Retirement: A Full-Time Job

I Hate Nature

   

I hate nature.  Don't get me wrong, I love looking at it out the window from the comfort of my couch.  I just don't like it when it joins me on the couch, as the tick did last night.

A couple of weeks after I retired, we moved into our vacation home.  Our plan is to live here for a few years before selling it to finance our golden years.  It's in a beautiful wooded spot, but living here is really going to test the mettle of this bug/rodent/snake skittish girl.

The bugs that call this place home are a varied and ugly bunch.  A friend that was living here a couple of years ago found a scorpion in the house, so now I am very vigilant about my surroundings at all times.  A midnight trip to the bathroom is not without its anxieties.  The decision to just hold it 'till morning often trumps comfort.  I am reluctant to risk putting my feet on the floor in the dark--the territory of who knows what creepy-crawly.

I was not one of those children fascinated with bugs and would never have been found actually picking one up.  I was the child that ran shrieking the other way (and haven't changed much since growing up). 

Our first night after moving up here I had banished Doug to the guest room for snoring infractions.  At 2am he was up, all the lights were on, and a look of panic was on his face.  "Do you hear that?"  I didn't hear that.  "I'm not sleeping in that room, there's a NOISE."  He came to join me.

I put earplugs in.  "Do you hear that?"  (He shook me awake since I had earplugs in--so, no, I didn't hear that, but thanks for waking me up AGAIN.)  I listened until I heard what he heard--a rodent party of some sort in the attic or below the house.  Mickey must have scored some primo nuts because they were really living it up.  Party's over now, we've trapped 6 mice under the house since that night.

Now the biggest invader in the house is the Box Elder bug.  They are all over the outside of the house and are mating in the landscaping mulch.  Many have found their way inside.  If you smash them, they leave a red spot, so you really have to pick them up, something that I am unwilling to do.  If Doug is not here, I have to get the vacuum hose.  Three feet away is about as close as I want to get to most of the creatures sharing my home.

It's a good thing our front door is windowed.  Because I think if I had opened the door without looking, the squirrel pictured above would have come right in the house.  He sat on the front doorstep for about a half an hour--as if he was actually waiting for someone to open the door for him.  I began to wonder if this was my reincarnated Beagle sitting there thinking "what the heck--did they seal up my doggy door?"

What Will I Worry About Now?

I have had one overriding worry since I retired:  health insurance.  I've read the horror stories about obtaining health insurance and worried that even if we could get coverage, the cost would be bankrupting.  I handled this worry the way I handle most of my worries, denial and procrastination.

Well, it's not that bad; here's what I learned:

Do not pass up COBRA coverage when you leave your job.  This is pretty much the only guarantee that you will be able to obtain reasonable coverage in the future.  When you leave your job, you can elect COBRA coverage to continue the insurance you had while you were employed for an additional 18 months.  (Your state may extend this period even longer.)  Our monthly premium under COBRA was $600.

Start shopping immediately for an individual policy.  I knew I could save on our premium if we could purchase a plan with a higher deductible.  I contacted a broker.  She told me that because of our health history, we were not insurable and it was not even worth submitting our application to insurers.  She recommended that we stay on COBRA for the full COBRA period because at the end of that time we would be guaranteed coverage under HIPAA.

After you exhaust your COBRA coverage, you are guaranteed coverage under HIPAA.  In California (very helpful publication here) the rules require that insurers offer their 2 most "representative" policies to those that are eligible for guaranteed issue.  The cheapest policy I could find on-line under guaranteed issue would have doubled our premiums to more than $1,200.  (It's guaranteed coverage, not guaranteed to be cheap!)

Do not rely exclusively on insurance brokers.  When you apply for an individual policy outside of the guaranteed issue provisions, you must go through the insurance company's underwriting process, which includes providing a very detailed health history.  At the end of this process, they are not required to offer you insurance.

Before our broker told us we were uninsurable, I had already submitted an application for an individual policy directly with an insurance company.  Turns out we are insurable and at a premium half the cost of my COBRA coverage!  (I'm not sure why the story was different from a broker--perhaps the commission structure?)

Select your policy carefully; this may be the policy you have for many years.  HIPAA insures guaranteed renewability of your individual policy as long as you keep paying the premiums on time (although the cost will surely rise.)  If you change your mind down the road, you may not be able to obtain the coverage you want.

Most importantly, do not let coverage lapse.  Your options become very limited if you ever let coverage lapse.

I hope we are fortunate enough to enjoy excellent health and that the insurance company makes a fortune off of us as a consequence.

The Truth About Retirement

"Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day."

                                            -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have been retired now for two months.  Here is what I have learned.  While perceptions of retirement vary, all retirement really means is that you don't go to your job anymore.  That is the only universal truth, (well, that and there is no such thing as comfortable thong underwear.)

What will you spend your time doing after you retire?  Whatever you spent your time doing before you retired, minus the job.  While I'm sure my interests will evolve over the years (just as they did while I was working), I now spend my time doing exactly what I did before I retired, only more of it.  (Which reminds me of a wise friend's similar observation after a cocktail one evening, "I feel more like I do now than when I first came in.")

Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day.  Being retired just means that what you are thinking of all day is exactly what you want to be thinking about, not what someone else is paying you to think about.

And With This I Would Marry Him All Over Again

When I retired from my job a couple of months ago, my husband, Doug voiced some concerns about the budgetary constraints I was proposing.  Clearly the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed was in jeopardy.  It's true, and I did feel a little guilty about that.  (Only a little, I did point out that if he felt it was too draconian, he could always go back to work.)

Our new budget (and by new, I mean that we actually have a budget now) requires that he pare back his wine purchases and his expectations of the level of luxury on our future vacations.  He must get used to the idea of driving our cars until they can drive no longer, and will have to accept replacements that are more economical when that day comes.  (Our SUV-driving neighbors will surely mock us upon the addition of a Prius to the neighborhood.)

In this draft of the budget, my labor fills in for services we formerly outsourced such as yard work, housecleaning, and painting.  It turns out, this house cleaning gig is hard work!  I spent 4 hours cleaning yesterday and barely made a dent.  (By the way, to make the budget work I also dropped the gym membership and personal trainer.  Now that I'm cleaning and gardening more, I can see that paying for exercise would have been a complete waste of money.)

I have been taking a writing course these past few weeks, the focus of which is writing for magazines.  Last week, when I was wondering if I would ever have time to clean the house, I mentioned to Doug that if I sold an article every so often, we could consider hiring our house cleaners back.  I expected he would really like this idea.  I thought the dirt was getting to him but that he didn't want to risk death by saying something to me.

But listen to the sweet words he uttered to me when I proposed this idea.  He said "I don't know, for 300 bucks a month, it seems like we should just put up with a little dirt."  I haven't heard words that have made me that happy since "Will you marry me?"

Why Risk Getting Murdered by Blogging?

Doug and I are headed to his parents' house for Passover Seder this weekend and I am reminded of our last trip down there for Thanksgiving dinner.  I had just started blogging and was very excited to share my new hobby with the family.

Most people I know don't actually know what a blog is; so if I want to talk about it, I usually have some explaining to do first.  Over Thanksgiving dinner, I had just such a conversation with my sister-in-law's mother-in-law.  (Is it any less confusing to say my husband's sister's husband's mother?)

Her first question was "Aren't you worried about having a blog?  There was some girl around here that had a blog and she got murdered.  You should be careful."  I wasn't familiar with the story she was talking about, but figured this girl tried to meet someone through a social networking site (that is, if this story was even real to begin with.)  I explained the difference between social networking and blogging, which is really irrelevant anyway, because there is no inherent danger in either one.  I am in more danger of getting murdered walking down the street than I am by posting to my blog.  She was not convinced.

"Well then, don't you worry about someone stealing your identity?"  Well, no, it's not like I publish my visa card or bank account numbers.

"But you just post stuff on the Internet for ANYONE to read?"  Well yes, that's kind of the point.  Kind of like what writers do in newspapers and magazines.  In fact, the more readers, the better.  And even better if they leave comments, turning the whole activity into a conversation.

I told her how interesting it is that I get readers from all over the globe.  A college professor from Lithuania commented the other day.  "Well how do you know he's really a college professor or that he really lives in Lithuania?"  Well I guess I don't, but he really has nothing to gain by making this up.

So I gave her another example, recounting my excitement when Millionaire Mommy Next Door had commented on my blog for the first time.  "How do you even know that this Millionaire Mommy is a real person?"  (MMND, this was before you were on the Montel Williams Show, which I'm sure would have helped me immensely here!)  I explained that every blog has a real person behind it because someone has to actually write the posts.  "But what if she's not really who she says she is?"  She writes stuff, I read it.  What do I care "who she says she is?"  Am I worried that, in reality "she" is really a "he" and he is an ax murderer?  No, not if I like the writing.

I could see I was getting nowhere fast so I told her I would be careful and try not to get murdered.

I would now like to offer one piece of advice for those of you new to the blog world.  If a friend tells you she has a blog and then you later say "I read your blog," you need to follow that up with "and I really enjoyed it."  Don't make her ask after an awkward pause . . . "well, did you LIKE it?"  And if you didn't really enjoy it, it's probably better not to bring it up in the first place.  I would never know you read it and I'd rather not know you hated it.

Keeping Secrets

A couple of weeks ago, my husband Doug came home from biking with a friend and told me "I've got a secret I'm not supposed to tell you so act surprised when they tell you."  I think he figured that since the secret was one that I would find out eventually (his wife is pregnant), it was kind of an exception to the secret-keeping rule.  I said I would act surprised when they told me, and even worked out an act in my head.

A couple weeks later I was on.  We were having lunch with Doug's biking buddy (DBB) and he asked me, "So, what do you think about three kids?"

I played dumb, "You mean three kids as a rule?  I think it's a bad idea."  I can get away with this, being someone that wants zero kids.

DBB looked perplexed.  "Doug, didn't you tell her?"

I kept up the act, "Tell me what?"

He said "Dude, I thought you said you had to tell her!"

"Tell me what?"  I said, "Now you have to tell me!"

DBB confessed they were having a third child.

I took off my sunglasses and stared him right in the eye, "Who's the daddy?"  I said, "Because I know you just got the snip-snip."

"Well yes, we found out right before the snip-snip.  Dude I can't believe you didn't tell her, you said you had to tell her!"

"Yeah,"  Doug said, "I did tell her."

He ratted me out!  He not only can't keep a secret, he can't keep the secret that he didn't keep the secret!  Men.

DBB did commend me on my performance, though, so that's worth something.

I Got Tagged

Cheryl over at But What Now? "tagged" me.  She had no idea how risky this is because I'm the kind of person that never participates in this kind of thing.  You send me one of those emails that says "send this email to five of your friends in the next five minutes or you will die;" I always risk death by hitting the delete key immediately.

But blogging, that's an entirely different story.  While I might risk death, I would never be so foolish as to risk negative blogging karma.  (And I might add, it does take the pressure off of trying to come up with something original today.)  So here goes:

The rules:

1.  Link to the person that tagged you.
2.  Post the rules on your blog.
3.  Share 4 things in the following themes.
4.  Tag 4 bloggers at the end of your post with a link.
5.  Let those bloggers know they have been tagged with a comment on their blog.

Four jobs I've had:

Well since I spent nearly 18 years at my last job, it's really stretching back to get four whole jobs.  My first job in high school was at H. Salt Fish and Chips.  I came home every night smelling greasy and fishy, yeah, some good times.  I left the fast food business for a more professional career as a gopher at a law firm.  After college, I worked at a highly respected (and now out of business) accounting firm.  My last job as the CFO of a venture capital firm rounds out the sum total of my working history.

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Sorry, there's only one.  "It's A Wonderful Life."

Four places I have lived:

San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Calistoga and New York City (OK, that was only for a month--some might say I'm stretching but it was hands-down my favorite place to be.)

Four TV Shows I love:

Well love is a strong word for TV, but I really like Sopranos, Damages, House, and Friends reruns (that's a show I watch over and over again--pathetic, I know.)

Four places I have been on holiday:

Biking in the Loire Valley, beaching in Mexico, eating in excess in Italy, and living it up in Manhattan.

Four of my favorite dishes:

Pork belly at Redd (Yountville), tempura green beans at Red Cat (NYC), tacos at La Coroneta (SF--two bucks!), and my husband's thin-crust pizza.

Four websites visited daily:

New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Dooce.com, and Brazen Careerist.  (Why would a retired gal visit a career site?  The writing is just that good.)

Four places I would rather be now:

The great thing about retirement; I'm exactly where I want to be.

Four bloggers I'm tagging (I apologize in advance):

1.  Frugal in the Fruitlands
2.  Makeitbetter's Weblog
3.  Working for Rachel
4.  The Wastrel Show

Spare Some Change for a Retiree?

It's kind of strange being the poor person now.  And I don't mean we are poor; it's just that other people think we are poor and I don't really want to argue with them because it's cheaper that way.

Yes, we are on a fixed income now, and perhaps I say this out loud too much.  I'm not really sure why I do that; I'm not really worried about running out of money.  But it seems to have stuck in my friends' and family's minds because they all seem to be watching our pocket book for us.

I think my parents-in-law are worried that we don't have enough money to travel and buy good wine, because they have offered to take us on vacation with them, and they buy wine for us whenever we go wine tasting together.

Last year for my dad's birthday, we included gift certificates to Togo's Sandwiches with his gift, which he gave back to my husband last week to buy dinner at the hockey game.

But it all really hit home a couple of days ago when we met some friends for a really fabulous dinner in the Napa Valley at Redd.  They love food and wine, I think even more than Doug and I do.  They were pondering a couple of French Chablis options and my friend cautioned her husband to be careful because "Sydney and Doug are on a fixed income now."  I laughed because I didn't really think I would care which bottle they ordered by the time we divided up the check at the end of the night.

In the car ride home, Doug said "Wow, I've never been out to dinner where the wine choice was actually downgraded because of us!"  Up to now, we've been the ones trying to take our friends' budgets into consideration when choosing the wine.  This was the first time we've ever been on the other side of that.

I had a taste of the Chablis they chose and had actually thought it WAS the more expensive one, it was really fabulous--and I'm not generally a fan of any wine that's not red.  Doug said no, that was the cheaper one, and the one they didn't order was $178!  Wow, it would have been totally wasted on me, so I'm glad they worried about our budget.

Like I said, it's cheaper that way.

It Feels Like Sunday Afternoon

My husband just said to me that it feels like a Sunday afternoon.  Maybe it feels like Sunday because it actually is Sunday.  I know it to be true because I read the Sunday paper today.   For the most part, all of the days feel the same now, but usually they all feel like Saturday, because we don’t have to go to work the next day, any of the days.  The truth is, we hardly ever really know what day it is anymore.

But Sunday actually feels better than the rest of the days.  Sunday still feels lazy and wonderful, but now Sunday afternoon turning to Sunday evening is not unwelcome.  I get that feeling on Sunday night, like no other night, how great it is that everyone else is going to work the next day and I am not.  Most of the days I’m happy to be retired, Sunday night, I’m ecstatic.

Happily Obsessed

A few weeks ago I introduced you to a few people in the blogosphere that are also writing about retiring early in life.  I can’t believe I forgot to include Tim at Canadian Dream, the fist of such bloggers I discovered when searching for others of a similar mind.

A couple days ago, he wrote a post about coping with his obsession with retirement, which made me laugh because he described my own retirement obsession perfectly.  Anyone that knows me though, knows this is not the only thing I obsess about.  I don’t really like the word obsess, I prefer “engage with passion” or “exude excitement about,” but I digress.  Tim suggested some tips to get you over such an obsession in the interest of actually enjoying your life right now.

A few years ago, while on a spa vacation with my friend Vicki, I booked a session with a therapist there.  She asked me what brought me in.  I told her that I weighed myself every morning and I wanted to know whether this was normal.   Well, she didn’t say was that I was perfectly normal, that everyone does this, and that it probably is how I maintain this petite figure.  She instead asked me, “What else do you obsess about?”

I hadn’t really thought of weighing myself as an obsession, it was just something I did in the morning when I got up.  But she was right; I told her the truth, “Everything."  She asked me for specifics.  I started by telling her that I reviewed my financial situation every day—sometimes more than once a day.  She asked me how that made me feel.  I said I loved it, because I wanted to retire early and I enjoyed watching my progress and fantasizing about retirement.  She said good

She asked me about vacations, was I the type to wing-it or did I have to plan every hotel room, every train ride,  and every restaurant reservation.  Well of course I had to plan every detail.  That was half the fun; combing through travel books picturing myself there, fantasizing about all the fun I would have.  She said good.

Then she asked me how I felt when I weighed myself every morning.  Well this was a no-brainer.  If it was less than the previous day, I felt fabulous; if it was more, it pissed me off for the rest of the day.  She said not so good.  She said there is nothing wrong with obsessing about things.  It was part of my personality (and gave me some theories—absolutely right, by the way—about why that was).  As long as my obsessions gave me pleasure that was great.  It was a way to enjoy my future retirement early, a way to extend the fun of vacations by savoring them in advance.   That was all fine, she said, but I had to give up obsessions that did not make me happy.

She told me that if she had several months to work with me, she would work me up to throwing out my bathroom scale.  But she knew I wasn’t ready for that.  So she recommended instead, that before I got on the scale each morning, I should ask myself what kind of frame of mind I am in.  Will it ruin my day if the scale says something bad?  If it will, don’t get on the scale that day.

So go ahead, obsess about retirement if you want, but only if it makes you happy.