Happiness In Retirement

Some would argue that I am, in fact, retired. I would vigorously debate that stance and explain that I’ve found a new career in writing. So from my perspective, I am still working. Working status verses retirement status aside, I did find a fascinating article recently on one of the websites I visit every day.

Financial Advisor web site

FA, Financial Advisor Magazine, always has a myriad of articles of interest to investors and financial advisors alike. It usually leans heavily conservative and Republican. Its audience (I’m guessing) consists mainly of veteran as well as new generation investors. Articles range from the latest bitcoin offerings to government regulations to newfound strategies for investing. The magazine and its website prides itself on its forward-looking stance to the world of finance.

I read the bulk of its articles with a healthy dose of curiosity more than anything else. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an experienced or knowledgeable investor. Despite that, I can smell hype, controversy, and right-leaning attitudes when I sense them. I take everything I read on the site with a healthy grain of salt and pepper.

Knowledge is power and I trust my financial planner to have my back. Years ago, I was lucky enough to hook up with a solid financial advisor who steered me into conservative-yet somewhat aggressive stocks, bonds and mutual funds. All I can say is that it’s worked well for Sharon and me for more than twenty years thus far.

So I was surprised when I came across an article in ‘Financial Advisor’ that I thought hit the nail on its head with a ballpeen hammer. It appeared in the October lst issue of FA and was written by a Ms. Jennifer Lea Reed. She is either a genius or dedicated researcher because I think she hit a homerun with her article for its insight and honesty.

The article begins by stating: “If you’re looking for happiness in retirement for yourself or your clients, you can forget relationships with adult children, buying a slick car to cruise the cul-de-sac or lounging at a beach cabin in Mazatlán, Mexico.”

Then she goes on to say: “Instead, there are only three categories that lead to satisfaction—when you have enough money, when you have relationships with your peers and community, and when you have your health. These three things might seem different, but they have one critical thing in common: They all require investment before retirement.”

Then she goes on to explain that this was the upshot of a panel dedicated to finding happiness in retirement which was held at Morningstar’s Investment Conference held recently in Chicago. She added: “In order to assess trends in what’s important in retired life, Michael Finke, professor of wealth management at the American College of Financial Services and a researcher in the areas of retirement spending, life satisfaction and cognitive aging, looked to a data  known as the ‘Health and Retirement Study.’

Michael Finke then continues: “This was a study of 20,000 retirees that began in 1994, and we followed them up to 2018. When we ran analyses on life satisfaction, what we saw was that there are three core elements to life satisfaction. I like to call them the Three Pillars of Life Satisfaction in Retirement,” Finke said. “The first pillar is money. Having more money does make you happier, and it seems to have a relatively linear effect up to about $4 million.”

Now this is where I have to pause for a moment. After Sharon and I had set aside enough money for our two kids college tuition, we only then began to focus on saving for retirement. Back then, the figures need for retirement ranged from seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to more than a million dollars set aside for our golden years.

Our financial advisor had the correct answer. ‘What will your lifestyle be like in retirement and what will that cost you on a yearly basis? he asked. For example, if you need fifty thousand each year, then what lump sum do you need in investments in order to take that amount out each year? We had our answer.

I think today the lump sum need for a comfortable retirement varies with each couple or individual and I’m not sure four million dollars is the correct answer. On the other hand, the other two pillars of success (according to this study) were spot-on!

Professor Finke goes on to say: “All of these three things are investments. And what I mean by an investment is it’s anything you sacrifice during your working years in order to live better in the future. So our health is an investment when we exercise and eat better,” he continued. “Relationships are an investment, and this is something that as an economist it was a new way for me to think about relationships. That what you’re doing during your working years is not just accumulating money to live better.”

I realized years ago that ‘health was wealth.’ As I get older, I find more and more friends and associates who are experiencing health issues. The bottom line is that their bank account or cabin up north or new car in the driveway means absolutely nothing to them when they’re sitting on their sofa in pain. And if they are sitting that alone, the pain only increases exponentially. Friends can make all the difference in the world.

I think that’s one reason why I’ve found myself blessed with such wonderful chat buddies each summer with my ‘coffee and chat’ sessions. Writing and associating with other writers, theater people, artists, musicians and actors only enhances those experiences.

I think it was the gist of the article that gave me such satisfaction. Its main emphasis was that these three pillars are not hard to attain goals, aspirations or summits to climb. It simply means saving for retirement, collecting a cadre of friends and associates and living a healthy lifestyle. If you can do those three things, then retirement should loam in the distant future as another new avenue of adventure, exploration and personal satisfaction in your golden years.

·       Some paragraphs were taken from an article entitled: ‘ForHappiness in Retirement, Forget about your kids and the fancy car, advisorssay.” By Jennifer Lea Reed. October lst, 2021

The Bear State

Old reliable Wikipedia tells us that:

“The California grizzly bear (Ursus arctos californicus) is an extinct population or subspecies of the brown bear, generally known (together with other North American brown bear populations) as the grizzly bear. In California, it was particularly admired for its beauty, size, and strength. The grizzly became a symbol of the Bear Flag Republic, a moniker that was attached to the short-lived attempt by a group of American settlers to break away from Mexico in 1846. Later, this rebel flag became the basis for the state flag of California, and then California was known as the "Bear State."

It’s an iconic image that immediately resonates with a lot of people; native Californians and out- of-staters alike. I’m a recent settler to the state and then only on a seasonal basis. Nevertheless, I can still feel the vibe that is California. The state, because of its size, population diversity and overall draw to a lot of people, always seems to be going through some kind of drama and trauma. It’s no surprise that Hollywood and other fantasy factories are located there.

It seems that almost every day there’s another incident being played out in Sacramento, San Francisco, or the forests of Northern California. An attempt to oust the governor failed but opposition to mask mandates continues on. Forest fires have slowed down but an offshore oil spill continues to ruin beach activities and wildlife. Drought conditions haven’t gotten any better and water restrictions continue. California is so large that every five years or so, there’s a call to dismember the state and separate it into north and south or other variations of the same theme.

This summer was a scorcher with continuous waves of rising temperatures which would begin around 110 degrees then grow daily until it was hovering at 123, peaking for a day or two then slowly diminishing to a somewhat tolerable 100 degrees for a week or so before the next wave started to swell up again. That pattern of rolling, ever increasing heat waves, did wonders for the vegetation but wreaked any notion of outdoor activities during the afternoon hours for most residents.

Unfortunately, Covid restrictions continue on, showing little change from last season. It’s ‘masks on’ whenever entering a store and a lot of restaurants are still on limited hours. Surprisingly and despite Covid restrictions, Palm Springs is starting to open up again. Parking lots are full, the airport is bustling and downtown is crowded each night with tourists and locals alike almost desperate to go back to their old routines and mingle with the masses.

Just before we left last season, Sharon and I were fortunate enough to meet some of our new neighbors. Over the summer, they shared their own encounters (via Ring doorbell) with some other neighbors; coyotes and a bobcat that seem to have taken up residency nearby.

Coyote video

https://www.facebook.com/1615615684/videos/10222159783496317/

Bobcat videos

https://www.facebook.com/1615615684/videos/2740013619631406/

https://www.facebook.com/1615615684/videos/576469177122384/

That may account for a dramatic decrease in the number of bunnies scampering about our yard as compared to last season. I love sitting outside at night and staring up at the stars. Nowadays, it’s always a question of what’s lurking on the other side of my wall. There’s a rumor going around that a cougar was sighted just two blocks away about a month ago. I’m still going to sit in the dark but close enough to my back door if I need to seek shelter there.

Our birds survived the heat and our hummingbird family grew from three to seven flighty, flirty tiny creatures. They’re not too happy that we’ve invaded their turf but we’ll find a way to get along.

Unlike other hipster hotels like the Ace and the V, the Saguaro Hotel remains closed. Sharon and I used our social membership there two years ago to use their facilities during off hours. Even if I can’t go there, I do want to return to walking the berm every day.

Local hiking trails still abound and are calling me back once again.

There will be new trails to explore and more distant attractions like Joshua Tree, Laguna Beach, and Idyllwild to add to that list.

It’s a different environment for me here among the bobcats, cougars, coyotes, and bear-state mentality, but the workload continues on unabated. I have a plethora of writing projects that are screaming for my attention.

Waleed, the skinny hippo, is almost ready for the next stage of production; creating colorful panels for my children’s book. Then I’ve got three nervous nuns I’m trying to help navigate a new and confusing ‘real world’ environment. ‘Agnes’ will have to wait a little longer before she and I begin our wondrous affair set in the turbulent sixties and my imagination. The mystery of Henry Miller and Big Surf has been solved but I’ve still got to find the time to get it out to a larger audience.

Finally, now that I’m back on home turf, I don’t think I’ll have any problem getting volunteers to workshop one of my latest plays ‘Widow’s Waltz’ for their fellow audiences. There are even more projects waiting in the wings but they’ll remain there for the time being.

As much as the surroundings may change in this bear state-of-mind, and now with some growling at night, the workload continues on and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Polly and Waleed

This spring initially looked pretty bleak for me on the writing home front. Theaters still hadn’t reopened. Book clubs still weren’t meeting in person. Putting together small or large gatherings for script reading proved a challenge and ultimately undoable.

Those detours and roadblocks to my scheduled vernacular summer pushed me back to the writing table. It meant rehashing and rebuilding past novel ideas, first drafts of plays and more blog ramblings. Then around mid-summer, two writing projects in particular proved an interesting yet very palatable contrast. They seemed a bit odd on the surface but worked out perfectly well in the long run.

Between creating new blogs, rewriting, and tightening up several plays and finding the right marketing venues for my new mystery novel, I found myself jockeying between a polyamorous affair and a skinny hippo. As the two story plots unfolded, it turned out that Polly, the main character in ‘Polly’s Amorous Adventures,’ had serious issues with her sexuality. Waleed, (a very skinny hippo) on the other hand, had serious issues of low self-esteem. These conflicting yet similar issues turned out to be a marriage made in writing heaven…if your mind works that way.

‘Polly’s Amorous Adventure’ proven to be a very successful play when it premiered in California in 2018. But I felt it might have even stronger ‘legs’ in the Twin Cities if I could find the right venue for it here. Vida, my editor, upon reflection of the plays past performance, felt that Polly hadn’t yet fully examined the idea of a woman exploring her own sexuality.

Vida explained that this was more than just an extension of the woman’s liberation movement of the 60s, newfound sexual freedom that came with the pill or the more recent MeToo movement. While it encompassed all those ideologies, it also examined a woman’s respect of and appreciation for her body. And this was not just a sexual thing but rather a mental, physical, and psychological analysis that drove deep into a woman’s psychic.

Adding this new dimension to the script proved a challenge with various characters dealing with the subject matter without lecturing about it. I choose several characters like Polly’s girlfriend Hazel, and her mother as my primary vehicles of information for the audience.

All the while I was mending and re-stitching the script for Polly, I found myself dealing with a skinny hippo that was afraid of his own shadow. That particular storyline began more than fifteen years ago with the story of a skinny hippo entitled: ‘Skinny Hippo.’ A Google search revealed several skinny hippo entities so my story title changed to ‘Waleed, the skinny hippo.’

Vida and I went through the sample drawings of over 100 illustrators from free-lance sites such as Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer. We narrowed those down to four illustrators. From those four finalists, we ordered four sample panels and finally came up with two illustrators whose versions of skinny hippos seemed to suit our imagined primary subject matter.

We made several passes at editing my original text to try to get it down to a child’s reading level. Then we had to figure out just what ages it might be most appropriate for. Sharon and I attended the Minnesota Children’s Book Festival in Red Wing and got a lot of great ideas for children’s books.

We studied book sizes, placement of text, full panel drawings, half page drawings, isolated images on the page, multiple images on one page and other assorted techniques to drive the colorful impressions home.

Waleed and Polly made for a strange yet similar subject matter. We touch on issues of self-esteem, self-identity, bravery and being different. As the ‘Wise Fish’ tells Waleed, “Different is good. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.” The same can be said of Polly.

Now I’ll have to wait to see if my audience agrees with my lovable little hippo and my lovely lass seeking her own identity.