Retirement: A Full-Time Job

Picturing Retirement: Home Improvement

Photo Friday:  Ok, so besides travel, the other thing I was really looking forward to in retirement was painting the all the faux finishes out of my house.  This picture was a few months after I retired.  Three years later and I still have one room left to de-faux.  Go figure.

Related Posts:

    Great Blog Posts (That I Didn't Write!) -- aka:  The Bathrooom Before and After

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Postcard from Australia

Posted in Traveling Tuesdays

Greetings from Down Under!  Technically, here in Sunshine Beach it’s Wednesday, but back home it’s Tuesday so I think I can still slide a “Traveling Tuesday” post in under the wire.  Aside from the several days it took for us to get over the jet lag and the shockingly high prices for restaurant meals, I absolutely love this place. 

Observations:

-People are more prone to smiling here,

-There's free wine tasting in the airport,

-(I don’t think that’s the reason.)

-Driving on the left-hand side of the road is really hard when you are lost and getting loster,

-Two iced teas at lunch the day before yesterday:  $14,

-Two beers at lunch yesterday:  $10,

-(We won’t be making that mistake again!)

-No need to remove shoes or jackets at airport screening for domestic flights,

-In fact, no need to even show photo ID.

-Waking up after the U.S. stock market is already closed is a much easier way to go through life.

-The speed limit is 80km/h on the beach at Fraser Island.   (Yes you read that right, on the beach.   Stay left, use your turn signal indicator, and by all means, mind the bikini-clad pedestrians!)

 

Translations:

US                                                  OZ

Make a reservation                          Make a booking

Begin boarding                                Commence boarding

Get your drinks                               Organise your drinks

Lollies                                            Sweets and candies

French Fries                                    Chips

Ketchup                                          Sauce

Trash                                              Rubbish 

Garbage can                                    Bin

Dispose your cigarettes                     Bin your butts

Liquor store                                     Bottle shop

Shortly                                             Before the tick of the clock

Shopping cart                                   Trolley

Actually                                           Realistically (maybe that was just our guide?)

 

Questions:

            -What is the proper etiquette when hiking through the nude beach fully clothed?  Do you say "G'day” to passers-by, or look the other way?

            -And does it strike anyone else as funny that while already exposing every single body part to the sun, nude sun-bathers still don a hat?

 

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Photo Friday: The Theme is Hereditary

Photo Friday:  This week's picturing retirement photo was very hard to choose.  The wide selection of destinations my parents traveled to in the last year included Barcelona, Turkey, Dubai, Oman, Costa Rica, Miami and the Yucatan.  I settled on the gulet that was their home for several days in Turkey.

Related Posts:

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On the Alert for Fraud

Posted in Money Mondays

We use our airline-miles credit card for everything.  Not just the big purchases but the miniscule things, too.  Believe me it all adds up.  This year we earned enough miles for both of us to fly round trip to Montreal, Canada, and to Sydney, Australia.  

A few months ago, while we were traveling in Canada, we received a phone message from a savvy employee of Birkenstock.  She was calling to make sure we weren’t trying to order 60 pairs of shoes.  I have nothing against comfortable shoes, but no, I don’t need 60 pairs of them.  She suspected as much.

She had called the number on the Internet order and talked to someone that said he was Doug.  “Doug” assured her that he did indeed want 60 pairs of shoes.  He said he had a lot of friends.  Apparently they all lived in Virginia Beach.  She didn’t buy it, cancelled the order, and found our number in the yellow pages.  Our generous fraudster also ordered two thousand dollars worth of cigarette papers.  It’s easy to be generous when you are high and using someone else’s credit card I guess.

Over the years, our credit card issuer has caught and alerted us to plenty of fraudulent charges.  The last one was a series of 99 cent charges to iTunes.  The $.99 they catch, but ten grand in shoes and cigarette papers they don’t?  Oh well, they did reverse all the fraudulent charges, cancel our card, and get us a new one—in Montreal, the very next day.

Since that time, we have now set up email alerts on our card.  Every time a charge is made over a certain dollar amount, we receive an email.  Sure, it generates a lot of email, but at least I know that the next time a popular criminal gets ahold of our credit card number, I’m not clothing all of his friends.

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            Why Risk Getting Murdered by Blogging?

            A Note About “Losing” Money in the Market

            You Can’t Take it With You

 

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Photo Friday: I'm Detecting a Theme

Photo Friday:  So far all the contributors picturing retirement are traveling.  I can relate to that kind of retirement.  Tamara and her husband hiking the Alpine Pass in Switzerand, over 100 miles!  Talk about an active retirement.  To read more about Tamara's retirement, check out her Early Retirement Journey blog.

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How to Retire Early

Back in the day of late-nights at the office, the janitor to our building used to come in to my office to empty the trash cans at around 8pm.  I was the only one in the office at that point, it was tax season.  He and I would exchange pleasantries in my limited Spanish and then he would always say, in English as he left my office, "More work, more money!"  While I was on a salary, so more work wasn't really more money, he did have a point.

There's no getting around the fact that the more years you work, the more money you're going to have.  The more money you have, the more money you get to spend.  If you decide to retire 20 years before the traditional retirement age, you are giving up 20 years of income.  That's a fact.  Less work, less money.

So then, what's the secret to early retirement?  Read my guest post at FiGuide, How to Successfully Retire Early.

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Lusting for Boredom

Posted in Traveling Tuesdays

I am so looking forward to the 14 ½ hour flight to Australia.  Is it because of the cramped seating, the airline food, or the stale, re-circulated air?  Or perhaps it’s the four movies on a tiny screen and the free booze?   (Yes, we get free booze on the flight.)  Nope, it’s because of the boredom.

Boredom, how I miss you.

Even in retirement I have a hard time with a day that is devoted to simply eating, sleeping and reading.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love a day of just eating, sleeping and reading.  But I can’t do it.  Not even in retirement.  It’s a very hard thing to do, actually.  Life interrupts.  Guilt interrupts.  And darn it, that voice that shouts, “Go do something with your life!” interrupts.

But there’s nothing else to do on the plane.  Nothing.  It’s forced boredom, and how I relish the thought of fourteen and one half hours of forced boredom.  

I’m not sure why so many people fear boredom in retirement.  Frankly, it’s hard to find the time for it. 

Remember that summer vacation when you were a kid?  The one you so looked forward to for the last several weeks of school?  And then a few weeks into it you were following your mom around the house nagging, “Mom, what can I doooooo, there’s nothing to doooooooo?”  Oh I remember.  It was awful. 

Oh, how I miss it.

I’ve got three books I’ve been working my way through for the last six months.  I’m stalled in the middle of knitting a blanket for a friend’s baby.  I haven’t written in my journal since July 28^th.  All things I can do guilt free on a 14 ½ hour plane ride.  I can nap.  I can read travel books.  I can have idle conversation with my husband and he’ll actually listen because there’s nowhere else for him go!

As Katrina Onstad writes in her Globe and Mail piece Why We Should Rediscover the Joys of Boredom, “What is a holiday, really, but the opportunity to pay for boredom?”  

Yes, it seems like you should be able to do all these things in retirement, but trust me, it’s a whole lot easier when there’s absolutely nothing else you can possibly do because you are trapped on a plane.   

I can’t wait.

Related Posts:

            Is Boredom Really a Danger in Retirement?         

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            Boredom Begets Boredom

 

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Photo Friday: Retired Art Teacher with Wanderlust

Photo Friday:  Lynne, a retired art teacher, fittingly posing in the middle of a sculpture on her first retirement trip, to Sweeden and Norway.  Going on two years of retirement, she took the time to send in this picture right before leaving on another trip to Sweeden.  Bon Voyage!

(To submit your picture of retirement, email me a photo with how you would like it credited.)

 

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Intro to the Home Exchange Vacation

 Posted in Traveling Tuesdays

This was the greeting we received from the 10-year old daughter of our hosts on our most recent home-exchange vacation to Montreal.  Doug and I have exchanged our house for an apartment in San Francisco with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, for a custom-built two-bedroom home in Monterey only minutes from the Monterey Jazz Festival, and for several wonderful apartments in New York City, just to name just a few.  In all, we’ve enjoyed swapping with over a dozen people, some more than once.

I understand people’s fears about swapping homes, I was a little nervous before our first swap too.  I’m not going to try and sell home-swapping to the ­­­­skeptical, but I would like to share how I got over those fears, saved thousands and thousands of dollars on lodging over the years, and made a few nice acquaintances along the way. 

There was recently a high-profile story about a woman in San Francisco whose apartment was ransacked when she rented it out through Airbnb while she was on vacation.  Fortunately, this experience resulted in Airbnb’s new $50,000 guarantee against such a circumstance, but it was still the kind of story that feeds into many people’s fears.

The reality is that most folks are not going to fly clear across the country to vandalize your home or steal your big screen TV.  Sure, I suppose it is a possibility, but so is the possibility that someone will break into your home while it sits empty as you are vacationing at a resort in Hawaii.  But that possibility doesn’t prevent millions of folks from taking off on vacation every day. 

Unlike a vacation rental, on a home-exchange, you are actually in your guests' home while they are in yours.  That fact is very powerful for both parties in involved.  I am much more careful in my swap partner’s home than I am in a hotel or in a rental because I actually have a relationship with this person now.  And in my dozens of trades so far, I can see that my exchangers are behaving exactly the same way.

The more realistic possibility is that everything in your home is not left exactly as you had hoped, maybe a wine glass was broken, or ring is left on your coffee table, or more likely, you and your swapper's standards of cleanliness are different.  So far, I’ve found people to be extremely gracious with things like that, but even if they weren’t, the cost of replacing that wine glass is far less than the six nights' hotel stay in Manhattan that you would have had to absorb if you didn’t swap. 

Just a little perspective.

Related Home-Exchange Posts:

    On-Line Dating in Retirement    

    Luxury Vacation Envy

    Everything Old is New Again

 

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Picturing Retirement: Exploring the U.S.

Photo Friday:  Our visit to the lovely town of Brattleboro, Vermont last spring.  Now when I watch the video of Irene's impact there, and this exact spot, I relate more personally.  (Hoping all of you back east are recovering ok!)

(To submit your picture of retirement, email me a photo with how you would like it credited.)

 

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