Sun in the morning and the stars at night

Walt Whitman asked this question, “After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on what remains?”

“Nature remains”. he answered, “the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.”

How many of us feel the pull of the sun by day and the stars by night? I do sometimes, but I know that I have lost touch with my natural self and I know that I would not want to go out camping unless there were a lot of amenities,

When my wife and I were younger we did a tour of Europe. It was fund, but our trip was much the old saying “If this is Tuesday, this must be Belgium.” We had a short period of time and we made the most of it. We did not have much money, so we camped, and I remember campsites that had stores, bars, bistros, working indoor toilets, and swimming pools. In the 1970s in British Columbia if you were lucky you had an outhouse close to your campsite, no pools, no stores, no bars and no bistros.

We enjoyed our time and when we came home, we looked around and realized that if we wanted to have some of those luxuries when we camped, we could not camp with just a tent. So began a ten-to-fifteen-year adventure with a camper on a truck where we took our young children throughout the province. 

We took our own store, bar, kitchen with running water, our own bistro and indoor toilet, but we still had to find swimming holes. We enjoyed every minute of it, but as the kids grew, we outgrew the camper and finally sold it. 

Now when we travel, we book our timeshare or a nice hotel and go for walks on the beach to catch the sun in the day and sit out on the balcony watching the stars at night.

Countdown to retirement

Even if you hate your job and have a “countdown to retirement” clock on your desk at work, you’ll still likely have difficulty when you finally give them the old heave-ho. I was lucky I left work with only one months’ notice. I made a decision to retire based on my wife’s medical decision to stop work not on my willingness or desire to retire.  At the time I did not realize that I was lucky as many find retirement hard.

Some say that leaving a career is similar to a break-up with your long-time spouse, it is sure to be difficult. You think the escape will be nothing but sunshine and rainbows, but it’s not always that easy.

The same is true of your job. Expect it.

Better yet, set up a future for yourself in other areas – self-employment, volunteering, or starting that part-time job. When you’ve already moved on to the next thing mentally, letting go of the old boat anchor becomes that much easier to do.

If you want to retire well and retire early, you should simply live modestly, get rid of all your debts, earn a solid income, forecast what you need (but be flexible) and invest heavily. That’s really all there is to it. Dig any deeper and you’re just wasting your time.

The most valuable information in your planning for retirement  is the ones that hardly anyone talks about:

·    Being willing to work after retirement.

·    Having an understanding that even the best-laid plans are futile, you’re never going to predict exactly what will happen over a 30-year span. It’s impossible.

·    Retirement is not all unicorns and angelic choirs. It’s just the next challenge in life worth conquering. It is part of your journey, not your destination.

·    Go in with the right mindset, understand what happiness truly means for you, and never stop working toward the goals that will take you there.

 

Compounding Interest

I have talked about the dangers of inflation on your retirement so talking to your investment advisor about long-term returns is important. Saving a high percentage of income is only half the battle. You can’t just put fat stacks of cash under your mattress and expect to get rich. The interest rate you earn long-term is also very important. Consider this, if you can earn 10% a year, it takes approximately seven years for your money to double. In another seven years, it would double again. Wait for another seven, and it doubles again. This is called the Rule of 72. It works this way take the interest rate you are receiving and divide it into 72 the answer is the number of years your investments will double. So, in our example 72 divided by 10 equals 7.2.

Let’s say you manage to save $100,000 by 40 and you earn 10% a year. How much would you have when you retired at 61? Your investment would double three times over the 21 years you left it. So, you’ve actually have $800,000. ($100,000 becomes $200,000 which doubles to $400,000, and then doubles one more time to make $800,000). If you could hold off another seven years or until you are 68, you could have yourself a cool $1.6 million. Not too shabby when you consider that you only had $100,000 28 years ago. That’s the power of compounding interest, it works to help you. You have got to be invested to get ahead and you will need a good financial advisor to do that.

I retired at 60, and I had some ideas about what retirement would look like, but I found that my retirement did not go as planned.

If you retire at age 60, like me, you could easily have 30 years or more of retirement life ahead as I hope to have. When I was 30, I could not have predicted where I would be at age 60? It is the same is true for our retirement years, And that’s okay, You can do all the planning and forecasting you want, but you’ll never be able to predict what will happen to you personally, professionally, relationship-wise, or financially over the next 30 or more years.

In early retirement, I thought I was going to exercise more, read more, travel more, and work less. I do exercise more, read less, and travel less but I work more, all for good reason. All I can suggest is that when you retire, be ready to be flexible and able to make updates to your overall financial plan. My advice keep your planning simple. Spend less, earn more, play more, and invest all you can. That’s it. There’s power in that message.

Assisted living from a different perspective 2

One of the realities of your retirement is that you and your friends are probably experiencing the same financial and health stresses that worry you. There are various ways to use co-housing as a method for addressing your shared concerns and create a community to meet your needs.

You could:

·  Buy or rent a home with friends and spread responsibility for chores across residents.

·  Live with friends and hire people for cooking and cleaning and share the costs.

·  Rent out rooms in your home and hire the services that you and your residents need.

·  Help family members do any of the above.

·  Explore more about co housing:

o  The Golden Age of Golden Girl Style Living

o  Explore the Golden Girls Network (Canadian Branch,

 

Getting creative is almost always a good idea, but a good plan and a good plan B is a better tactic.  Besides, retiring to a Holiday Inn or travelling the world on a cruise ship will only get you so far.

However, creating a financial plan for growing old is one of the key objectives for retirement planning. Some people have enough assets to pay for long-term care out of pocket, the rest of us need to explore other possibilities. The idea is to stay as creative and as open-minded as you can, remember retirement is a journey not a destination.