So I’ll tell you all something that may make some bitterly envious and others wanting to congratulate me.
I am now retired as of this New Year’s Day.
I’ll tell you why I am doing it now. Considering all the males in my family dropped dead before the age of 46 and a mother who limped it to 65, I figure I better grab Social Security earlier than later so that I may have a few years to enjoy it. Add to that, all the life span tests based off insurance actuarial tables I’ve taken have me going to the Happy Hunting grounds between 69 to 75. And, since I witnessed it with my own family, the last one and half years of their lives were no fun and the ending three months were even worse. So at best...early 70s when I may nip it? The average age for all US white males who buy the farm is at 75.
I had a neighbor my age say this, “We’re in the 4th quarter now but not at the two minute warning yet!” That kinda was a wake up call too.
This all sound dark and gloomy? Nope. Just me being as realistic as possible. I can’t help it. I can be ruthlessly pragmatic. I enjoy wishful thinking a lot of times but I know it’s fantasy and comes to nothing, so I prefer to make decisions with both feet on the ground. In truth, I have no idea when I’ll join the Choir Invisible. Out of weird luck I may hit 90, or a gas tanker truck may plow into me in two days. Who knows?
The final point being, after all the data I punch in on various life expectancy platforms, the median probabilities still say early 70s.
Other factors effected my decision too. My legs are beat from years of standing on concrete at work. I feel daily pain and them getting weaker and lo and behold, when I have a few days off, they get better! So guess where the damage is coming from? I don’t think an added few years of pounding on them will make them any better. Another reason? My patience for C- people is getting shorter. Not too long ago, I sort of loudly said, “You can’t FUCK this up!” to a employee not in my department at work. It was loud enough that got the attention of others in the hall as well. (How I just lovvve fixing other people’s fuck ups!). Either I intimidated those in the hallway or going to HR would’ve exposed their major screw up so I never caught any hell for it. How C- people manage to live life w/o any deliberation or planning still amazes me. Either I am older and crotchety or there are more C- idiots in the world. I suspect it’s both. I want more distance between them and I now. (Perhaps moving to back woods Maine is a hope?)
Time. I feel it moving faster and faster as I get older. Funny thing too about that. It goes just as fast if you’re working or on vacation. But I do feel the pace picking up and prefer that if if must speed along, I’ll do it while I am lounging or doing what I enjoy.
Then there is the fragility of health and plain stupid chance. Since I work in health care I see people younger than me all wrecked and ruined from all sorts of causes. I also hear of other’s lives that are hobbled by drugs, alcohol, mental illness and seeing one co worker whose heart deteriorated in a few months time to where he can’t walk five feet w/o being exhausted and he’s a decade younger than me! Seeing all this just cemented my decision to retire now as my health is holding out. You get older and you see more and more around you being wounded, and more often, by chance or sickness. It made me tally what I still possess that’s good and want to use it before I lose it, and lose it one day I will.
So, grab the time while the grabbin’s good!
**
“But you’ll take a 30% hit to the money you’ll get! Wait till 67 for the full check!” I was told by many who tried to educate me on Social Security
“Yeah, I know.” I say to them. I’ve done plenty of run throughs on that. My taking Social Security now and comparing it taking it at 67? The break even point occurs in my early 70s...gee...that’s when I’m slated to nip it. I’ll have the same amount of cash (cumulatively) by taking it now vs. taking it at 67 (if I kick it in my early 70s. If I live longer, I get more).
Math works ya know…
Affordability...
My particular position in life now was due to some ugly luck as well. I was the last one standing in my family and that came with a house. “The Death Lottery” as an old friend put it. He too won that when his family died off leaving him (as well as me) as the last one standing. It left him acres of land abutting the sea in Plymouth. His Dad also left him a helicopter company which Barn liquidated. His dad was a
WW2 navy carrier pilot and trainer and also was one of the first guys to fly helos when they started to become more common in the late 40s. After the war, he bought them one by one to fly whatever you wanted...for a fat fee of course. He needed an airport and was also one of the three guys to get Plymouth airport properly built as it was just a long dirt road in a field back then. Aircraft is a pricey business. I had no idea the FAA required a total engine rebuild every 2,500 hours you flew a helicopter. 2,500 hours is a little over 3 months of flying time.
Anyways I digress too much here…
I once told Barn that it felt like a shit way to get a house when I saw everyone else struggling. I also told him, that from some, I could feel their envy about that fact.
He remarks, rather loudly to me as well:
“What? Ya gonna give it back if you could? You can’t! They’re dead and gone! Bullshit! This sounds mercenary but you gotta grab things in life while the chance presents it! Don’t dare apologize for any of it...you think others say they’re “sorry” when they hit PowerBall? I wasn’t sorry when I sold off those helicopters! This is the way things are. Luck is luck in whatever form it comes in...grab it! And about those who envy you? If they desire your luck they would have had to live YOUR life, every minute of it to end up where you are today...some wouldn’t want that if they saw some of the shit you put up with!”
**
I had no kids and aren’t they super expensive over the years?
I never planned on them, and had they appeared, well, so be it. Add to that the kind of women I met in life didn’t want them either.
“Don’t you think you missed out on a family?” I used to get asked a lot.
“No, because you can’t miss what you never had” was my response. Also, a few friends who became parents, I witnessed their kids growing up to be total assholes as adults. Where’s the fun in that? Visiting your kid in jail or shelling out $$$ because they can’t hold down a job must suck. And I’ve seen this often enough, “normal” kids using the parents as ATM machines w/o so much as a ‘Thank you.’
At best I’d see parents hoping, molding, training a “good” kid with hopes of creating the person they want them to be. What does happen is that the kid develops their own personality and it solidifies and they go off on their own path regardless of what the parent wanted. They become their own person. I have seen some small disappointment in a few parents when their child veers off into a direction never predicted. They’re good kids who became young independent adults who can make it in life, but on their terms, not the parents. And then the precious few parents whose kids were gem quality. Those ones who did create joy in the household and would validate your life as a parent.
And since I never paid for clothing, food, insurance, toys or cosigned loans for $160,000 educations at a college for a kid, or three of them one after the other, I avoided that expense.
Thirdly, I can thank Dear Ol’ Dad for having a career as a CPA, working in banks and being the “Go To Guy” when it came to tax law. He knew how to count money and taught me that as well.
I remember, on some Saturday morning when I was five years old when he sat me down with a pencil, paper, some 5’s 10’s and 20’s and taught me how compounding interest works. I thought it was magic that money could just grow w/o you doing a damned thing to rightfully earn it. He never taught me how to throw and catch a ball but instead he taught me about finance. At five I was finger painting in school and also slowly learning about how mortgage amortization works and why banks grab the interest off of you first.
Dads and sons have great conversations while driving around. It’s just you two in the front seat and you just jabber away.
When I was 12 he explained Caribbean island banking to me.
“You
can make money and never pay taxes on it?” I asked,
surprised.
“Sure, it’s totally illegal but doable...as long
as you just commit tax avoidance vs. tax fraud. Tax avoidance is a
nuisance crime but tax fraud is like murder...the IRS spends most of
their time chasing that instead.”
He goes on…
“You just set up an account in say, the Cayman Islands and you can generate interest on those accounts and you just never tell the IRS you have cash there. IF the IRS finds out, and sometimes they do, they have to petition the Cayman courts for a warrant to open your account to get evidence to prosecute you with, but the way the Cayman banking laws are designed, they can lawfully blow off the IRS petition as the Caymans are their own banking jurisdiction with their own very particular laws. So, no warrant..no evidence of avoidance..no court case...you keep your money!”
He gets excited by the next lesson he talks about.
“Even better! Create a corporation in one of those islands..you can then trade stocks on Wall St and you just never tell the IRS about your capital gains...same thing again, if they find out by some way, they are unable to force the local courts to issue any warrants to reveal the account’s owner or what transactions occurred!”
“It’s so far away” I ask. “How do you get at your money?”
“Oh easy, the bank issues you one of their personal credit cards that’s tied to your account. Believe me, the cards are good the world over. Hardly anyone will deny them. Using a card also avoids utilizing in-bound banking wire transfers which can tip off the IRS.”
As I hear about all this, I begin to wonder and then ask..
“How do YOU know about this?”
“I have to know banking law at my work.” he says.
“Yeah but you know American banking law...why the foreign ones too?”
“I just do.” he says. That “I just do” was a hint to stop that line of questioning.
I still wonder about Dad sometimes and what clients he may have dealt with at First Federal Savings and Loan on Westminster St. Any occupation has it’s positive and dark sides. Kids whose Dads were firemen, fire marshals, who were trained in fire science, know about fire safety...and also how to burn down a major industrial building w/o getting caught.
These are some of the talks I had with my Dad on long rides. There was no chatting about the Boston Bruins, but talk of how you handle money.
I admit this. About a decade ago, I once tried to set up an account in Turks and Caicos islands in the Caribbean.
Every major bank, and I mean EVERY one, has branches in the Caribbean. Capitol One, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Chase and every other major American bank as well as the ones in Canada and Europe.
In order to do island banking, I first had to open an account with a foreign bank, so I chose the Canadian ScotiaBank in Montreal. This is legal and on the up and up.
You create the account, pay the fees and then stuff that account with money.
Wait a bit, three months or so, and ask them to create an account for you in their Caribbean branch. They have NO problem doing that (for a small fee of course that keeps them happy). You then tell them to transfer that money (in medium amounts over time) to that account you created in their branch in the Turks and Caicos.
Hey Presto! Once your money is deposited in the Turks/Caicos it’s in a different banking jurisdiction which blows their nose at the IRS.
There is a small problem though. These island banks don’t want chump change. ScotiaBank required at least $100,000 to set up an account there. Want a sham corporation set up by said bank? One million dollars needs to be deposited. So, you see how the rich stay rich because the entry fee to some great workarounds to taxes is a bar set high enough to ward off working stiffs.
It’s done to this day. Just don’t be a drug lord or terrorist group and stick to plain ol’ tax avoidance as Homeland Security can bust open an al-Qaeda kind of account in minutes. They still tend to leave the tax avoidance accounts alone still. There are many rich AMERICANS who want it this way and have pull with various politicians and such to exert some quiet pressure for it to remain so.
I shoulda became a CPA...but thanks Dad for the education on how to manage money!
And no..I don’t have an account in the Caribbean. I just learned some very basic and very practical ways to manage money. As Dad kept telling me, “Don’t piss it away! Don’t be stupid!”
He also taught me this. Money will not bring happiness...but it sure as hell can alleviate some of life’s problems..as long as you have it.
You poor and car breaks down? What are you going to do? Instead you save up your money and you can get that car repaired and you’re back on the road in days. This jist of Dad’s view was this. Don’t blow the cash, instead make it work for you and realize money’s main function is as a TOOL, nothing else.
So over the years, I never blew cash in a silly manner. I figure the best thing I learned from Dad was impulse control.
What Will I Do in Retirement?
I have little idea to tell the truth since we’re in the dead of winter. Crossing over into my 60’s was a bit of a shock as I saw how the rest of the world treats me even though in my head I feel like I’m young and relevant most times.
To the world though, I ain’t.
The world sees my shock of white hair, my limp and my complete ignorance of the Top Ten on Spotify or the newest computer games. I hate to feel like I tell the same stories over and over again because my short term memory is getting worse. Truthfully, I am grudgingly accepting this new station in life. What choice do I have but to accept it? However I admit I am still not used to that idea.
I’ve seen a few who were older than me who retired and all three did something I thought interesting. They all reverted to doing things they loved doing in their childhoods or teen years. One watched TV a lot, those retro shows. Another started back on a hobby of deep woods camping they did when they were kids and another chases the Minor League baseball teams around New England. He had been a Little League kid who at times traveled to out of state games.
If I hold to my childhood passions, I see more interest in music and electronics (like that EVER faded!), riding my bike all over (this is beneficial for the body, as long as I realize I’m over 60 and cannot fall off a bike into a curb w/o really fucking myself up) and reading at my leisure and a host of other things. I doubt I’ll be hanging in the parking lots in Slater Park at 2am with other 60 year olds like we did as teens but it would be fun to see the faces on the cops if they pulled in to see what these geezers were up to.
I used to be one hell of a gardener once. If I try that again, I have to spade over that patch now grown over with grass. It may take me much longer to do vs. when I did it at 14 and it was a bitch job then. There’s satisfaction in gardening. Once, long ago, I was out there on a late July dawn and I could smell the ripening cantaloupes perfuming the whole yard. They do do that and it surprised me. Carrots growing in the dirt give off a strong carrot scent as you stand near them as well. I hadn’t ever known that. Also eating corn that’s been ripped from the stalk less than ten minutes ago can’t be duplicated by any store or roadside farm stand. And Oxheart tomatoes will be turned into puree for all my sauce ideas.
Since marijuana growing is sort of legal now, I can add that to the corn, tomatoes and melons I can grow. Growing it would be just a goof for me, to see if I can pull it off. Though I doubt I’ll ever smoke it as it turns me to rubber for half a day and I’m wholly useless. Hell, I can find a teen around here I can donate it too.
I want to reconnect with some in my past who have long since gone, at least for one meeting at least. I know that people drift apart, our lives become so busy it’s hard to start up again but I’ll give it a try with a few certain ones. (Diane...hint hint!)
And perhaps newer people I may meet (who will have to pass my ‘are you a dick and will you fuck up my life test!’). However, there are people worth knowing once you find them.
Travel, the old favorite of retirees. I could, by next week, book a flight to Paris and eat in a bistro and check out the East bank of the Seine and come home in a few days. I could, but won’t. I ain’t that silly with my cash and Paris does not hold all that much attraction for me and my french has long since rusted away.
But Cape Kennedy holds attraction. I’d love to see that complex where they shot off all those moon missions. I’d also like to see JPL in Pasadna, where all those planetary probes are controlled from. They only open it one day a year for visitors and they nearly butt rape you on security clearances before you go in too. Even with that, seeing that mass of technology would wow me. JPL may be a harder wish to fulfill though, we’ll see.
A long time work friend, who has gone on so many cruises that they email him 8 to 10 day packages that are silly cheap, has been bugging me to try one one day. I may
I figure this new phase of life will take some getting used too. It all still feels anticlimactic as there is no huge emotional shift in me...yet. I saw this coming years ago as either I would make the decision or my legs would.
I figure all of the changes will fuse in time.
Add this to tomato sauce?
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