Tag Archives: Retirement Challenges

Feb 28 2019

Mad Money

Tomorrow being the first day of March let’s engage in some March Madness. I belong to a social media group with the mission of organizing our lives.  Organizing also means decluttering.  Simplifying.  Divesting oneself of unnecessary baggage in oh so many ways.  After all this work, we don’t want to purge and then replenish our stash of stuff with new stuff.  That thought brings to mind the need for a budget.  

My challenge to my online group is to create a budget during the month of March.  I decided to offer up the same challenge to my readers.  However, I’m challenging everyone to include a line item named Mad Money and personalize what that means to you. 

You have a budget, you say?  Well, I have a few things I want to say about budgeting and Mad Money, but you already knew that.

About 30 years ago when I devised the first real family budget, I made it so restrictive, there was no room for fun, frivolity, serendipity.  The budget came out of arguments over, yes, you guessed it, money.  Like most couples Martin and I had our money vices.  I was perplexed when he opened his palm one day to proudly display a pair of red anodized nuts or bolts or some hardware to shave a gram off the weight of his bicycle.  They cost $6 each!  Remember, we’re talking circa 1990 here.  As I expressed my ire, he served me a comeuppance reminding me about my exploits at the garden center.

After setting the budget, it didn’t take long to figure out it needed to be a tad bit fluid so a Miscellaneous line item was added.  And, the line item that probably saved our marriage and continued our hobbies among other things — Blow Money.  Blow Money was simply my term for my and Martin’s personal allowances.  It could just as easily be called allowance money, enjoyment money, don’t want to be on my deathbed with regrets money, hobby money, impulse money or anything else I decided to call it.  Today I call it Mad Money removing any connotation that it has anything to do with cocaine!

Aside from the fact that our personal allowances meant we could go mad, as in crazy mad, buying anything within its limits, having a set amount to spend on plants or whatever each month taught me something.  This was money with no holds barred.  No questions from the other.  No judgment.  However, having it somehow changed the dynamic.  

For example, I’ve been invited to my share of kitchen parties, home decor parties, candle parties and whatever else parties someone could come up with to sell products.  The guys reading this were most likely spared from this part of the capitalist agenda.  Having Mad Money didn’t make me go crazy about what I bought.  It did exactly the opposite.  It made me more thoughtful, more mindful, more judicious about the choices I made.  Having a finite amount of money to spend made me think twice about that kitchen gadget, vase or scented candle.  It even made me think about that pretty plant I saw at the garden center.  Impulse purchases all but disappeared.  If an item didn’t shout out to me in a great big bellowing voice, I walked away from it.  

As a result, I have my share of stuff, but you’ll find I still have plenty of empty space on my walls, tables, desks, floors and the garden, as well.  It’s what I call negative space, which calls attention to the things I love, much of which has been a part of my home landscape for decades.  It also makes my yearly declutter, organizing venture very manageable.  And, the more things you have, the more complicated your life.  All that extraneous stuff needs cleaning or repair or servicing as well as space.  It takes your time, your energy, your spirit. 

Going a little mad this March as in Mad Money may help you organize, declutter, simplify, pare down, with spirit lifted and energy to spare.  Let me know if you take up the challenge or already have a budget including Mad Money in your life and what you do with it.

Jun 26 2013

A DAILY LIFE

OK! I’ve been derelict two weeks in a row. I didn’t post on my appointed Monday date with you. Please forgive me. I’ve been galavanting around the southeast, didn’t have anything I felt post worthy to put out there and so, dear readers I’m a derelict. That said, this experience made me think of yet another great thing about being retired…I can spur-of-the-moment, or not, take off to parts known or unknown. So, when one of my sisters and her partner decided to make a trip south on the spur-of-the-moment (they’re also retired), we were able to say, “Hey, stop by for a visit”, with little upset to our routine. Yes, even in retirement we have a routine. Routines add structure to our lives and it’s structure which makes the special moments special. That doesn’t go away in retirement.

After years of getting up at the same time, getting ready for work in much the same way each day and having to be at your desk, office, station, work site at a specific time, suddenly all of that comes to a screeching halt. You can sleep in everyday if you want. You can get up and throw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt or hang out in your pj’s ’til noon or all day. You have no place to go unless you manufacture a place to go. You have nothing to do unless you create something to do. So, part of challenge in retirement is how will you create structure. Why? Do you really want to spend the next thirty years of your life sleeping in and sitting around the house in your pj’s doing nothing more than watching the tube, surfing the net and leafing through magazines waiting for the special moments?

After placing in the state time trials, the question Martin has been asked most often in the last week is, “So, what will you do now?” It’s also similar to an often asked question since we retired, “What do you do all day?” And, therein lies the rub. After 40 years or more of someone telling you what to do all day, there is suddenly no boss. There are no corporate directives. There are no promotions to a higher level. There are no new products to roll out. There are no employees bringing you problems to solve. There is no job description. There is no company policy manual. There are no rules. Only you. In retirement it’s up to you to determine your fate. That, folks, is probably the number one challenge of being a person of independent means.

Martin has already decided he won’t be competing in the national time trials. He’ll continue to ride for exercise and the company of a local group of cyclists. He’s already exploring taking a college course or two in photography and/or painting with acrylics. We can always find something new to challenge our brains and satisfy our creative vision. But, understand this. Determining your fate isn’t one big round of finding something creative or challenging to fill your days. Your days also need some of the usual. The everyday. The oftentimes mundane. Because one of the things which has also vaporized with your work life is structure. Maybe not entirely but a significant amount of your routine is gone.

When working, long weekends and vacation days often become moments when we do something special in between the structure of work. Structure is the juxtaposition which creates the excitement of say racing in the state time trials or running a marathon. To be sure, there’s the structure offered by laundry, grocery shopping, house maintenance and family obligations. The latter remains even in retirement. Although for us, shopping and errand running on the weekends and evenings has been replaced with doing those chores early morning weekdays when the stores are pretty close to empty. Now we do laundry whenever the hamper is full. House cleaning is whenever we feel like it or to motivate ourselves, we invite someone for a visit or dinner.

But, back to our daily life and the importance of routine. After years of dinner sometime between 6:30 and 7:30, in our new life, we enjoy starting dinner early and eating around 5:30. Structure. Thanks to a little diluted orange cat named Carmen, Martin still gets up in the morning around 5:30 to 6 a.m. Carmie doesn’t realize Daddy doesn’t go to work anymore so, she sticks to the routine she was raised with, meowing at the bedroom door in anticipation of Martin rising and giving early morning pets and breakfast. I sleep in until Martin brings me a latte bedside around 7 a.m. That’s right, girls, he makes me a latte every morning…structure! Even our choice to age in place on our six acres provides routine, albeit different routines during the different seasons. With an overgrown woods looking like something the Prince had to hack through to reach Sleeping Beauty in the castle, winter’s routine is bushwhacking. This time of year with summer approaching, mornings are spent picking berries and vegetables, deadheading flower beds and doing chores in the garden. Then, there’s house maintenance like cleaning gutters, painting the house trim, fixing a leaking toilet and all the other things you now have time to do yourself instead of paying someone else to do it for you.

So, no matter what you plan for retirement. Skydiving. Bungee jumping. Spending a year in an RV traveling the country. Going to Europe or Hawaii. Sailing the seven seas. No matter what you plan for excitement or challenge, in order to make it truly exciting, you’ll need a daily life of the usual, the everyday and mundane. you’ll need structure and routine. However, even if you have a blog to write, you can take off spur-of-the-moment to parts known or unknown.