Retirement Dreams and Reality

I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement. My goal is to wait about two more years and then retire roughly when my wife does. But it’s been on my mind because I’m so looking forward to it.

Of course, the recently passed Big Ugly Trump Tax Shift Act makes me wonder if I should act now.

With all the backroom finagling over Social Security, I don’t know if it’s more advantageous to get into the system now or wait until the dust settles. I understand that they’re unlikely to disturb the soon-to-be retirees, and instead put the screws to those who have to wait awhile. Maybe I should just get my claim in while they still have some money.

You’d like to think that they’ll figure something out once the insolvency date becomes a real threat. But somehow, I just don’t see this group of politicians doing anything to help average Americans. With these guys, I’m thinking the cure will be worse than the ailment. Because it’s the easiest fix in the world: just raise or eliminate the cap on taxable income for Social Security.  But that would negatively affect the rich, so Republicans will never go for it. Any my guess is that if the Democrats ever come into enough power to get it done, the Rich will buy off just enough Democratic votes to shit-can the whole thing. They want Social Security gone, not fixed. Or at least changed into a system they can skim. I’d love to be proven wrong here.

I’ve worked continuously since I was 16, save for a couple of 3-month periods when I was unwillingly unemployed, back in the 90s. So I am ready to chill.  When I retire, I intend to do NOTHING productive. No part-time jobs, no consulting, no nothing. If I do any volunteer work, it would be something like becoming an election official, like those old fucks you always seen checking names when you go to vote.

I want to take care of the house. I’ll finally have time to exercise.  I want to see more movies and ball games. I want to binge on all the TV shows I’ve missed.

I want to take a cruise; though I’m told I’ll probably hate it because they tend to be very “peopley,” I at least want to try one. I want to go to the beach in September or October, which Sweetpea has always wanted to do, but has been barred from doing because that’s when school starts.

I may write a book based on my own and my family’s stories. I definitely want to start writing crabby Letters to the Editor of our local Baltimore Sun, staking my claim as Local Liberal Crank. I want to ramble around the country and visit whatever friends and family I’ve got left.

 I’ve always been easily amused, so I don’t have to seek out big entertainment events. The simple stuff is fine for me.

I know that not everyone can have such dreams. I’ve been fortunate to have found job stability late in life, to the point that after fumbling around in retail during my 20s and 30s, my last chunk of years have been the best-paying. And Sweetpea is situated similarly, so we’ll both have solid Social Security income (assuming original plans stay intact). I’ve been saving like a madman for the last 15 years, so with that, my 401k, and Sweetpea’s teacher’s pension, we should be OK. (Pending debilitating illness, economic or atmospheric collapse, of course.)

So, as I look dreamy-eyed into my retirement future, I see that the Powers That Be just won’t let me enjoy it. There were two stories in my news feed last week that tried to make me feel guilty about my unproductive plans. The first one started by mentioning how 71% of retirees have no plans to take part-time jobs. And that much is fine, but they go on to treat this as some kind of abnormality that needs to be explained.

They also mention how only 11% of “future retirees,” aka younger people, say they would do the same. Now, that’s really an apples-to-oranges comparison. Younger people have started out in a vastly different economic system from that of my generation. They know they may not be able to rely on Social Security. They can’t count on long, well-paying careers, especially with the onset of AI threatening to take over so many office jobs.

My thought on it, if all things were equal, would be that once they actually get to the finish line, they may think completely differently. They don’t know about getting ground down by life yet. They’re still young and their joint don’t ache.

Another article runs with the young person angle, with a story about a young person who was able to retire in her 30s, but went back to work out of boredom.

I don’t think articles like these appear in a vacuum. I think the Powers behind the scenes, the Rich moguls who guide what the media shows us, don’t want us seniors to just sit on our retirement laurels. They want us back out in the workforce. They still want us to retire so they can stop paying the full salaries we’ve earned over our many years, but they want us to come back again and work for a discount, without having to kick in for health care. They like that we’re experienced, hard-working, and reliable; they just don’t want to pay the going rate.

Then, once we accept their proposition that we should continue working, we would be less reliant on Social Security, pensions, and the like; employers can pocket even more of it.

Yes, I may be cynical, but it adds up.