Satire: Factor These Things in When Considering Retirement

It's not like the "experts" lay it out.

Retirement planningPhoto byCartoon by Lambert-King

Most of us who have spent time in the workforce have looked forward to the time when we can leave via retirement.After all, it’s called workforce, not workIwanttobehere.Some places really put the force in workforce.

Some of us, like myself, are into retirement, or at least semi-retirement now. How’s that working out for most of us? I’m guessing not that well. There are articles about retiring everywhere you turn about retirement. They generally espouse ideas that most of us have no hope of implementing.

For example, most will say save a huge chunk of money. It seems like $500K is the bare minimum. When I left my day job, I was about $499K short of that. That type of advice reminds me of an old Steve Martin bit. Steve told people how to make a million dollars and not pay taxes.

Steve’s formula was simple.

First, make a million dollars. Steve has a really impressive resume as it is, but he could add another skill to it. Retirement counselor. Sure, salt away 500K while making $40K a year and raising a family.

As for the not paying taxes part of that formula, Steve’s answer was to say, “I forgot.”

In order to have a great retirement, get a great education.

And to get a great education, amass a huge amount of student loan debt. That way you’ll make a lot of money. And what will you need to do with that huge amount of cash? Pay off your student debt.

With careful planning, you should be able to pay off your student loans when you’re 60. Then you can concentrate on retirement. Assuming the stress of paying off your student loans hasn’t already put you in an assisted living facility.

When preparing for your retirement, analyze your assets.

Be practical about this. For example, don’t figure in the street value of your organs. While your monetary situation is important, other things come into play. Do you have a good support system? How’s your health? These things can have as big of a bearing on the quality of your retirement as your finances.

Consider your support system. Do you have kids that can help you with chores around the house, take you to a doctor’s appointment, or borrow money from? If you have kids that can do two out of three of these things, as Meatloaf said, that ain’t bad.

Just to clarify, when I say, “support system,” I don’t mean life support. If you’re on life support, your retirement is already pretty well determined.

Your health may well be the biggest determiner of the quality of your retirement.

For many of us, we have to work at something in our senior years. If we are somewhat healthy, we at least have more options. My wife and I have been fortunate in that regard.

At this point, I’ve been able to write some humor pieces and gags to make a few bucks. My wife, while her health is particularly good, is still able to sell her craft items on Facebook. We are able to get by, for now.

Rich man, poor man, lots of times it doesn’t matter.

Unless we’ve cabbaged away a tremendous amount of bucks, we’re ultimately headed for a home of some sort. To qualify for government assistance to get into these homes, you generally have to have little or no assets. Until you reach that point, the facility will charge you a lot of money.

While bloodletting may be a thing of the past, asset letting is not. I figure by having no assets, I’m ahead of the game.

Then there’s the Kenny Rodgers plan.

As Kenny so eloquently put it in his monster hit, The Gambler”, “the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

Have a good day!