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I think this is the wrong forum for this topic. For any of us retired or those about to retire, it is too late. Saving and foregoing unnecessary expenses is something that needs to be done over the years, over the decades, in order to prepare for retirement. Some of us have done so and can now live comfortable retirements with money available for travel and toys and hobbies. Others either had poor luck or poor planning and are looking to live cheap.
So with the poor planning there may be good memories.
Well, OP, I thought this post was going in a different direction. My wife and I are the types that did live below our means and now are comfortable enough in retirement. The twist, however, is that our lifetime habits of frugality makes it damn near impossible to loosen up and be gypsies or butterflies or spendthrifts. That's OK, I guess; we are who we are.
I totally get that. We were pretty much the same way, but old dogs can be taught new tricks. Spend it and don't leave it behind for someone else to spend
I just recently had a friend die at age 50. Three weeks ago he was working and had a heart issue. Yesterday he died. The day before the issue he was healthy as a horse. Save for a rainy day but enjoy the sunshine.
Many people never learn to manage their own finances. I know employed millennials who live paycheck to paycheck and don't even have a personal budget, but I see them squandering money every day while complaining about being broke. Their financial horizon is two weeks instead of twenty years. When I was their age retirement was not a priority, but I at least had an annual budget broken out to daily and monthly levels.
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Young people have no concept of the fact that they are facing a 50 year working life.
This is so true. At my local coffee shop, it is largely young adults in line for a $5 cup of coffee, and you often overhear them _while in line_ complaining about their poverty.
In my early 20s, I kept a monthly budget in a ledger book and it was down to the dollar. I knew exactly how many beers I could afford on any given Saturday. But savings was always one of the line items. My IRA funded during only those lean years twenty-five years ago has a total asset value now approaching 100,000.
I agree that this is the wrong forum, because there is more to it than saving for retirement. Many people never learn to manage their own finances. I know employed millennials who live paycheck to paycheck and don't even have a personal budget, but I see them squandering money every day while complaining about being broke. Their financial horizon is two weeks instead of twenty years. When I was their age retirement was not a priority, but I at least had an annual budget broken out to daily and monthly levels. When I went off budget, the whole thing got revised. Believe me, there were some monstrously huge revisions, like Christmas of 1972 when I spent 10 days in intensive care without medical insurance and was unable to return to work for two months, or 1980-1983 when the Reagan recession coupled with an acrimonious divorce put me thousands of dollars in unplanned debt. Still, I managed to build a solidly middle class life through budgeting and financial planning with a steadily increasing horizon.
Home ownership was a part of it, which dovetailed neatly with retirement. We bought smart and had it paid off by the time the Bush recession hit. By the time we bought our current home our financial horizon to retirement was 20 years, so a 15 year mortgage made sense. At that point we could look at our finances and make what adjustments we could for retirement. Being mortgage-free allowed me to sock another $20,000 a year into my retirement accounts.
Young people have no concept of the fact that they are facing a 50 year working life.
The thing is that I had plenty of crabs and beer on the way, I just caught the crabs myself, and a buddy who is an amateur craft brewer brought the beer. Having fun is not expensive at all, and will fit into just about any budget. I bought my fishing and crabbing boat second hand. It's not much, and you wouldn't want to take it out on the open ocean, but it's fine for bays and estuaries. Sometimes I don't even go to the ocean. Local crawdads are delicious fresh water lobsters, and you can catch 300 without even a fishing license. Combine that with a charcoal grill, a couple steaks and some corn on the cob that you can grow yourself, then give your buddy a call to bring the beer.
When I was in my 20s, I knew a lot of local musicians. I started holding a Sunday brunch at my house, that was nothing much, just hash browns, pancakes, eggs, biscuits and gravy or whatever I felt like, washed down with black coffee. The musicians would work until 2, stick around for a few after hours drinks, pack up their gear, and start arriving about 5 am. I would have the coffee on, and would cook while they played music, talked or just sprawled after work. Before long my house became one of the "in" spots in town for the art crowd, not just musicians, but artists, writers, and creative people of every description. By sunrise, after a gallon of coffee, everybody was sober and getting creative. Contrary to popular mythology, the really creative people were the first of the anti-drug crowd. Hangers-on were free to get stoned, but performers didn't get up in front of hundreds of people and make asses out of themselves because they were too drunk or stoned to cope. Caffeine was the drug of choice, and I was pushing fresh roasted, fresh ground Arabica in an era when Yuban was still considered a premium coffee.
It was cheap. The most money I spent was on coffee beans. Do you know how many people you can feed on $10 worth of pancakes and eggs? This was the early '70s when eggs were 25 cents a dozen, so multiply that number by 5. You don't have to bust your budget to have fun. Fresh crabs and beer are cheap once you have the fishing license a plastic garbage can and some clean bottles.. Buy a few gallons of gas for the outboard and you are good to go. Once you realize that squandering money is not the key to happiness, living the good life will have no effect at all on your retirement plans.
That is a really beautiful depiction. Was this all on or around the Umpqua?
Well, OP, I thought this post was going in a different direction. My wife and I are the types that did live below our means and now are comfortable enough in retirement. The twist, however, is that our lifetime habits of frugality makes it damn near impossible to loosen up and be gypsies or butterflies or spendthrifts. That's OK, I guess; we are who we are.
How true this is, my wife still clips coupons and will find a restaurant that send her a 20% discount.
Well, OP, I thought this post was going in a different direction. My wife and I are the types that did live below our means and now are comfortable enough in retirement. The twist, however, is that our lifetime habits of frugality makes it damn near impossible to loosen up and be gypsies or butterflies or spendthrifts. That's OK, I guess; we are who we are.
We are in much the same place and we've learned to loosen up quite a bit. We saved our whole lives so we could live well in retirement and travel as much as we want. Remember, you can't take it with you, so why not enjoy what you've worked so hard for?
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