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A Zen Helper for Retiring

Here’s your chance to see if you’ve got your act together for retirement preparation!

First, observe your financial portfolio . . . o algo. Did you actually think I’d consider money an important part of retirement? Please, folks – you should know me better than that by now (assuming that you’ve read other articles on this website. If you haven’t, please read the remainder of this site before you return to finish this Zen Helper.)

So this article has nothing whatsoever to do with finances. The reason? Well, obviously, finances represent the least important part of your retirement strategy!

Consider this. As you age, one of two things will occur. Either you’ll have your mental faculties about you, and if you’re reasonably intelligent, you’ll be able to create one marvelous new method of making money after another for your whole life (you can actually start this right now, and effectively ‘retire’ today). Or you’ll be completely mentally defunct, and it won’t make an ounce of difference to you whether you’re sitting on a beach in Cozumel or feeling the slow seep of an IV injecting nutrients into your arm.

Even if you choose the route of working really hard until you’re 65 instead of just retiring now, you’ll still have to prepare for the time of retirement.

Consider the bliss. You’ve just retired with $900,000 in the bank, and let’s pretend that you’ve managed to make it this far in life without any major health problems. You’re still fit and healthy. Let’s also say that you’re married or partnered in some way.

Now what? Buy an RV and tool around the country? Travel the world? Buy a nice retirement property somewhere?

It’s fine to dream, but if most people would take a good look at their lives, they’d see that they’re not very good at manifesting dreams. Our only real talent is planning ahead for futures which, unfortunately, never arrive. (Or at least if they do, we miss them because we’re so busy planning for the next thing.)

Let’s concentrate on relationships for a moment. If you want to prepare for the reality of retirement, you should probably start hanging out with your spouse/partner 24/7. Get into the practice of actually doing something together, because if you’re going to quit working completely at 65, you’re suddenly going to have a heck of a lot of time on your hands–together.

My unofficial poll finds the following results for the average couple–

Hours in the Week: 168
Hours in one week spent in each other’s presence: 21
Number of those 21 hours spent watching tv: 6
Number of remaining 15 hours spent talking about work (bo-oring): 8
Number of remaining 7 hours spent fighting or working out ‘relationship issues’: 4
Number of remaining 3 hours spent listening to the radio or otherwise ignoring each other: 2 ½
Number of remaining hours actually spent in ‘mutually enjoyable activities’ (enlightening conversation, sex, walks, joint projects, etc.): ½ (At best.)

What this all adds up to is that most couples have no idea how to spend enjoyable time together. They’ve been so busy spending their lives in the pointless distractions of career and making money so that they can then enjoy some time together after they turn 65. Since they’ve never cultivated the ability to spend time together, they can then spend the next 20 years or so ‘together’ watching tv, fighting, and talking about how glad they are they don’t have to work any more.

Of course, since most soon-to-be retirees express the desire to just get a nice ‘fun’ job that pays the bills, maybe people could just do that now, when they are 20 or 30 or 40! Maybe move from fun job to fun job, or maybe start your own business or think of a creative way to make money (and maybe a new creative way next year).

But what am I thinking? I really should be sensible and tell people that they should get a job that stresses them out, stick to it (it’s not that long, really – just until you’re 65 or 68 or whatever the retirement age will be when you get there (if you get there)), save lots of money, and then, when you’re 65, do something that you think might be fun! That makes more sense. Oh yes – and make sure that you save up a few hundred thousand dollars so that when you finally can’t move about any more, you have plenty of money to continue to fund the pharmaceutical company executives, who have been busy sipping margaritas in Cozumel while you labored your whole life to fund their vacations.

Leaving you with that pleasant thought,

Kenton

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Zen Helpers. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be queued for moderation and posted as quickly as possible.