Suggestion 8: You can’t get there without making the trip!

While we work, especially at a long-term profession like we did with teaching (65 years between us), we make decisions with a much different mindset than upon retirement.  I would argue most of my decisions were what would get us through the week, the day, or even just the morning.  Jobs just eat so much of our time.  Oh, we planned for retirement, but more as a thing out there sometime later.  Then later comes.

Salaries buy us options.  Wealth is a relative term, but I always defined it as having the choice to do or not do things.  Options.  And while many would say wealth is the result of substantial paychecks, I think frugal living is perhaps more important.  That discussion is for another time.  In this essay I want to pass

along another nugget we’ve discovered during retirement ---another one we didn’t see coming. 

When you retire (stop reading if you’re truly rich), when you live on a fixed income, you lose options.  Or more accurately you lose the mindset you had when paychecks were still coming in---the mindset that allows you to put off evaluating decision-making because you’re so busy.  I’ve written about work as the Great Distraction, and this is not intended as a repeat of that suggestion.  Rather this is another reminder that you will have time to reevaluate all those hurried decisions, and some, maybe lots, won’t look so good.

The point is the view we have on where we are, required us to be there to view it.  It is an interesting mental exercise to imagine different choices along the way with equally imagined outcomes, but it is just an exercise, a pretend game.  The road you traveled to get where you are was the road you traveled.  The decisions you made choosing your way were probably the best ones you could make with the time, resources, and knowledge you had.  Live a responsible life, show up for your family, show up for work, treat others as you wish to be treated, work on your weaknesses, and accept your limitations.  I suggest “bad” decisions are inevitable when judged by the 20/20 of hindsight.  Rather than be disappointed, use all “mistakes” as lights shining on who you were then and are now.  Good luck, and, yes, I already know I’ll look back on this essay with regret later!