“When I retire I’ll travel the world.” “I’m waiting for my retirement before I do that.”
How many times have you heard someone say that? They work their butts off for 40 odd years, not going on holidays, just saving, saving, saving for their retirement. Then when they finally retire, they don’t have the energy or desire to travel anymore. Sometimes health issues set in which prevents them from doing all the things they saved for retirement.
I’m not that person.
I’ve always lived my life at full speed never saving for that rainy day or retirement dream. Of course, this is to my detriment. I now find myself a supposedly retired person having to work until the day I die.
Retirement for me will always be a myth.
So what went wrong, you might ask with tears of sympathy in your eyes. Don’t feel sorry for me as it’s all my own doing. I made certain choices when I was younger that impacted my retirement. Because when you are young getting old seems to be far, far away in the distant future. I never imagined I’d get old. In my mind I would always be forty. Unfortunately reality dictates that each year you get older and before you know it, you are sixty!
The good thing is that I can look back on my life and see that I lived it to its very fullest. I took my children all over the world with me, lived in many different countries, had some amazing holidays, made awesome memories and basically experienced it all. I didn’t wait until I was too old to enjoy traveling. I lived for the moment and grabbed it with both hands.
But…and there is always a but. I never put anything aside for my retirement. Instead of saving, I paid for my children’s tertiary education, their accommodation and subsidized their living expenses until they were independent. And of course there were holidays. Even when backpacking, holidays don’t come cheap. As an international school teacher moving countries every few years, the onus was on me to plan for my retirement and pay into a retirement fund. Of course I never did that! I was never going to get old after all.
If there is something I learned it’s that we all eventually get old. Whether we like it or not. My advice to young people out there is, start paying into a retirement plan. Don’t put it off until it’s too late. You have to have a plan for the future.
Don’t be like me.
I do long for a day when I can choose whether to work at something or just chill, and just stay on my farm and enjoy my golden years. Unfortunately that day will never come for me. I am destined to keep working paycheck to paycheck, never earning enough now I work part time to ever be able to put something aside to save. Work, work, work. You can see why for me retirement is a myth. And before you say anything, I agree with you. It is my own stupidity and something I have to live with and make the best of.
I have to say though, I don’t regret the choices I made when I was younger to travel and create memories with my children. I far prefer sharing the travel experiences with my family than traveling alone and having nobody to share it with. Being a solo tourist is lonely. I think if I didn’t have those family holidays when I was younger and instead saved that money for my retirement, I would never have visited all those wonderful places now as an older retired person. It’s no fun traveling alone. I would have missed out on so much. The world has so much to see and experience.
So no regrets on traveling with my children when I was younger rather than saving it to do in retirement.
But there is definitely a regret that I never put aside money into a retirement plan.
For me retirement will always be a myth. Something that when I get up at 2am to drive to the airport to fly to a work assignment, will always be just out of my reach and something I yearn for.
One day we all get old. Remember that. Put money away for a rainy day. Pay into a retirement plan even if you are only twenty.
Listen to this old lady.
DO IT!
Cindy Vine is a sort-of retired teacher, author of books available on Amazon and has a YouTube Channel that she would LOVE you to subscribe to @CindyVinePortugal
