Retirement used to be a simple, everyday fact of life. You reached a certain age, and you stepped gently back from the mainstream and let it pass you by. Now, retirement is a dream that you plan for, and while you dream, you carry on working, looking forward to the day you can finally have a little time to yourself
I’m not good at being proud of myself, but I do remember the pride that spread warmly through my chest when my financial advisor told me he was impressed by the consistency with which I’ve paid into my retirement annuity over the years.
He was even more impressed when he heard I don’t plan to retire. Good financial planners, you see, are most concerned with ensuring you have enough money until the day you pop your clogs, and I had just told him something that would mean my money would stretch a little further.
So why have a financial retirement plan when I don’t plan to retire? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Well, no, not really.
First, retirement really doesn’t appeal to me. What am I supposed to do – lie around in a hammock all day contemplating my navel and baking jam tarts for any grandchildren my offspring decide to produce? Given that I can’t even go on holiday for more than four days without getting grumpy, that’s not going to work for me.
The only hammock I’m interested in, is the one my financial investment will provide for me, by freeing up my time so I don’t have to work quite as hard on the hustle as I currently do.
You see, I really love my work. I’ve probably churned out millions of words over the years, and I don’t see myself stopping ever, really. I don’t foresee a future where I don’t get up, have breakfast, and sit down to write something most days of the week. And here’s something I haven’t told my financial planner – because I don’t think he’ll take it well – but I do plan to live to at least 100, so I’m only halfway there.
What I do foresee, however, is a future where the nature of what I’m writing changes, where the focus shifts from panicking about all the words I have to write today, to focusing on the words I want to write.
At the moment, you see, writing pays the bills. I have two daughters – a student and a scholar – which means the bills are for three of us, plus a dog, a rabbit and assorted hangers-on, many of which seem to need feeding at various times.
In a few years, however, my daughters will be moving on to their adult lives – to their own jobs and flats, and they’ll be responsible for feeding their own friends. So there won’t be quite as much financial pressure on me as there is now.
I write for my clients five days a week, but on weekends, or in the very early hours of the morning, I’m also trying to squeeze in a bit of the other stuff – a novel or three, some non-fiction books that are in my head, that kind of stuff. It’s difficult when you’re tired, and when there’s no guarantee of any of it coming to anything, the publishing business being what it is. Very few authors in South Africa have the luxury of writing books full-time.
So my passion projects always seem to be pushed onto the back burner in favour of the daily hustle, the writing, editing and writing training that keep food on the table, and the lights on when Eskom is generous enough to give us some juice.
But one day when it’s just me who needs to be fed and clothed, I’m looking forward to having more time for those passion projects, time to spend a few hours every day creating new people and worlds, or researching things I find interesting in-depth, so that I can share them with other people.
I don’t want to be so reliant on writing for clients that I don’t have time to daydream a little, or to take a trip to investigate a setting or interview an expert for my own writing, or even just to take a mini-holiday without my laptop, and see a part of the world I haven’t explored before.
But I’m also aware that life throws curveballs at us. If I don’t look after myself – or even if I do – bits of my body might betray me, particularly given my goal of living to 100. There is always the possibility that I might not be able to work as I plan to, simply because I am physically or mentally (God forbid) unable to. And then my retirement annuity provides not only a hammock, but a safety net, so that I don’t become a financial millstone around my children’s necks.
I’m going to keep up those payments every month, come hell or high water, and I’m going to keep planning to work for the rest of my – hopefully – very long life, so that I have both a hammock and a safety net to fall back on.
Leave a Reply