Retirement Is Wonderful

This morning I enjoyed sticks of raw kohlrabi, fresh from the garden. I also enjoyed a toasted tomato sandwich, with a garden tomato ripened indoors. For lunch we are having freshly harvested broccoli with cheese sauce. All this, and we don’t have a green house. The autumn has been unusually mild, although no longer warm.

We seem to be settling in well to this retirement thing.

Neither of us has a pension from our years of employment. For the most part we are able to live on my government pension, not entirely mind you, but mostly. We have a nest egg that we dip into when needed, which is not often. Attila is too young to receive most of his government pension benefit, and too young to receive drug benefits. He slowly, over the course of a few years, put by extra medications he must have, some of them are very expensive, and is carefully using them up in hopes they will last until he turns sixty five and is eligible for coverage. So far, so good.

I have finally fallen into a routine for paying the bills. It was quite a transition, from regular paycheques to half as much in the bank once a month. At first I forgot or missed a few bills, and found it challenging to balance payments with what was coming in. Now it is easier, I know what can be paid when, and have a calendar telling me when any funds we do get will arrive.

Our entertainment budget is $12 a month for streaming. Our clothing budget is $0. We don’t drink. Whatever expense we felt we could live without has been cut.

One of the things that saves us a bundle of money, allows us to eat well, and allows us to survive on this small pension, is that we garden, preserve, cook from scratch, and almost exclusively shop sales. We keep a well stocked pantry, and the only regular weekly expense is dairy and fresh produce. Even the fresh produce we buy is dictated by sales, for instance, if apples are on sale, we will be eating apples. One week we only spent $6.00 on groceries, but most weeks it is a lot more than that (e.g. lactose free milk is $10.89). Attila is the master shopper at our house, and he does a fine job of keeping our food spending within our budget.

Another aspect of retirement is that Attila is able to catch up with home maintenance. We painted Mist Cottage soon after purchasing her in 2010. Because we painted over some old paint, it was patchy, the old paint began to peel several years ago, the house looked increasingly ragged. Over the course of the summer and autumn Attila worked on scraping and repainting the house, and it looks oh so much better. Hopefully now he will be able to address patches where the old underlying paint is peeling, scraping and repainting ad hoc.

With retirement Attila can take a relaxed approach to projects, this makes an incredible difference to stress levels.

My life has not changed as much as Attila’s has with his retirement. I was already retired, although partially as life was dictated by Attila’s work schedule and need for the vehicle. I enjoy having Attila around during the day, if I need to talk to him, I can find him. I also have access to transportation during the week, for appointments, shopping, or anything I’d like to do, a new experience in my retirement.

My daily routines haven’t changed all that much though, preserving and cooking everything from scratch is time consuming. For instance, I baked bread yesterday, and noticed that there is only enough flour left for one more loaf of bread. Time to sort the wheat berries and pull out the flour mill. Yesterday I taste tested our gallon jar of Kombucha, which is fermenting in the corner in the kitchen, it was ready and needed to be strained and stored in the refrigerator in mason jars. That led to preparing the green tea and sugar for the next batch of Kombucha. Small kitchen projects pop up every day.

As I sit here Attila is putting the winter cover on Iris the trailer. This simple project caused me a to reflect. Before retirement a project like this would not necessarily be initiated by Attila before I became concerned about it being done, winter waits for no man. But this year Attila had it on his radar, and the project was started before I’d even thought about it. It is so much easier to see what needs to be done, and when it needs to be done, when one has the benefit of time unfettered by outside obligations. I am so glad that for the most part I am no longer aware that a project needs to be done, before Attila tackles it!

Worldly

Weather

11°C
Date: 11:00 AM EST Saturday 16 November 2024
Condition: Sunny
Pressure: 101.7 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 10.9°C
Dew point: -7.7°C
Humidity: 26%

Quote

“Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath.”
Solon
638 BC – 559 BC