Retirement Trails

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Christmas season is usually a time of self reflection while mulling over many things, and then spending even more time pondering about stuff using the “tongue in cheek” method. This can sometimes be rather enlightening and it can help to provide intellectual clarity to this thing we are doing called “retirement”.

Looking back, it has certainly been a big change for us even though we are still finding our way in our quest for adventure.

We have come to realize that there are subtle changes that slowly take place from retirement planning, to making the move out of the workplace, and then moving along into retired life. It is a process of activities that usually includes things like exploring new places, pursuing new activities, enjoying new beers and finding those special rums that can be sipped on ice.

Office zombies who maintain daily engagement in the workforce may regard their planned retirement date as that “key moment” in their careers that signifies financial freedom.

Usually something like.... Yes! We made it! Woohoo!... A time of joy and fireworks!

We felt that way too but then we added another step in our process that brought with it that enhanced liberated feeling when we sold off all of our goods and chattels along with our collected piles of "stuff" that seemed to be anchoring us to our old life in Canada.

We have since found out that retirement is not a single event to be measured at a point in time, but a process that affects your future and your very psyche. The whole process consists of a trail of activities for leaving one way of life and entering another way of life, and it usually begins years before you actually submit your resignation letter.

Someone once said that success in life is not measured by the length of the number in your bank account, and rather is measured by the memories you create for yourself and those around you. It would therefore make sense to focus on how to maximize the memories in your life and not the other way around. We are doing our best to focus on making memories right now, and yes, we can also confirm that it is a very quick task to count the short stubby numbers in our bank account.

Dreams:

As with all conscientious worker-bees, the hopeful retiree begins early to build that nice nest-egg of savings for retirement, and with little warning, they find themselves in the Dreams stage, which typically begins five to ten years before retirement. In the Dreams stage they are trying to visualize how they would live their lives once they let go of the daily grind at the workplace. Questions come to mind...“Where do I want to retire to?”; “Can I afford to retire?”; “Can we afford to travel for a while?”; “Will my wife join me or just kick me out of the house?”; “Should I become a beach bum?”... This stage is very important and sets the stage to begin planning.

It is our opinion that there are some uninformed people in this world who don't want to let go of their work lives and would rather carry on with their zombie existence and robotic routine while wearing a plastic smile. And there is nothing wrong with that for those people who want to be robots. However, there are also those more enlightened folks who DO wish to shake away the daily drudgery in order to celebrate fiercely during a cart-wheel filled sequence of events.

Reality:

The Reality Stage kicks in anywhere from 12 to 24 months before the moment you quit pursuing your career path. Lifestyle issues come into focus, along with fears that one’s RSP retirement nest egg may be inadequate to live in that luxury penthouse with white sand and palm trees below. Yes, this is a stressful time... thinking about all of this “reality” stuff. You start getting serious about adding up what your income might be from government programs like Old Age Security and the Canada Pension Plan, as well as employer pensions (if you are that lucky). This is often coupled with looking at how investment portfolios can be optimized – stay away from Bitcoin... You also start thinking about how you can skip out of paying taxes (you can't, but you still think about it)... Seeking advice from pre-retirement financial planners comes into focus and much of your free time is spent looking at options for making your new, and higher, income levels balance along with your wild spending expectations of retired life. You start to realize that wild spending is just part of the dream phase, and you purposely don't travel as much during this time due to the “deer in the headlights” effect taking it's toll, and you focus on trying to pay off as many stupid bills as possible while trying to save for the big day.

Commit:

The third stage is when you take a deep breath, let go of your safety net and take the big leap, the plunge, and dive head first into your new life. This is by far the shortest stage in the retirement process as it is the end of employment and the start of what most people in the world would call “leisure” time. This is often marked by a drunken celebration period – perhaps a whole weekend of frenzied debauchery. It has become a rite of passage for many and is comparable to the hallowed ceremony that marks graduation time.

This commonly occurs between the ages of 62 and 70, and by this time you are pretty good at doing math. This is also a highly emotional period while you calculate and recalculate annual income vs expenses. Inflation is large on your mind as you hope your slightly-indexed pension income will keep up with the ever-inflating cost of living in your target expat retirement community. You are also busy finding out about how to maximize income from your RSPs, and how to redeploy those huge sums of savings that you have so diligently tucked away in your Cayman Island bank accounts... oh wait.... you forgot to deposit money in those accounts. Then you realize it's time to downsize everything in your life – especially your previous spending habits.

Your own actuarial forecast also weighs heavily on your mind. Your sedentary office lifestyle and latest medical report means you should have died a couple of years back. OK, let's rethink this. You read somewhere that the potential for living to 100 years of age is becoming more common, and actuarial models have been known to be wrong.... yes, we always hope to prove them wrong. We also hope our retirement leisure time can last anywhere from 20 to 30 years, and perhaps longer. That’s a lot of time to fill, assuming our biological health keeps up with our fantasies, and we’ll need to change our monthly cost of living expectations if we’re to make the most of our savings account.

Adjustments:

This is the stage we are enjoying at the moment. It typically covers the first four or five years of your new life style. Letting go of a former zombie existence of drudgery and repetitive commuting, and rather embracing a daily life of leisure, allows feelings of happiness, contentment, and confidence to take the place of anxiety. Learning the basics of relaxation is paramount if you are to survive the early onset of this stage. The new notion of “be-ing” increasingly replaces the previous notion of “do-ing”. For example, be-ing on a beach is far better than do-ing the annual Corporate budget.

As it turns out, it becomes important to get accustomed to learning more about be-ing, and enjoying where you are, and what you are experiencing, rather than thinking about what needs to be done. The type of people that you decide to spend time with will become far more important to you, and you find that you can easily cast away the people who piss you off.

It’s a complex time of change and that requires major adjustments from work life to leisure activities. Planning for this change is important. Gone is the old definition of “rest and relaxation” while you wait for the inevitable arrival of the grim reaper. Today as we move into retirement, and gradually break the habits formed over a lifetime of a brainwashed society with a culture of hard work, our relationship with leisure, and with ourselves, evolves and changes. This is the most “time affluent” phase of our lives. This time needs to be filled with healthy activities for personal growth and adventure.

Many want to experience new leisure activities, vs. things they’ve already done, and that approach would be similar to what we are doing in our retirement adventure story in this blog. But some continue to work part time or volunteer their time to others. In our minds, it is a good way to add more names to the list of “uninformed people” who would rather be robots.

Epilogue:

Anyway... and at last, there is the epilogue and legacy stage. This is when seniors confront themselves in the mirror with their aging aches and pains and ever-hopeful longevity plans. At this point they are ever-thankful for having taken the leap to enjoy their adventure years. They ultimately revisit their wills, write memoirs, and prepare to pass what wealth remains on to their heirs..... we won't have any of that...

It's time to settle in to a smaller home, shop differently, might also eat differently, and then you come to realize that this truly is the time of your life when your treasure the memories you created while having your adventures.

Maintaining your health and independence is even more important to these mentally adjusted retirees, with most of their leisure time spent relaxing or connecting with family and friends. So, you make plans to visit each of your relatives on a regular basis for a nice free meal and talk their ears off about the time you were in Mexico, or Barbados, or Grenada....

Compared to other stages, epilogue stage retirees are most likely to enjoy familiar activities rather than discovering new ones. They indulge in soft porridge for breakfast, doing finger painting, receiving leg massage treatments, practice tying on good sturdy walking shoes, etc..

... and maintaining those repetitive familiar skills can also be very useful such as preparing your own medicinal libations - especially when it's 5 o'clock so you don't have to rely on others to pour your daily portion of rum... cheers!

Happy Retirement!