I think retirement is a pipe dream... (2 Viewers)

[SteveSBrickNJ]

Interesting that you of all people would ask.. becuase one thing ive been looking for in a possible retirement location is an active tennis community .. I know ur a tennis fan too, and yes i think Belize and Panama have good tennis.. but there are some beautiful places to play in Asia, and your $$ goes a lot further there than in Belize or Costa Rica.. but one of the reasons ive sorta scratched the Philippines off my list is b/c it seems there arent many decent places too play; if you google, it seems that outside of the high dollar areas of Manila, most of the tennis courts in the Philippines look like dirt parking lots .. it’s depressing .

Yet when you select a place to live for retirement, you might wish to consider the fact that your body may not allow you to play tennis for many years. My wife is trying to talk me into doing a retirement (down the road...when ready) that would be Nov. - March in Bali Indonesia and April - October here in the good 'ol USA.
She grew up in Indonesia so she is bilingual....my wife speaks English and Indonesia's language called : "Bahasa". We've visited Bali Indonesia...it is somewhat like Hawaii maybe?. Her idea might be tolerable for me because so many Australians visit or live there. That way I have English speaking people to talk to.
I don't want to go someplace where the only person who speaks English is my wife. If she gets mad at me and gives me the silent treatment I'll go crazy from the language barrier-isolation.
In the Philippines the stores seem to have signs in
English. Most Filipinos speak 1) their national language "Tagalog" ....2) Their local dialect ....3) English
*

 

[Rickboy]

Yeah, no offense to Rickboy or the many, many others like him- but that mentality of ‘You retire to die’ is kinda sad to me…. I just feel like there’s so much to life besides work; i had my first job at 9 yrs old, working summers on my dad’s construction sites.. my first ’outside of the family’ job was working in a fast food place at 14 yrs old.. so that’s literally almost 40 years (off and on) of grinding away and.. im sorta tired .

I'm not sayin' you have to stick with a J.O.B. but you have to do something. Even my 98yo Grandma is working a few days a week at a church run thrift store for the poor. To me it's life is meant to have purpose. Whether it's your job or your family or some passion.

Also, this isn't meant to be a critique of anyone that wants to just have a fun retirement. You do you. I'm not here to judge. This is simply my path. Of course I'm only 51 years old. One can change their mind in 20 or so years.

 

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Yet when you select a place to live for retirement, you might wish to consider the fact that your body may not allow you to play tennis for many years. My wife is trying to talk me into doing a retirement (down the road...when ready) that would be Nov. - March in Bali Indonesia and April - October here in the good 'ol USA.
She grew up in Indonesia so she is bilingual....my wife speaks English and Indonesia's language called : "Bahasa". We've visited Bali...it is somewhat like Hawaii maybe?. It might be tolerable for me because so many Australians visit or live their. That way I have English speaking people to talk to.
I don't want to go someplace where the only person who speaks English is my wife. If she gets mad at me and gives me the silent treatment I'll go crazy from the language barrier-isolation.
In the Philippines the stores seem to have signs in
English. Most Filipinos speak 1) their national language "Tagalog" 2) Their local dialect 3) English
*

I have watched plenty of that guy’s videos.. he annoys me.. and, he lives in a high dollar part of Manila (Makati or BGC i think) and if you retire there, you might as well retire to someplace in the US b/c you wont save much money .

Ive heard good things about Indonesia .. huge plus that ur wife is from there.. ive never been , but i plan to visit Asia soon since there is only so much you can learn thru Google and watching expat videos on YouTube .. the fact that the Philippines is an English speaking country is a huge plus, but unfotunately there seem to be many more minuses in re to the poverty and ‘roughness ’.. and ive heard that in places like Thailand or Vietnam, it’s easy to get by with English in most of the expat-heavy areas .

 

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Yet when you select a place to live for retirement, you might wish to consider the fact that your body may not allow you to play tennis for many years. My wife is trying to talk me into doing a retirement (down the road...when ready) that would be Nov. - March in Bali Indonesia and April - October here in the good 'ol USA.
She grew up in Indonesia so she is bilingual....my wife speaks English and Indonesia's language called : "Bahasa". We've visited Bali Indonesia...it is somewhat like Hawaii maybe?. Her idea might be tolerable for me because so many Australians visit or live there. That way I have English speaking people to talk to.
I don't want to go someplace where the only person who speaks English is my wife. If she gets mad at me and gives me the silent treatment I'll go crazy from the language barrier-isolation.
In the Philippines the stores seem to have signs in
English. Most Filipinos speak 1) their national language "Tagalog" ....2) Their local dialect ....3) English
*

ETA the awesome thing about tennis is that many people play well into their 80s… BUT if ever i wasnt physically capable, i could always go to the dark side and play pickleball .

 

[HoustonSaint68]

Livin the high life on cheap street...

I love that. Nice.

 

[HoustonSaint68]

- those summers taught me what i DIDNT want to do for the rest of my life- which was manual labor .

True dat. Probably the biggest disservice I did to my kids was not making them work the type of nasty arse jobs I did starting, like you, at age 14.

I was reading last night how the thing that is keeping the Chandler dude from Friends from going back to opioids is thinking about having to live the rest of his life with a colostomy bag. The thing that kept me in night school after working a full time job and a part time job was the thought of washing dishes, or flipping hamburgers, or tearing off shingles in 90 degree heat for the rest of my life. It's a LOT easier to read Dostoyevsky when you're dead tired with an infant sleeping in your arms than it is to haul shingles up a ladder in a New Orleans summer.

 

[Tapxe]

you have to do something

Something is a vast list. Maybe infinite...

 

[Mr. Blue Sky]

True dat. Probably the biggest disservice I did to my kids was not making them work the type of nasty arse jobs I did starting, like you, at age 14.

I was reading last night how the thing that is keeping the Chandler dude from Friends from going back to opioids is thinking about having to live the rest of his life with a colostomy bag. The thing that kept me in night school after working a full time job and a part time job was the thought of washing dishes, or flipping hamburgers, or tearing off shingles in 90 degree heat for the rest of my life.

Minor correction- like i mentioned in my post, i started that type of work at 9(!) yrs old.. just sayin…


I saw a headline about Matthew Perry ’waking up in his own feces’ but decided not to click on it since i was about to eat dinner, ha…. Seriously though, i agree that those types of experiences can have a huge impact on future decisions.. hard lessons for sure .

 

[HoustonSaint68]

Minor correction- like i mentioned in my post, i started that type of work at 9(!) yrs old.. just sayin…


I saw a headline about Matthew Perry ’waking up in his own feces’ but decided not to click on it since i was about to eat dinner, ha…. Seriously though, i agree that those types of experiences can have a huge impact on future decisions.. hard lessons for sure .

Ahhh, yeah, I did see that in your earlier post - I was referring to your first non-family job.

And the Perry thing is where genetic luck comes in. For example, I was drinking pretty hard at 15 and I'm half-Irish. But I don't have the alcoholic gene or whatever it is that physically dooms people to addiction. If I did, I'd probably be dead, or at the very least in a dead-end job with no prospect of retiring. But I was lucky that way.

I definitely worked hard for what I have...but for being lucky though, I wouldn't have any of it. Didn't paralyze or kill myself or others all the times I drove drunk. Didn't get anybody pregnant at 16. Didn't get my idiocy posted on social media when I was an ignorant young racist. Didn't have sheetty parents. Didn't shoot a friend playing around with guns. Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky -- so no illusions that I "earned everything I have".

There but for the grace of God....

 

[saintmdterps]

True dat. Probably the biggest disservice I did to my kids was not making them work the type of nasty arse jobs I did starting, like you, at age 14.

I was reading last night how the thing that is keeping the Chandler dude from Friends from going back to opioids is thinking about having to live the rest of his life with a colostomy bag. The thing that kept me in night school after working a full time job and a part time job was the thought of washing dishes, or flipping hamburgers, or tearing off shingles in 90 degree heat for the rest of my life. It's a LOT easier to read Dostoyevsky when you're dead tired with an infant sleeping in your arms than it is to haul shingles up a ladder in a New Orleans summer.

My summer job in college was construction. I noticed how worn out the older workers bodies were, and decided that's why I wanted to graduate college; I didn't want to end up like these men. Some of whom I saw later in their lives in my professional capacity as an occupational therapist. By the end of those summers, I was tired of sweltering from beginning to end of the day, and was ready to go back to college albeit to an unairconditioned dorm room

One summer I noticed one of my coworkers seemed to be not quite your average construction laborer. I said to him, "You don't strike me as the average construction worker" He laughed and replied "Well, during the school year I'm actually the biology department chair at Salisbury State College. I do this job to unwind from the politics. Here, at the end of the day I have no other work to do. I'm outside, getting my body back in shape and clearing my mind. Don't tell them but I'd do this for free just to relax" he later echoed my sentiments that by summer's end, he was ready to go back to the college.

I also worked with a retired navy commander and several others who liked the summer work just to be outside and do grunt labor that didn't require the mind to work hard. On the other end of the scale, my first summer I was crew lead and got paid 50 cents extra per hour because I was the only one of the 5 of us with a drivers license

 

[Bleu Raeder]

There are so many great responses in this thread.

I know what got me to the "ain't gonna be able to retire" place I am in now. I was doing well with saving and planning and all of that until that major health issue that many of you remember. We did all of the right things for the most part, but there were tens of thousands of dollars of things not covered by insurance or the drug company. And that is where many people today are - they are all good up until someone in the family has a major health problem. And many, unlike me, are never able to work another day in their lives.

I am happy to be here.

We've started talking about the not-retiring and perhaps living a bit more like we are retired because we understand quite clearly that tomorrow is not guaranteed. Not go hog wild, but do some of the things many folks put off until they don't have to clock in. The discussion is ongoing but in our hearts, we know the math of dumping as much into savings/retirement accounts may not be the best plan at this point. I do have a very modest 401k and I will not take SS until I absolutely have to (if it is still there when I am ready and I'll be drawing the max). Bleu Wife is very much on the fence about this and thinks we should dump every spare dollar into savings.

So, we shall see.

 

[HoustonSaint68]

My summer job in college was construction. I noticed how worn out the older workers bodies were, and decided that's why I wanted to graduate college; I didn't want to end up like these men. Some of whom I saw later in their lives in my professional capacity as an occupational therapist. By the end of those summers, I was tired of sweltering from beginning to end of the day, and was ready to go back to college albeit to an unairconditioned dorm room

One summer I noticed one of my coworkers seemed to be not quite your average construction laborer. I said to him, "You don't strike me as the average construction worker" He laughed and replied "Well, during the school year I'm actually the biology department chair at Salisbury State College. I do this job to unwind from the politics. Here, at the end of the day I have no other work to do. I'm outside, getting my body back in shape and clearing my mind. Don't tell them but I'd do this for free just to relax" he later echoed my sentiments that by summer's end, he was ready to go back to the college.

I also worked with a retired navy commander and several others who liked the summer work just to be outside and do grunt labor that didn't require the mind to work hard. On the other end of the scale, my first summer I was crew lead and got paid 50 cents extra per hour because I was the only one of the 5 of us with a drivers license

Good for him being smart enough to work both sides of the grass.

I once was working a mentally grueling transaction with a younger lawyer and, IIRC, at one point he looked out at the conference room window at some landscape workers and said something like: "Man, they don't know how good they have it, working outside with the dirt in their hands and no mental stress." I just mentioned to him that more likely they were probably thinking the same thing about us in an air conditioned room with no physical element required.

Years later, that same young guy was working another deal and went out in front of his hotel to wait for his car pickup. There was a golf tournament at the time (the Westchester Classic) and one of the golfers (Vijay Singh IIRC) was waiting for his ride. As he told me the story, Singh was quite a number of strokes back at this time and, after standing there quietly for awhile, my friend's car came and as he was leaving with his big case of documents, he looked at Singh and said: "Isn't this something? We're both going to work." Singh came back to win the tournament, and my friend always took credit for putting him in the right frame of mind to win.

 

[sfidc3]

Yeah, no offense to Rickboy or the many, many others like him- but that mentality of ‘You retire to die’ is kinda sad to me…. I just feel like there’s so much to life besides work; i had my first job at 9 yrs old, working summers on my dad’s construction sites.. my first ’outside of the family’ job was working in a fast food place at 14 yrs old.. so that’s literally almost 40 years (off and on) of grinding away and.. im sorta tired .

We had a similar work career….I started mowing lawns and delivering papers around 9-10, worked as a busboy at 14….BUT what really motivated my to get my college degree was working summers at the NOLA water board and offshore as a deck hand….

I was extremely fortunate to retire at 56….maxed out our 401k every year, investments, we don’t spend a ton on clothes and never buy new vehicles….but more than anything? Luck, timing with some discipline ……

 

[Bleu Raeder]

Yeah, no offense to Rickboy or the many, many others like him- but that mentality of ‘You retire to die’ is kinda sad to me…. I just feel like there’s so much to life besides work; i had my first job at 9 yrs old, working summers on my dad’s construction sites.. my first ’outside of the family’ job was working in a fast food place at 14 yrs old.. so that’s literally almost 40 years (off and on) of grinding away and.. im sorta tired .

I think several of us here can relate, but I can also understand the sentiment.

Bleu Dad feared retiring because so many of his friends had done so and were gone within a couple of years. As he neared retirement age he was attending more and more funerals. At first, he was the primary caretaker for Bleu Mom until she passed. He then found he could pour himself into his lifelong passion of model railroading. He also made friends his age who were active. He survived retirement, but couldn't survive a hidden heart issue. He was a Midwesterner, frugal to a fault without want. He hadn't started saving for retirement until he was nearly 50 though, having a reasonable retirement plan provided by his company in the days before 401ks and such became the norm. He lived comfortably and enjoyed his retirement.

I think that we have to retire that mentality now though.

My new neighborhood is 55+ neighborhood and I am, by far, one of the youngest in the area. Sure, you hear ambulances a little more often than you would like but the vast majority here are 75+ and maintain very active lifestyles. Many of them have been living in the neighborhood since it was established about 17 years ago and are quite healthy and always have something going on. While it seems rather cliched, the clubhouse has activities of some sort each and every day - poker nights, bunco, bingo, exercise classes, etc. - and those activities are well attended. I don't think as many folks now are "retiring to die".

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

I'm an elementary school teacher who happens to be 60.
God's been good and I am very healthy. I feel I have the same energy and enthusiasm as I did 20 years ago. I say all this to lead up to the topic of feeling bored once a person is retired.
I PERSONALLY think that would be me. I'd miss the kids and being part of the exciting elementary school environment.
When we have a week off and my wife has to work at her office job.....that week goes so slowly. If she and I retire together ....sure we could travel more....but we currently have a combined income of $135,000 and when we retired it will become more modest than that. I have a 401k that has tanked during the Biden years....and I'll get a pension. The longer I work...the bigger my monthly pension check will be.
Anyway, even though my wife is younger than me, she might retire first. I just can't picture myself "retired" every day....every year....year after year. Nope...I can't.
I think I am personally better off staying in my teaching job as long as I'm healthy and enthusiastic.