"Rational Suicide(2)"
Retirement
It’s Something to Consider Seriously!
The Times They Are a’ Changing!
Part 2 of ?
The Last Six Stages to Death
Ageing= Love,
independence, Pain, Dignity, DNR, Faith
The Aging Process
At the
conclusion of Part 1 I left you considering the future that you are now
entering and asked you to think about money so let’s start there.
If you are over or nearing the age of 60 if you
haven’t already planned on applying for your early Canada Pension Plan do so. Simple monetary fact: you pay a
penalty but it is money to be saved but if you manage to last to the target age
of 70 you wind up money ahead of the game. Check it out: when I did it took one
month of unemployment to qualify for the early pension. That can be obtained
with an unpaid leave of employment that most employers will be happy to grant.
The other
thing I left you with was a comment about your social circle starting to shrink
and that really accelerates on your retirement. If you are the man of the house
be prepared to lose most if not all your friends at work. Simple fact is you
aren’t there to witness the daily business transactions and relationships and
that is what you talk about with your home boys.. You’re out of the loop and
contacts are lost. The other thing you must be aware of is that your daily work
location is going to move into your wife’s work location and conflict of
schedules is almost inevitable. On the assumption that you do have a wife:
Some tips to take seriously
Tip #1:
The first
thing to do is sit down and as best you can, estimate what your combined income
will be when you retire. You calculate what your fixed income is going to be
from all pension plans and hopefully a cash flow from your investments. When
you are done take a good hard look at your monthly income because that is what
you must survive on until you reach 90. Hopefully your investments are large
enough to permit cash withdrawals on an occasional basis because sooner or
later you are going to need all you can get to cover your care.
Tip #2:
If it is at
all feasible get yourself a debit and credit card and switch to a plastic
economy. If you pay on time it costs nothing and the statements provide a
complete track of your spending. You can actually create a budget hopefully with
a surplus amount to save or handle crises when they arrive. Unfortunately you
can count on nasty surprises and unexpected expense. Shit happens!
Tip #3:
Don’t
expect your sex drive or sex life to last forever. If you are lucky menopause
didn’t cancel your wife’s desire out and she still wants some lovy-dovy.
Even if
your partner in bed is willing, sooner or later almost every man will watch Big
Red turn into Pinky Dinky and point at the ground. Use it or lose it holds
true! That is one of the more nasty surprises you will encounter.
Tip #4:
Expect your
memory to start screwing up and you start mistrusting your self about little
details. Your car keys and wallet are always where they are supposed to be but
when you leave the house you have sudden panic attacks and slap your pockets
silly to find and reassure yourself you have keys and cash. You spend half an
hour looking for your glasses and discover you’ve got them on, names get hard
to remember and if things are not important we’ll just forget them and not
bother remembering details.
I’m going
to leave you here until the next post to just think about the sequence of events
and the repercussions you can foresee from just leaving work, the reduction in
income and coming home to roost under one roof. Talk it over with your partner
because she’s going to share the same future with you. If you both can foresee
problems in your future relationship, adjustments can be made to avoid conflict
and keep caring for each other. That is of primary importance.
Having
reached awareness of those problems in the first five years, my next post will
deal with the physical deteriorations that seem to start at age seventy of even
sooner and how to approach and handle them.
Until then
To be
continued as
Rational Suicide (3)
Slowly Falling Apart
As soon as
I get it written.
Blaine Barrett
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