Jumping Ahead to 2022: What is retirement?

    Winter 2022  

    Until the reminder about my domain came via email, I had forgotten how to get to and use this blog! So - long gap. This is being written in Tucson, Arizona where hubby Russ and I are wintering with our son and his partner Keri. The high desert here is thorny and stark. Sunsets can be beautiful - but happen quickly.  At home in New Hampshire it's mud season and our caretaker has put out the sawhorses to keep folks from using the full driveway due to the ruts which occur.  With me in my tiny house are Susie (the Cockatoo), and Mick and Mack, the Shi Tzus. Russ is in the main house guest room - doesn't enjoy sleeping with the doggies.  Having recently upgraded to a new iphone, I hope to learn how to post pictures here and elsewhere ; my old phone stopped being able to simply post pics to Facebook after the last "update".  

    What does it mean to retire? Perhaps stepping back is the simplest definition.  One steps back from whatever daily work was consuming her time, and creates a new reality, or expands one started earlier in anticipation of retirement. Focused on surviving the day to day, even after I became a lawyer, neither Russ nor I thought about preparing for retirement until Russ was in his late fifties. Whoa!  We jumped on opportunities given by employers - saving fully 20% of every paycheck, but even that was too little. Were we blessed to have jobs and our health? Sure, and there are many who must spend every cent of what comes in when it comes into the household. But service to others had been our lodestone throughout our marriage, and  - rightly or wrongly- I ignored the looming financial need and created Community Legal Services (CLS) with Tim (my son) and Jeannette Haney, my friend and paralegal. With no money except what was donated in kind by my law office (supplies and lawyer time), we forged a new way of looking at legal services.  That's another discussion. Important to today's retirement theme, though, I did not "save" or plan for any future except a strong and growing one for CLS .  So now I am 72, Russ is 80, and we have only one real property investment to sell and use to survive. Plus social security, of course.  My now-part-time law practice generates income. It's a piddling amount compared to the public perception of what lawyers make, but it helps, especially in the winter.  We also run Stonecraft House (our home/inn) , which we've now done for 5 years through AirBnB. Surprisingly, that income has increased even through the pandemic, and we find it enjoyable.  It's a real high to meet folks from all over our country and the wider world, and I get great satisfaction from having rooms that appeal to customers' senses - visually and sensually.  

    When the markets plunged in 2008 and 2009, our 401K lost thousands of dollars rapidly.  So we pulled our money out and turned it into a simple IRA.  From there we bought a house in Orange, MA - a real fixer-upper - for cash, and then put hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars into the two family home. Once the first floor apartment was done, we used it , through AirBnB. Now we are going to sell it and hope that the real estate market will stay strong a bit longer so we can pull our money out and add some profit on top. Maybe then I can "retire".   Or maybe not.

    What are your thoughts about retirement?  Can you even afford to stop working? If not, will your employer let you keep working?  Is retirement just for the financial elite?