...but not quite. I've poured over countless books and articles on the subject. I realize I've become like some of those new moms who showed up on the maternity ward where I worked. They were over-confident and calm at first, with their well-researched birthing plans spread out in front of them...They portrayed consumate professionalism thinking the more they knew, the more they would control the process. Yet, inevitably things can and do go haywire. Compare these newbies to the seasoned birthing mom. There is nothing like the look of terror on her partner's face since after a mere hour or two of labor they have arrived and as the mother steps off the elevator fully dilated the baby is ready to be caught.
Either way, like retirement, it can happen fast and there's no stopping it. I've talked to people already retired.... they say, "just do it!" They mostly have the uniform response of loving it,
with a caveat here and there, of course such as you have to be ready....you have to want to do it. You can't treat it like a vacation.
I ran the numbers, over and over...Bottom line was having everything paid off, no mortgage, no credit card debt. One scenario was for 30 years...to age 94...seems reasonable, don't you think? Another for 25 years...but who wants to go shorter than that? You're asking for trouble if you do, is all I can say.
It's quite a let-down to find out how much the old age pension and Canada Pension will actually add up to every month. (Keep in mind income tax gets deducted too.) You have to wonder how people make it if they don't have any work pension or savings? I guess that could be the definition of poverty and nobody plans to go there on purpose. I tried several of the sophisticated retirement calculators and firmly realized (like a slap in the face) that I could likely live comfortably for about six years tops. Whoop. I will have to work at something else, even part-time.
Somehow retiring, only to become a cheapskate miser because of limited money flies in the face of our values. If you are already wealthy, none of this even applies to you. If you were/are a poor working stiff like most of us, you will apparently have to take on some form of this tightwad persona whether you like it or not.
Then comes the part that you can do anything you want when you retire. Well, I want to do all those things I don't get to do enough of when I'm at work all day. I want to be able to exist without always having deadlines. I want to get out from under never-ending meetings, not even face-to-face, but computer-to-computer. The sitting, hour after hour...Apparently, that is the new smoking in terms of reducing life span. But what I like, mostly involves not having to shower, get dressed, and go out five days of every week. I wonder how many days I will go without leaving the house before I get that bit out of my system?
Well...that was now over a year ago. As it turns out, my employer offered employees a chance to apply for a voluntary separation. It came with a formula for a small payout based on your number of years of service. In February last year I applied for what was essentially an early retirement and was accepted! I finished work the end of June, 2018 and couldn’t have been happier.
I have had one full year to decide if it was worth it and let me tell you, I still could not be happier!
My favorite thing is not having to set the alarm...I knew it would be. Awesome, is about the only way I can describe my new lifestyle even though some days I still set the alarm for one reason or another.
I remember my first free morning as memorable. I had walked my grandsons to school. It was a gorgeous day and the littlest one wanted to stay and play at the playground after the bell went and his big brothers went in. I remember thinking how wonderful it was to suddenly just have time to sit and soak up the sun and fresh air and enjoy the little kids at play. Years in an office without windows does that to you. For months and months and probably forever, I will fully enjoy the sun as it pours into my house at any time of the day.
A tidbit of travelling didn't hurt. First, Mom and I went on a trip to Alberta to see my brother and sister. Next there was a week at the lake, followed by an out-of-town wedding. In September, I was invited to accompany two high school friends back to our home town of Hudson Bay. That Fall trip was stunning and full of wild life not to mention the people we reconnected with and those we missed. At Christmas, my kids and their kids had an early celebration, then Mom and I flew back to Alberta for another visit. Not that I have turned into a world traveler, but these little jaunts and experiencing different things helped to ease the transition.
I have always loved to crochet and knit and went all out making homemade Christmas presents for pretty well everyone in my family...Long socks I decided to call TV socks, (thanks Bentley, for the idea), small afghans I call lapghans (thanks every nursing home I've ever been associated with). Very colourful and fun to make! The biggest effort was making pompom rugs for all five grandkids and thanks to my friend Pat for the idea! Quite a big job, but hopefully they liked them. I started dabbling a little more with painting and sketching and found it truly is a love of mine. Not to mention playing my new piano keyboard...the more you do these things the better you get.
I love it when I’m out and about during the weekday! It is so fun to see the loads of people who also do not have to go to a day job. I decided to start saving shopping receipts and try to get a bird’s eye view of where my money goes. I had a ball park figure of how much I thought I needed every month and strangely enough, it was pretty close. I did have a couple of hiccups with my vehicle. On the way home from that wedding in southern Saskatchewan, I had a spark plug blow through the motor. This turned into kind of a big and expensive deal that also involved the transmission! If you don’t have a personal line of credit and are thinking of retiring, consider getting one, rather than racking up the dollars on your credit card (the one you have basically for emergencies only)! Also, the tow truck would only take cash and so always carrying a little cash doesn't hurt.
One thing that didn’t really work well was my attempt at indoor gardening. I got Spring Fever and planted all these seeds in containers in my basement family room. I had big bag of peat moss and cow manure frozen in the garage, so thought that would work great. Not really. Yes, it did smell bad in my basement for a few months come to think of it. All in the spirit of growing your own veggies I told myself and anyone who stepped foot inside the house. Firstly, the seedlings didn’t get enough light. When they grew tall and spindly, I thought I would transplant them. That nearly did them all in. I thought I would try these corrugated cardboard pots that are supposed to dissolve right into the soil. Definitely not a good idea. Of everything, I think I salvaged about three tomato plants and a few flowers. I had also bought cheap planters from a dollar store. I could hear my uncle Jerry telling me to punch holes in the bottom for drainage, but of course I left that until they were moved outside and almost drowned with a few good rains! I also got over-zealous with the fertilizer once everything was put outside. Had to back off from that fairly early.
What I’m saying is it’s great to be excited to get at these things but you probably need a better plan than mine. My neighbours have a large area of grow lights in their basement and their stuff turns out healthy and strong. I need to pick their brains because I am apt to do the same thing next year!
Next I decided to have a garage sale. In the end there was stuff from four households. My daughter, my friend, and my neighbours who gave up the ghost for the last day or so only to drag over a pile of stuff for me to sell. It was fun and I bought their home-made adirondack chair for $15. The lemonade stand my little grandsons had was probably the biggest hit. You meet all kinds of people (including weirdos) at these sales and get some fresh air too. It pretty well poured for parts of each day, but nobody cared. When you have a winter that has the entire month of February at 30 or 40 below zero, people just want to get out. We didn’t get rid of everything, but got rid of an awful lot of stuff! The rest is being donated to some worthy place, just have to load it and take it over.
My deck had developed some rotten spots, so I had decided to get a few boards replaced quite some time ago. That means you have to find a reliable carpenter to do the work. I procrastinated about this for several summers until I was actually scared if more than one person was ever on it. I could see someone crashing through and landing on some kind of gardening equipment in the little shed area below. I irrationally hoped it wasn't anyone I knew that got hurt.
I was also worrying for several years about what to do with the hot tub. I had used it for the first year after I moved in, but then realized it was more trouble than it was worth as far as I concerned. Every week the chemicals needed to be tested and adjusted. I had a big tub of these probably toxic chemicals stored in my house and I really didn't think they were a healthy thing to have laying around. I finally decided to have the tub emptied and winterized by a hot tub company and there it had sat for the last nine years. It needed a new lid and a new container. It was supposed to have its own electrical box, but was wired into the main one. Not even legal. Again, along with the deck, I had watched the wood rot around a perfectly good tub for several summers. Over time, I had tried various things like trying to sell in on Kijiji. I called hot tub places about a trade-in or what to do. I couldn't see spending between $6,000 - $25,000 on a new one when I would hardly use it and who can afford that? They said it might have to be removed from the yard with a crane lifting it over the top of the house. Either that or it would have to be rolled on its side out of one of the very narrow side gates. I have a walkway and not an alley at my back fence and that is not helpful for removing a hot tub. Finally, one hot tub company said they would haul it to the dump for $500.
This summer, I realized I was at the end of my rope as far as letting these items continue to disintegrate. I had to do something. I went online and was lucky enough to find a great handyman. Not only is he a good carpenter, but he has great ideas. The carpenter knew someone who would unhook the electrical part and in exchange might take the tub. His first look said that because the entire underside was spray foamed onto everything, that it could really damage the pipes etc. during a move. It looked to be a complicated job needing several strong movers. He decided not to go for it. The carpenter assured me that he would cut up the hot tub for less than $500 if it came to that! He knew that the idea of paying to send it to the dump was really making me sick! However, the idea of cutting up a perfectly good hot tub made my blood run cold! He suggested I call the Habitat for Humanity ReStore to see if they wanted it. What a wonderful idea, but no, they didn't want it. Who would buy it they said. I had offered it to my kids for the lake. No, they didn't want it. He suggested advertising it for free on Kijiji, so I did, plus Facebook Marketplace. I said it was free as long as they did the removal. Somehow, and unbeknownst to me, for awhile it was showing "free delivery". Jeez! Two people had already asked me to deliver it, one in P.A. and one in Aberdeen before I realized the mistake. I couldn't believe the audacity! Couldn't they even read? It was a nice lady who showed me a screen shot of the statement for free delivery and I almost had a heart attack. It took me about six seconds to get that off of there!
I had always worried about someone coming for it that didn't have a clue what they were doing and wrecking something during the removal like my house or my neighbour's house or fence. As luck would have it, I had over 50 interested parties. A young fellow from out-of-town asked if I could wait for a few days until he could get there. He was ahead of another out-of-towner who was going to move it with logs somehow. When he showed up I was concerned because he hadn't brought any tools and was all by himself. That kid (31 year old) was nothing but ingenious! He ripped off the rotten container and pulled out the hoses and pump equipment underneath. He said any damage he could repair. He walked across the street and asked a total stranger who had a mini skid steer to help him move the tub out. It was a masterpiece event! They turned the tub on its side, lifted it with the fork lift, put a strap around it and that kid backed it out of the side of my yard. I couldn't believe he missed the neighbour's newly planted shrubs by about one inch. Both young guys were extremely good problem solvers and operators of equipment! The hot tub will be built into a new deck that this fellow is building. To celebrate, I gave the new owner two fat slabs of home-made bread I had been baking that he had been smelling through the open window!
The garden really was a source of stress when it just didn't come up. I had to reseed and finally things happened when the rains came. I was impressed to be able to have weeded my entire back yard perimeter by the end of May plus trimmed many of my multiple trees. That job has always taken me almost all summer. By July, I have gone through it all a second time and enjoy working outside. My lawn got fertilized and looks the best it has in years!
So my advice to you if you're agonizing about your decision to retire is like the others....just do it. Let the chips fall where they may (after a good hard look at everything). As for my housekeeping, no it really hasn't improved and neither has my cooking. You become more of what you are as you age, but becoming the best version of ourselves couldn't be better! Good luck!
Either way, like retirement, it can happen fast and there's no stopping it. I've talked to people already retired.... they say, "just do it!" They mostly have the uniform response of loving it,
with a caveat here and there, of course such as you have to be ready....you have to want to do it. You can't treat it like a vacation.
I ran the numbers, over and over...Bottom line was having everything paid off, no mortgage, no credit card debt. One scenario was for 30 years...to age 94...seems reasonable, don't you think? Another for 25 years...but who wants to go shorter than that? You're asking for trouble if you do, is all I can say.
It's quite a let-down to find out how much the old age pension and Canada Pension will actually add up to every month. (Keep in mind income tax gets deducted too.) You have to wonder how people make it if they don't have any work pension or savings? I guess that could be the definition of poverty and nobody plans to go there on purpose. I tried several of the sophisticated retirement calculators and firmly realized (like a slap in the face) that I could likely live comfortably for about six years tops. Whoop. I will have to work at something else, even part-time.
Somehow retiring, only to become a cheapskate miser because of limited money flies in the face of our values. If you are already wealthy, none of this even applies to you. If you were/are a poor working stiff like most of us, you will apparently have to take on some form of this tightwad persona whether you like it or not.
Then comes the part that you can do anything you want when you retire. Well, I want to do all those things I don't get to do enough of when I'm at work all day. I want to be able to exist without always having deadlines. I want to get out from under never-ending meetings, not even face-to-face, but computer-to-computer. The sitting, hour after hour...Apparently, that is the new smoking in terms of reducing life span. But what I like, mostly involves not having to shower, get dressed, and go out five days of every week. I wonder how many days I will go without leaving the house before I get that bit out of my system?
Well...that was now over a year ago. As it turns out, my employer offered employees a chance to apply for a voluntary separation. It came with a formula for a small payout based on your number of years of service. In February last year I applied for what was essentially an early retirement and was accepted! I finished work the end of June, 2018 and couldn’t have been happier.
I have had one full year to decide if it was worth it and let me tell you, I still could not be happier!
My favorite thing is not having to set the alarm...I knew it would be. Awesome, is about the only way I can describe my new lifestyle even though some days I still set the alarm for one reason or another.
I remember my first free morning as memorable. I had walked my grandsons to school. It was a gorgeous day and the littlest one wanted to stay and play at the playground after the bell went and his big brothers went in. I remember thinking how wonderful it was to suddenly just have time to sit and soak up the sun and fresh air and enjoy the little kids at play. Years in an office without windows does that to you. For months and months and probably forever, I will fully enjoy the sun as it pours into my house at any time of the day.
A tidbit of travelling didn't hurt. First, Mom and I went on a trip to Alberta to see my brother and sister. Next there was a week at the lake, followed by an out-of-town wedding. In September, I was invited to accompany two high school friends back to our home town of Hudson Bay. That Fall trip was stunning and full of wild life not to mention the people we reconnected with and those we missed. At Christmas, my kids and their kids had an early celebration, then Mom and I flew back to Alberta for another visit. Not that I have turned into a world traveler, but these little jaunts and experiencing different things helped to ease the transition.
I have always loved to crochet and knit and went all out making homemade Christmas presents for pretty well everyone in my family...Long socks I decided to call TV socks, (thanks Bentley, for the idea), small afghans I call lapghans (thanks every nursing home I've ever been associated with). Very colourful and fun to make! The biggest effort was making pompom rugs for all five grandkids and thanks to my friend Pat for the idea! Quite a big job, but hopefully they liked them. I started dabbling a little more with painting and sketching and found it truly is a love of mine. Not to mention playing my new piano keyboard...the more you do these things the better you get.
I love it when I’m out and about during the weekday! It is so fun to see the loads of people who also do not have to go to a day job. I decided to start saving shopping receipts and try to get a bird’s eye view of where my money goes. I had a ball park figure of how much I thought I needed every month and strangely enough, it was pretty close. I did have a couple of hiccups with my vehicle. On the way home from that wedding in southern Saskatchewan, I had a spark plug blow through the motor. This turned into kind of a big and expensive deal that also involved the transmission! If you don’t have a personal line of credit and are thinking of retiring, consider getting one, rather than racking up the dollars on your credit card (the one you have basically for emergencies only)! Also, the tow truck would only take cash and so always carrying a little cash doesn't hurt.
One thing that didn’t really work well was my attempt at indoor gardening. I got Spring Fever and planted all these seeds in containers in my basement family room. I had big bag of peat moss and cow manure frozen in the garage, so thought that would work great. Not really. Yes, it did smell bad in my basement for a few months come to think of it. All in the spirit of growing your own veggies I told myself and anyone who stepped foot inside the house. Firstly, the seedlings didn’t get enough light. When they grew tall and spindly, I thought I would transplant them. That nearly did them all in. I thought I would try these corrugated cardboard pots that are supposed to dissolve right into the soil. Definitely not a good idea. Of everything, I think I salvaged about three tomato plants and a few flowers. I had also bought cheap planters from a dollar store. I could hear my uncle Jerry telling me to punch holes in the bottom for drainage, but of course I left that until they were moved outside and almost drowned with a few good rains! I also got over-zealous with the fertilizer once everything was put outside. Had to back off from that fairly early.
What I’m saying is it’s great to be excited to get at these things but you probably need a better plan than mine. My neighbours have a large area of grow lights in their basement and their stuff turns out healthy and strong. I need to pick their brains because I am apt to do the same thing next year!
Next I decided to have a garage sale. In the end there was stuff from four households. My daughter, my friend, and my neighbours who gave up the ghost for the last day or so only to drag over a pile of stuff for me to sell. It was fun and I bought their home-made adirondack chair for $15. The lemonade stand my little grandsons had was probably the biggest hit. You meet all kinds of people (including weirdos) at these sales and get some fresh air too. It pretty well poured for parts of each day, but nobody cared. When you have a winter that has the entire month of February at 30 or 40 below zero, people just want to get out. We didn’t get rid of everything, but got rid of an awful lot of stuff! The rest is being donated to some worthy place, just have to load it and take it over.
My deck had developed some rotten spots, so I had decided to get a few boards replaced quite some time ago. That means you have to find a reliable carpenter to do the work. I procrastinated about this for several summers until I was actually scared if more than one person was ever on it. I could see someone crashing through and landing on some kind of gardening equipment in the little shed area below. I irrationally hoped it wasn't anyone I knew that got hurt.
I was also worrying for several years about what to do with the hot tub. I had used it for the first year after I moved in, but then realized it was more trouble than it was worth as far as I concerned. Every week the chemicals needed to be tested and adjusted. I had a big tub of these probably toxic chemicals stored in my house and I really didn't think they were a healthy thing to have laying around. I finally decided to have the tub emptied and winterized by a hot tub company and there it had sat for the last nine years. It needed a new lid and a new container. It was supposed to have its own electrical box, but was wired into the main one. Not even legal. Again, along with the deck, I had watched the wood rot around a perfectly good tub for several summers. Over time, I had tried various things like trying to sell in on Kijiji. I called hot tub places about a trade-in or what to do. I couldn't see spending between $6,000 - $25,000 on a new one when I would hardly use it and who can afford that? They said it might have to be removed from the yard with a crane lifting it over the top of the house. Either that or it would have to be rolled on its side out of one of the very narrow side gates. I have a walkway and not an alley at my back fence and that is not helpful for removing a hot tub. Finally, one hot tub company said they would haul it to the dump for $500.
This summer, I realized I was at the end of my rope as far as letting these items continue to disintegrate. I had to do something. I went online and was lucky enough to find a great handyman. Not only is he a good carpenter, but he has great ideas. The carpenter knew someone who would unhook the electrical part and in exchange might take the tub. His first look said that because the entire underside was spray foamed onto everything, that it could really damage the pipes etc. during a move. It looked to be a complicated job needing several strong movers. He decided not to go for it. The carpenter assured me that he would cut up the hot tub for less than $500 if it came to that! He knew that the idea of paying to send it to the dump was really making me sick! However, the idea of cutting up a perfectly good hot tub made my blood run cold! He suggested I call the Habitat for Humanity ReStore to see if they wanted it. What a wonderful idea, but no, they didn't want it. Who would buy it they said. I had offered it to my kids for the lake. No, they didn't want it. He suggested advertising it for free on Kijiji, so I did, plus Facebook Marketplace. I said it was free as long as they did the removal. Somehow, and unbeknownst to me, for awhile it was showing "free delivery". Jeez! Two people had already asked me to deliver it, one in P.A. and one in Aberdeen before I realized the mistake. I couldn't believe the audacity! Couldn't they even read? It was a nice lady who showed me a screen shot of the statement for free delivery and I almost had a heart attack. It took me about six seconds to get that off of there!
I had always worried about someone coming for it that didn't have a clue what they were doing and wrecking something during the removal like my house or my neighbour's house or fence. As luck would have it, I had over 50 interested parties. A young fellow from out-of-town asked if I could wait for a few days until he could get there. He was ahead of another out-of-towner who was going to move it with logs somehow. When he showed up I was concerned because he hadn't brought any tools and was all by himself. That kid (31 year old) was nothing but ingenious! He ripped off the rotten container and pulled out the hoses and pump equipment underneath. He said any damage he could repair. He walked across the street and asked a total stranger who had a mini skid steer to help him move the tub out. It was a masterpiece event! They turned the tub on its side, lifted it with the fork lift, put a strap around it and that kid backed it out of the side of my yard. I couldn't believe he missed the neighbour's newly planted shrubs by about one inch. Both young guys were extremely good problem solvers and operators of equipment! The hot tub will be built into a new deck that this fellow is building. To celebrate, I gave the new owner two fat slabs of home-made bread I had been baking that he had been smelling through the open window!
The garden really was a source of stress when it just didn't come up. I had to reseed and finally things happened when the rains came. I was impressed to be able to have weeded my entire back yard perimeter by the end of May plus trimmed many of my multiple trees. That job has always taken me almost all summer. By July, I have gone through it all a second time and enjoy working outside. My lawn got fertilized and looks the best it has in years!
So my advice to you if you're agonizing about your decision to retire is like the others....just do it. Let the chips fall where they may (after a good hard look at everything). As for my housekeeping, no it really hasn't improved and neither has my cooking. You become more of what you are as you age, but becoming the best version of ourselves couldn't be better! Good luck!
