Life is What Happens While You Are Making Other Plans

I read an interesting post on retirement planning by a fellow blogger the other day, and (as is my wont) have stolen the idea to use on my own. Bear with me, I am sure that I have something important to say about the subject, though I am not sure what...

In the post, he wrote about how we change our attitudes toward retirement planning over our working lifetimes. Well, that's what I saw (seized upon) anyway and I wanted to muse about that.

When we first start our working life in earnest (as opposed to just earning money to waste on dating and drinking adult beverages), usually just after we first get married, we really do not much care about retirement. After all; our parents are usually still working (and have done so all our young lives), we're young and healthy and expect to live forever, and we have other things on our collective mind.

My less serious working life began when I was 12... with a newspaper route. It wandered aimlessly through bellboy, movie usher, handyman, busboy, stockboy, USN sailor, cushion stuffer, and other assorted short-lived jobs.

It was only after I got out of the Navy and then married (poorly, as it turned out) that I got serious about working for a living. Benefits were important but retirement was the farthest thing from my mind in those days. I knew there was a pension, I knew it wasn't a great pension, but it was there and ignored. Medical benefits were more important, more immediate... though not as immediate as the amount of vacation and paid holidays I would be entitled to, nor the amount of pay I would get. The latter things, as I recall, were very important at the time.

It wasn't until I approached 45 that I seriously began thinking about retirement planning. Fortunately, my second wife was more practical than I and pushed me to increase my contributions to the company's Long Term Savings Plan (which soon was converted to a 401K type) and just worried more about what would happen in our old age. I am one of those who need a practical mate since I would never think about anything that was not immediate.

Fortunately for me, it turned out that others worried about such things and planned ahead: the company, the union, and the lovely and vivacious Faye. And so I was able to retire and... so far... avoid doing anything more than play golf and lie about my scores. 

But, if you are under 40, you should think about what will happen when you retire.