It's Never Too Early to Start

I came home one day recently with several books from the library all related to retirement. It's not unusual for me to come home with a pile of books and stack them on our island. We typically eat our meals at our island but now that it is just the two of us, we only need half of it, so the other half tends to collect things like mail and library books. 

During dinner that night (or maybe a few nights later?), I caught Jeff's gaze as it paused on the books. He looked at me and asked, "Is there something you'd like to tell me?" I wasn't sure what he meant. He asked if I was being let go at work, or perhaps we had won the lottery and I forgot to tell him. I laughed and said, "No, silly, it's just never too early to start planning." His response was, "Evelyn, you are only 53... you know that, right?"

I'm not sure how the retirement bug got in my ear, but there it was. I found myself thinking about what our life would be like and what we would be like as retired people. And then I got the little panic in my belly about how fast the last working years were going to go... in a blink of an eye that time is going to fly by and there we will be with no plan in sight. It reminds me of a time long ago when I was nearing the end of my pregnancy and I suddenly had this frantic urge to get everything in order. Nesting, I believe it is called. 

Don't get me wrong, we have a financial plan in place. We have a financial planner that we meet with yearly to make sure we are on track. Money is not what my panic is about. It is bigger than that. It is about what we want our life to be like when we retire. What do we want to do? Where do we want to be? When do we want to do it? So many questions!

I am a planner. Some might say I am little obsessive about planning. Let's just say there have been a few trips to Walt Disney World with a notebook in place that included a timeline. Yes, maybe that was a little structured and inflexible... and yes, maybe a little obsessive... but who never needed to wait in line more than 20-30 minutes for rides? Hmmmmm? 

My point is that if I take the planning for a trip that seriously, how can I not take planning for Phase 2 of my life just as seriously? I don't want to wake up one day as a retired person finding herself sleeping to noon, spending most of her days in comfy clothes watching countless hours of Netflix. I want to make my retirement years sparkle. I want to launch into retirement with great anticipation and an even greater plan in place. I want to be in charge of my retirement, making it to be just like I imagine (within financial reason, of course). 

I am in the very earliest stages of this process. Toes just in the water a bit. Jeff is on board, but mostly along for the ride at this point. I have opened a few books, done a bit of research of locations, and started a retirement board on Trello (more on that later). Today it dawned on me -- there must be more of people like me out there. People in their 50s (or younger!) who are starting to think about those golden years and how to make sure they are golden. And then this blog was born.

Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope to see you here again soon. I not only welcome comments below, but I encourage them!