As a 40-something, retirement seems far off. I’m not ready to retire. Heck. I’m barely back to work after some years off as a stay-at-home mom. Now that I have been back in the workforce for a couple of years, I suppose I should give retirement more thought and consideration. But isn’t planning for retirement for older people?
Financial planners recommend planning for your retirement when you first enter the job market. I set up a 401(k) as soon as I was able. My first job was one of those minimum-wage-jobs-but-you-could-qualifiy-for-food-stamps-but-we’re-calling-it-a-professional type of job. After enduring sitting opposite someone who smoked to the point where her smokeless ashtray was overflowing with ashes, I had enough and mounted a job search. This was the late 80s…to this day I have no idea why one person was allowed to pollute the office with her smoke when the rest of the office was smoke free. I enjoyed coming to work, but within a hour I was choking on the smoke and ready to go home.
The 401(k) dovetails with the financial planning my husband and I did after we got married. But, are we ready? Is anyone ready for retirement?
My “Day One” of retirement is blurry to me at best. What will I do? Where will I be living? Hopefully, in the house I am in as I write this post. After a nomadic childhood of moving from England to America to England to America to England to America to England to Italy and finally to America, I am done with moving. I don’t want to move to another house much less move to another state!
When a friend talks about retirement, he always mentions the “for the first year I’ll sit on my porch in my rocking chair, the second year I’ll rock back in the rocking chair” scenario. I can relate to the need to relax and recuperate during retirement. As the mom of 3, it is nothing for me to drive 15 minutes to drop one off at swim practice, another 50 minutes to drop another off at volleyball practice, and another 30 minutes to pick up a long-forgotten-and-now-absolutely-needed item for a project. Love where I live even if I wish there were times I was closer to civilization.
I’m sure we’ll be ready for retirement, but for now I’m enjoying life, family, and the knowledge that we have prepared.
I was compensated by the Day One Campaign. The views expressed in the post are my own. I follow the tenets of Blog With Integrity.
