Genesis

It had been a really lousy day at work for both Jett and me.  Which is not to say it was an unusual day… we were both wallowing in a dreadful stretch of really lousy work days.  This particular day happened to be in mid-July of 2011 and we were dining out in an attempt to brighten the day.  After the usual exchange of war stories and as much commiseration as each could muster for the other, Jett said – not for the first time – “I would *so* love to just up and quit.”  But this time, rather than issuing the standard “yeah, that would be great” reply I instead said “So why don’t we?”  And, much to my own surprise, I discovered that it wasn’t just the margarita talking – I actually meant it!  Just as animals know instinctively that it is time to wander off to die, something was telling me that the time had come to give up the high-paying software job and wander off.  Not to die, I would hope, but to enjoy what was left of my life.

Jett looked at me suspiciously, trying to figure out if I was serious or maybe drunk.  But a suggestion of retirement was music to her ears, so she wanted to believe it was possible.  Hell, I wanted to believe it was possible.  But was it?  The grand scheme for retirement that we had formulated when we first started living together some ten years back, which pretty much centered on us becoming slumlords, worked great for a while. We made a lot of money on our first investment property. But all of our real estate investments since that time had been financial failures.  And the real estate bust of 2008 took whatever equity remained in the two properties that we still owned.  We really couldn’t count on getting anything out of those investments in the short term.

What was left? An IRA which was the accumulation of a lifetime of not-very-frugal savings and rolled-over 401K and SEP accounts still had some value, despite the stock market downturn.  It wasn’t enough to fund retirement in Central America, which was what we had talked about for years.  But maybe it would be enough to live on until Social Security could be tapped.  I was 62 and could, if I so chose, start drawing.  Jett was 60 and had nearly 2 years before she could go on the dole.  But I really didn’t know the rules and didn’t know if it was truly going to be feasible.  But I was damned well going to find out.

For the first time in our lives retirement was something more than a distant possibility.  With more certainty than was justified, I told Jett that we should target July 1, 2012, as the day we both retired.  That would give us a year to plan and deal with all of the complexities that come with upending one’s life. It wasn’t going to be easy. But, dammit, it was going to be possible!

Cheap retirement living, but with travel…

Maybe we should live in an RV. It was an acorn of a thought, but the more we talked the more it sprouted and grew.