Retirement: A Full-Time Job

This is My Brain. This is Retirement. This is My Brain in Retirement.

Sunday night I had the great fortune of being invited by my friend Vicki, to join her and her friends at the James Taylor concert at U.C. Berkeley's Greek Theater.  This is the very same venue at which I saw JT many, many, many, years ago.  Let's just say we were both a lot younger and he had a lot more hair (although I'm pretty sure he was wearing the same pair of jeans.)  He made a bunch of jokes about memory loss, but I can't remember any of them now.  

The concert was great, and old-folk-jokes aside, the music made me feel 17 years old again.  This young-again phenomenon was, however, only temporary . . .

I was rudely deposited back into my 44-year-old self shortly after the show ended.  We made our trek to the really far away parking lot where I suggested Vicki's friends park the car.  You see, if you are willing to walk a bit, you can get out of the area and onto the freeway a lot quicker than if you park close to the theater. That is if the garage DOESN'T LOCK UP WITH YOUR CAR INSIDE!  This was my first introduction to Vicki's friends; I fear this suggestion may have negatively impacted their first impression of me.

Yes, the garage which I had so diligently researched on the Greek Theater's website closed BEFORE THE CONCERT WAS EVEN OVER.  When we arrived at the garage's locked gates, we were not alone.  There were at least 20 other concert goers, wearing their picnic blankets and tired faces, wanting so much to just jump in their cars and get home to their warm, comfy beds.  (I am about the average age of the other attendees, and so am pretty confident they shared my feeling that WE ARE WAY TO OLD FOR THIS!)

The couple closest to the gate informed the rest of us that they arrived at the garage at the precise moment that the attendant left the building.  He told them that he was "going on a break" and would be back in half an hour.  The crowd continued to grow outside the garage and we began to question whether he really would be back, as the fine print on the back of our tickets clearly stated that the garage closed at 10pm on Sundays--an important fact previously overlooked by all those present.

But here's where the great advantage to being retired set in.  I REMAINED CALM!  No, I did not worry about how I had to get up early and go to work in the morning.  Instead I masterminded plan "B."  I called my husband to find out when the last BART train would be leaving Berkeley.  We had 1 1/2 hours until this drop-dead moment.  We would wait for the attendant to come back, but if he didn't, we would take BART, my husband would pick us all up at the other end, and deliver everyone to their respective homes.

Because I am retired, I would go back out there the next day and pick up Vicki's friend's car and deliver it to their home while they were at work.  Not exactly how the evening was supposed to go, but we all felt better knowing we had a plan.  Let me tell you this:  I never would have been calm enough to figure this all out if my brain were going to the office the next day.  The part of my brain formerly devoted to work-related anxiety was free to engage in more productive endeavors.  Just as I finished explaining the plan, the attendant returned. 

Retirement Goals?

Question:  Why sleep in until 8am when you already slept eight hours by 7am? 

Answer:  Because you can! 

It turns out it's not any easier to get out of bed in the morning in retirement than it was while I was working.  Even though I’m now averaging an extra hour of slumber each night, I still have to force myself to get out of bed by 8am.  (An arbitrary hour that I have deemed almost respectable.)

The other night, a new acquaintance asked me how I liked retirement.

“I love it!” I told her.

“What are you focusing on in your retirement?”  she asked.

“Nothing really, I’m just deciding each day what I’m in the mood for, and seeing where it takes me.”  She looked puzzled.

I guess she thought I didn’t understand the question.  “When you quit your job, did you have any GOALS in mind for yourself?”

I laughed, “Definitely not!  That’s what I just left, the world of goals and to-do lists.”

“But then will you go back to work after some period of time?” She asked.

“Not if I can help it.”

You know how when you meet someone, sometimes your conversation just clicks?  This one wasn’t really working that way.

It just dawned on me, though, that I HAVE been achieving a goal in retirement, almost every day: getting out of bed by 8am!

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Isn't Blogging Writing?

Monday night was the final class of my five-week writing course.  We got to the last topic of the evening: how to stay inspired to keep writing.  One of the students asked whether it is helpful to keep a journal.  The instructor said that some writers do that but he finds that when he spends energy writing in a journal, he doesn't have any leftover for his other writing.

Another student agreed with this comment and added, "Yeah, like those people that have blogs.  How do they ever have any energy left over for real writing?"  To which our instructor added, "Blogs:  diarrhea of the mouth," which garnered laughs and nods of agreement from all the students--except me.

I did not share that blogging actually keeps me writing.  Blogging inspires me to write more, not less.  But "writers" do not see bloggers as writers, and I did not want to "out" myself as one a mere bloggers in front of this audience  Yes, there are crappy blogs out there, but there are also crappy articles and books out there--bad writing is not limited to the blogosphere!

Bloggers put words on paper (or virtual paper).  Isn't that what is known as writing?

A friend of mine told me that I'm not a writer unless someone pays me to write (and AdSense revenue doesn't count).  I could offer something equally as cynical; you're not a writer unless someone reads your writing.  (If a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound--you get my drift.)

But what I really think is if you write, you're a writer (employed is a different issue.)  And as long as we're on the topic of writers; go check out a great new addition to my blogroll; and guess what--the writing's good!

Practical Advice for Retirement: Stock Up on Underwear

If you're getting ready to retire, you can find plenty of advice out there on what you need to be doing. You'll find advice on saving and investing, pursuing hobbies, staying healthy, choosing where to live, and volunteering or working part-time.  But no one ever tells you another fact of retirement:  you're going to need more underwear.

When you work, you pretty much keep to one pair of underwear per day.  Wake up, workout, shower, put on nice clothes, go to work, come home, change into sweats, and plant yourself on the couch and watch t.v. until bedtime.  What you have here is a one-pair-of-underwear day.  (Unless, of course you were compelled to wear thong underwear with your work outfit, in which case you will want to immediately de-thong upon arriving home, therefore making it a two-pair-of-underwear day.)

Since I pretty much wore the same pair of scraggy sweats every night when I was working, the laundry basket didn't really get too full all that fast.  And I had enough underwear to get me through a week or two.

But in retirement, the meandering nature of the day can often require several changes of underwear a day.  A typical day might include waking up, working out, hitting the shower and then getting dressed to go meet a friend for lunch.  After swinging by the library for some books, or running some errands, you might find yourself home and eager to get working in the garden with plenty of daylight hours left.  So, you change into gardening clothes and come in a couple hours later dripping in sweat, covered in dirt, and feeling like there may be a few bugs that have worked their way into your bra.

A second shower and complete change of clothes is definitely in order; so far a two-pair-of-underwear day.  But possibly you are going out for dinner and want to wear your favorite jeans, you know, the ones that you have to wear thong underwear for--which means you will arrive home after dinner and promptly de-thong into your third pair of underwear.

Since many of my activities don't actually involve going out into public, I can wear a mishmash of clothes that I've accumulated over the years.  So having something to wear doesn't depend on my having to do the laundry very often.  But going through two or three pairs of underwear a day could mean having do to laundry just to get some clean underwear!

Before you retire, head to the Jockey store in the outlet mall and triple your underwear wardrobe; you're going to need it.

Things I'm Learning From Retirement: Get Out of Your Routine!

I've been retired for almost four months now and have pretty much settled into a daily routine.  Mostly that's a good thing because it means I do actually manage to make myself work out each day.  But yesterday my routine was changed because I was forced to get out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:30 am.

The night before, I was engaged in a bit of computer rage.  Rather than take a hammer to my laptop (one friend's answer to fixing anything, "If it can't be fixed with a hammer, it can't be fixed at all."), I went on-line and booked an appointment at the Apple store.  All they had available was 9am, before the store opened. This meant I had to be up, showered, and down at the store at what I have come to believe is the crack of dawn.  It was a nice time to be at the store though, before the throngs of people descended, very quiet.  The Apple guy told me "that's because we're all out of iPhones."

I was home by 10:15 and decided to tackle the cleaning of the house.  It had been several weeks since I had cleaned, but we're having a dinner party on Sunday, and I can't let actual people see the squalor we have been living in.  (Today a friend asked me, "How often DO you clean your house?"  I said "Whenever we're having people over.")

After spending four hours (on and off) cleaning, I did also manage that workout and felt VERY good about the day's accomplishments.  I rewarded myself by pouring a glass of wine and taking my book out into the garden to read.  This is exactly what I pictured for all those years that I would be doing in retirement, but I hardly ever do it!  The weather was perfect, everything is blooming right now, and birds were singing and playing together.

After a couple hours, I came back into the house and said "this is what retirement is all about!"  What took me so long?

Retirement Into a Down Market-Part II

Am I nervous about the stock market, having just retired while it is diving?  Yes.  Do I know better than to be nervous?  Yes. 

The logical, finance-person part of me realizes that over the next 50 or so years of my retirement, the market is just going misbehave from time to time.  I know this.  But the emotional part of me screams “why now?”  Why, right at the beginning of my retirement? 

I’ve been retired for almost 4 months.  In my detailed finance-nerd spreadsheet that I created to assure we would have enough money to live comfortably (not excessively) until the ripe age of 95, we need to make an average of 6% on our investments (while experiencing an average 3.5% inflation rate, and dying promptly at age 95).  

I know that in any given year, we will not experience a 6% growth rate in our assets; it will be higher in some years and lower in others (and in some years, like this year, so low it’s NEGATIVE).  This year, for the four months since I retired, our assets have declined by 4%.  That may not sound like a lot, but we should only be withdrawing 3% per year to live on, so we’re already down over a year’s living expenses with eight months to go of this first year.

At first glance, this doesn’t sound catastrophic, like all we have to do is die at 94 instead, right?  Wrong.  Due to the miracle of compounding, it actually has the miraculous effect of shaving TEN years off our allowed life span.  At this point in my life, I’m not ready to plan on throwing in the towel at the sprightly age of 85.

But in a way, it’s good that we are experiencing a market freefall during our first years of retirement rather than a huge market increase.  Why?  Let’s say by age 95 we experience whatever ups and downs the market has in store (and do manage to eek out an average of 6% per year).  Let’s say that year 1 was a huge up year.  If that were the case, I think that would have given us the impression that my retirement budget was too strict.  After all, look how much money we have with this huge upswing.  I think, in that scenario, we might grow accustomed to spending based on our new increased asset base. Then what happens if we encounter some big down years beginning in year 10?  It might be to late to recover from 10 years of overspending if we had been lulled into a false sense of security in the early years.

But since this first year looks to be a hard-slogging one, this is forcing us to see where we might be able to cut some costs, just in case.  Better we learn this lesson and make adjustments now, rather than when it’s too late to recover from overspending in early flush years.  It just means we forego some of the extravagances this year (and maybe the next couple of years).  With 50 years to go, it’s ok if we don’t get on that European vacation right away—more time to brush up on a foreign language.  Maybe we won’t eat out as much this first year; excellent, then we won’t waste all these veggies that are growing in our garden.

I guess the big question is, will we still remember these lessons years down the road when we do have some large upswings in the market?

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Cocktail Party Chatter

I love being retired; I just hate talking about it at parties.

A few weeks ago at a big 50^th anniversary shindig for my in-laws, one of my favorite guests, Sam, came over to say hi.

“I’m going to tell you what I told you 16 years ago at your wedding.  I wish you had a sister that I could introduce to my son!”

He then went on to say that he heard I had retired.  “What am I doing wrong that I’m 72 and still working?” he joked.

Last week in Molokai, at one of the many neighborhood dinners we were invited to, Diane, who works as a real-estate agent, asked us “what do you guys do that you can just take off on a Hawaiian vacation with your friends at a moment’s notice?” 

I told her “nothing.”  I think she thought I was joking.  Later during the evening, my husband admitted that, yes, we really did do nothing—we were both retired. 

Well then Diane wanted to know, “what do you guys DO then, now that you are retired?

Another retiree, Georgie (age 70) jumped in.  “You don’t have to answer that!” she said.  I thought that was a very appealing option.

Because the truth is, I find myself uncomfortable discussing my retired life at cocktail parties—especially with people that are working; even though I know that in both these instances, they work because they want to, not because they have to.   Even before I retired, I knew the cocktail party chatter would come to an abrupt halt when called upon to list my retirement activities; especially with people that actually love their work. 

“I blog, read, bike, garden, and sew. “  As I say it, I anticipate the glazed look in their eyes, “that seems very nice,” they say.  I guess a simple fact comes to the surface at cocktail parties.  It’s much more fun to be retired than it is to talk about it.

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Home Sweet Home

No matter how idyllic a vacation is, there is something wonderful about walking back through your own front door.  Not to mention something wonderful about being able to call a pizza place and have pizza delivered at 10pm.  I wonder what people do when they arrive home to Molokai at 10pm after a vacation.  The grocery store is closed, the neighborhood store is long closed, and I don’t really think there’s anyone on the island that delivers food even several hours earlier.  We only went to one restaurant the whole time we were there, and it closed at 8pm.  I wonder what they do?

Well, I imagine they call up their neighbors and ask them if they have any leftovers.  Three of the five nights we were in Molokai visiting our friends, their neighbors unexpectedly provided dinner for us.  The second night we were there, Tom and Georgie called to say that Tom had caught Mahi Mahi that day and did we want any (yes!)  Two nights later, on the 4^th of July, they invited us, along with 20 or so other neighbors, for a potluck.

The following night, some other neighbors, Larry and Diane, invited us over for turkey dinner; just bring a side dish, they told us.  All of the guests had been next door with us the night before.  I imagine, if you lived there full-time, you would always be able to find something to eat by calling one of these wonderful neighbors.  We were only guests of our friends (who are now the new kids on the block), and we feel like we are part of their neighborhood too!  What a pleasant change to the standard tropical island vacation, it was more like visiting Small Town, USA (but with what felt like third-world charm thrown in—like you weren’t even in the US at all!)

The sign at the Molokai airport welcomes visitors to “the friendly island.”  Turns out it's true; who needs pizza delivery with neighbors like that?

Failure at Vacation?

Last night I had a dream that last night was the final night of this vacation and that I had not finished even ONE book.  In my dream I felt like a failure.  A failure at vacation?  Who cares if I carry all four books back home unread; what difference does it make?  There will be no test, right?

I received a comment on my Vacation from What post that vacationing in retirement is called “travel.”  It’s hard to think of an island vacation as “travel” but this island, the Island of Molokai, kind of is like “travel.”   You tell people where you live by mile marker from town.  Town is Kaunakakai.  It’s about 25 minutes from here.  

But if you just need milk, you can walk and get it right here at the little neighborhood store.  If you need 2 bottles of orange juice, a can of pineapple juice, salsa, a Mr. Goodbar and a Diet Coke you can also get them there, but bring a bag, they don’t have grocery bags.  We would have had trouble if we actually bought the Triple Sec.  The Mai Tai’s will be just as good though, because I did have the presence of mind to bring along some little cocktail umbrellas in my carryon luggage.

To walk to the beach access, you have to walk along the highway.  It has a name but it’s really the only road, so I don’t know its name.  There are a few snarly dogs on the way, none are fenced in, but most stay on their property.  Our friends told us that if one starts to come out after you, you pretend to throw an invisible rock at them.  Guess what, it works (he was a pit bull mix—they mostly are on the island).

Even with the remoteness of our location and the non-touristy nature of this island itself, I haven’t found much time to sit and read a book.   For anyone that thinks this sounds like a nice vacation (or nice “traveling” if you are retired), here’s the link to our friends' tropical rental cottage. 

Aloha!

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Ok, I get it now.  We came into Molokai after dark so I didn’t get the full impact until I woke up this morning, or shall I say until the symphony of roosters woke me up.  I got out of bed and saw that it was raining but saw that the lanai is totally covered so went outside to watch the rain, gaze over the palm trees at the ocean, and listen to the birds.

A few other birds jumped into the chorus.  I don’t know anything about birds so can’t identify which birds these are, but soon, what sounded like a huge jungle bird joined in.  Wow, I thought, it’s like being in the jungle.  Then I heard it again and tried to find it.  I looked behind me to the source of the bird call—my husband, inside the house behind me doubled over with laughter watching me look for that bird.

To say magical is too cliché and doesn’t capture it anyway.  I haven’t even been here 24 hours and now I totally get why my friends bought this place.  In fact, what I don’t get is why they would ever let renters grace the premises.  I don’t understand why they haven’t already quit their jobs and sold all their belongings so they can just spend every minute of the rest of their lives on this lanai.

Maybe it’s because they need a couple of chaise lounges, and to get them, it would remove them from the lanai for a full day.  They must drive to the airport, get on a commuter flight to Maui, rent a car on Maui, go to Home Depot, buy the chairs, put the chairs in the rental car, drive it to the dock, load them on a boat, drive back to the airport, return the rental car, get back on the commuter airline and fly back to Molokai, go to the dock in Molokai, pick up the chairs from the boat, load them in the car, and drive the 45 minutes back home.

Small price to pay in my opinion.

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Vacation From What?