It's been a while friends. Life has a way of moving forward like an endless ride on a roller coaster.
We have been preparing for retirement, a BIG change in our lives. My husband has worked for the entire time I've known him, and I met him when I was 15 years old! Last year, after working for the same company for 35 years, he decided it was time to begin thinking about retiring and of course that meant I needed to prepare the financial parts of it.
Back when we were first married in 1975 (I know, 42 years this year!!) we fell into our jobs. He made the money and I made it stretch. It wasn't always easy to be a stay-at-home mom of 4 kids and making enough money each month so that my kids today don't remember hard times at all. Guess we did a good job huh? We learned to be frugal and make the dollar stretch a LOT! As each of our 4 grew up, married and moved out, we were able to save more money each month, carefully building our nest egg for the future.
We have been on "terminal leave" from his work since mid-January, using up vacation from past years and still on full pay. Come April 1, my Birthday, things are going to be different! That is his true retirement date. For the past month, we've been busy getting our medical, dental and eye insurance in place, finding a new financial institution to manage our 401k funds and making certain things will flow seamlessly when the change is made. I like to think of them as baby steps to our new future. It's nice having Wes home every day and sharing work, play and life with him. My friend keeps asking me if I'm tired of him yet and I honestly get to reply, "I don't think I will ever get tired of him!"
Over the last few years, knowing exactly when he wanted to retire, we were maximizing our funds with company matched investments and saving the maximum we could and we think, THINK, we will have enough to last us as long as we may live. So we will be living on my husbands pension to begin with while we continue to try and save even more on retirement into our long term investment money. And possibly working some "contract work" in the first few years. Then, eventually, we will be adding in social security when its needed and hope we are able to stay "in the black" financially speaking. Still, we all know that prices seem to rise quicker than the cost of living increases so we are going to be faced with an ever changing world and a finite paycheck. I'm sure we can make it work and I'd say subscribe to our Blog, YouTube Channel and other social sites to see how we are doing it. Maybe we can share and teach you something along the way.
We will be sharing how we budget our cash, shop for clothes and groceries, how to take advantage of all the Senior Discounts that are available, entertainment, gardening and a whole lot more. So add us to your Blog list and find us on YouTube and Instagram and come along for the ride.
1 Corinthians 16:2 "On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made."
We have been preparing for retirement, a BIG change in our lives. My husband has worked for the entire time I've known him, and I met him when I was 15 years old! Last year, after working for the same company for 35 years, he decided it was time to begin thinking about retiring and of course that meant I needed to prepare the financial parts of it.
Back when we were first married in 1975 (I know, 42 years this year!!) we fell into our jobs. He made the money and I made it stretch. It wasn't always easy to be a stay-at-home mom of 4 kids and making enough money each month so that my kids today don't remember hard times at all. Guess we did a good job huh? We learned to be frugal and make the dollar stretch a LOT! As each of our 4 grew up, married and moved out, we were able to save more money each month, carefully building our nest egg for the future.
We have been on "terminal leave" from his work since mid-January, using up vacation from past years and still on full pay. Come April 1, my Birthday, things are going to be different! That is his true retirement date. For the past month, we've been busy getting our medical, dental and eye insurance in place, finding a new financial institution to manage our 401k funds and making certain things will flow seamlessly when the change is made. I like to think of them as baby steps to our new future. It's nice having Wes home every day and sharing work, play and life with him. My friend keeps asking me if I'm tired of him yet and I honestly get to reply, "I don't think I will ever get tired of him!"
Over the last few years, knowing exactly when he wanted to retire, we were maximizing our funds with company matched investments and saving the maximum we could and we think, THINK, we will have enough to last us as long as we may live. So we will be living on my husbands pension to begin with while we continue to try and save even more on retirement into our long term investment money. And possibly working some "contract work" in the first few years. Then, eventually, we will be adding in social security when its needed and hope we are able to stay "in the black" financially speaking. Still, we all know that prices seem to rise quicker than the cost of living increases so we are going to be faced with an ever changing world and a finite paycheck. I'm sure we can make it work and I'd say subscribe to our Blog, YouTube Channel and other social sites to see how we are doing it. Maybe we can share and teach you something along the way.
We will be sharing how we budget our cash, shop for clothes and groceries, how to take advantage of all the Senior Discounts that are available, entertainment, gardening and a whole lot more. So add us to your Blog list and find us on YouTube and Instagram and come along for the ride.
1 Corinthians 16:2 "On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made."
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