Thinking of retirement in 2019?

2019 could be the year you retire, as it is for my youngest brother. He did the calculations and in May he will pull the plug on his work and become the last of my brothers to retire. As he is much younger than I am, he told me that he watched my health to help him make a decision about when to retire. 

He is retiring a bit early, but all of my brothers did that. As I noted in an earlier post, this is the trend, most people retire earlier than their official retirement date. As part of your planning for retirement, people worry about how long their money will last. While this depends on how long they will live.

In Canada, the average life expectancy is 78.8 years for males and 83.3 years for females born in 2018.  If you are 65 you can expect to live until you are 83.5 as a man and 86.6 as a woman, depending on which province you live in now.  If you live in BC you could expect to live another 2 years on average.

In 2016, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 78.6 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For men, it was 76.1 years, while for women it was 81.1. If you are 65 you can expect to live a few years longer.

The question about how long your money will last is tied to your life expectancy, or what you believe about your life expectancy. If you are healthy or have older siblings that are still healthy then you may have to consider that you may live longer than the average. As my brother tells me as long as I stay healthy, then he will continue to watch his money, but if I get sick and die before my 80's, he said he will start to spend more. All joking aside, it is important that you take care of your money as you retire because you don't know how long you will need the money.

Are you on Track?

Three days in 2018, and I am wondering where the year went. Time, as I get older, seems to fly rather than crawl by. Every day is an adventure and life is still very exciting. 

I was thinking that life traces your kindness, much like an airline tracks your frequent flyer miles. The more you give, the more you earn, the higher you fly, and the further you go. So as you set out into the new year, I hope you are still on track. 

Here is to more adventures and flying high in 2019. 

Planning a New Year's Resolution?

We are on our way to a brand new year, lookout 2019 here we come. A few years ago a Palliative Care Nurse, Bonnie Ware,  wrote a book "The top regrets of the Dying" 

As you plan ahead, try to not have any of the regrets listed here. I know I will have regrets, but my hope is that I will learn from what Ms. Ware tells us and that my regrets will be different.  Here are the top five regrets of the dying as published in The Guardian on Feb 1, 2012, written by Susie Steiner

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
"Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

As you plan your New Year's Resolutions and look back at 2018 and forward to 2019 here is something to ask yourself. What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?

Boxing Day

Christmas has come and gone, and we are moving on to the new year. I hope your celebration was everything you wanted. Boxing Day is an interesting day. When I was young and in my teens, Boxing day was a day that was a time for visiting relatives or friends that we did not see on Christmas Day. My parents would dress up and we would go off for an afternoon of visiting. In our case, we went to my parent's friends in town and my parents would spend the day drinking and talking with their friends while the children would be forced to hang out with kids we never hang out with normally. 

My wife and her family experience a similar but different experience each Boxing Day. For them, Boxing Day was a day to visit with cousins and relatives who had not made it to their big Christmas Day celebrations. 

As newly married couples do, we sought to find a way to deal with both families around Christmas. What I realized looking back is that we came from two different cultures around Christmas and Boxing Day. I found it hard, not in a bad way, to get used to my the culture my wife and her family held dear at Christmas.  

My family celebrated Christmas in a small way, with a small (a maximum of 5 people) family dinner. My wife's family held a large Christmas feast, with never less than 30 people, all relatives in attendance. Boxing Day was a time to visit all of the other relatives who could not make Christmas, and this was achieved by having a great aunt or cousin hold a potluck drop in the afternoon (which lasted until late evening). 

New Year's Day, was another round of visiting after a big family party, which was always held at my wife's parents' house. New Year's day was a time for visiting all the relatives again.  It was a hectic time and it became our culture when our kids were young.

Over time as people became older, the traditions started to fade. People died, became ill, could not travel, the reasons were real and over time we lost the tradition of the big family gathering at Christmas. I miss it. 

Boxing Day is now an opportunity to line up at the stores for the biggest sale of the year. The day is not the same. Do you have any family traditions that have changed over the years?