Chapter 15 – Can We Do It?

Oh oh, I’m late writing again this week. This seems to be turning into a habit. I do have an excuse, of sorts. You see, I’ve started a new routine this week. With the holidays over, I’ve begun working with a daily list. I’m trying to ensure that I don’t fall into the trap of letting my days drift away without some sort of accomplishment. I have given myself specific household duties to perform. Each morning after coffee I start with the kitchen. Either emptying or filling the dishwasher, hand washing items that require a more delicate touch, wiping counters and the like. Next, I turn to the floors with my handy dandy Swiffer. Our floors have never been so clean. There is usually some laundry to do, whether it is washing, drying or folding and putting away. Essentially, I am quickly becoming an awesome housewife. I’m not sure what this means but I really enjoy it. Guess I’ll have to run this past my therapist son for his analysis. Another thing on my daily list is exercise. I promised myself that I would build a daily exercise routine into every day. Beginning this week, I have spent an hour each day on the treadmill. I’ve also cut back on my food intake and cut out sweets. So far, so good. It has only been three days, but I’ve managed to drop three pounds. And trust me, I have a lot more than three pounds to lose. Writing is also on my list. I think it is time I move it closer to the top.

So, bottom line is retirement seems to be going well. In fact, I love it! Financially, things seem to be on track. When I last wrote about our retirement plan, the question was, would we be disciplined enough to manage our spending and stick with our savings plan. Not only had we committed to putting a fairly significant amount into our joint RRSP every two weeks, but our new mortgage payment, post renovation, was much higher than we were accustomed to. We did this purposely to achieve our ten-year plan. Well, the short answer is yes. In fact, a few years into the plan, we also began adding a regular bi-weekly amount into our savings account. We were both committed to achieving our goal. Due to a little good luck along the way, we were able to pay off the mortgage a year early. My wife changed jobs a little while back. Some sloppy accounting by her former employer’s administration office had her overpay her pension contributions. We put the small windfall in the bank and moved on. One Saturday, when I was doing my weekly bank reconciliation and paying bills, I started to look closer at our accounts and made an interesting discovery. If we were to take her pension overpayment, some money from our savings account and a bit from an emergency stash we had squirreled away, we could be mortgage free! It took a bit of convincing, but my wife finally bought in and, just like that, we owned our home outright. What an amazing feeling! This allowed us to focus on our savings. Over the next year, we were able to build a fund to cover my missing income during the gap between when I retired and her pending retirement date. We also stashed some money to cover the cost of our retirement trips (we have another coming up when my wife retires in a couple of months). We learned the importance of an emergency fund along the way. The summer before I finished work, we had to replace our septic field. For those of you who are not on a municipal sewer system, you understand the cost involved in this project. Fortunately, we had additional funds in our savings, and we successfully survived this storm. As retirement got closer, I started looking closely at our weekly budget. How much would we need to sustain ourselves? More on this next time.

I’m thinking a lot today about our decision to retire early, and the reason behind it. If you have been following along, this all stems from the fact that both of our fathers passed away before they had time to enjoy their golden years and I made it my goal not to be that person. During my last year of work, I lost two friends who had been co-workers. Both were my age. I remember many conversations with one, where we would discuss retirement and how we looked forward to our pending freedom. Sadly, both were still employed when they passed. Yesterday, I received a message that another friend has succumbed to cancer. Fortunately, she did retire early, but she will never see her old age pension. She was only 64.