I'm becoming more convinced that life is about quality, not quantity. That is, I would rather live sixty really spectacular years than ninety really boring ones. Of course, living ninety spectacular years would be even better, but I just don't have the energy to stick around that long. Plus it is very expensive to live that long.
What would you rather do - spend three years riding a motorbike across Africa, Asia, & Latin America, or spend one year lying in a nursing home? Guess what, it costs $60K/year to live in a nursing home, and I think you can do the three years of travel cheaper than that.
At 30, you have choices. Spend $60K for the trip, or put that $60K into a retirement account and hope it keeps up with inflation, so you can pay to lay in your death bed in a few decades.
When you're 70, you don't have those kinds of options. Your health care costs skyrocket and you don't have the physical ability to keep up. Sure there are people who do exciting stuff when they are elderly but they are the exception. Chicks don't dig 70 year old guys anyways.
At this point, I'm basically convinced that quality of life rapidly degrades at age 60. I want to plan my financial life about running out of money at age 60. I'm not in particularly good health, but if I happen to make it past that age, great. I'm still alive.
I want to semi-retire in about 3-4 years, and let my retirement accounts keep churning, then hang it up for good about 10 years after that. Spend the last 15 years of my life (age 45-60) depleting my funds, living in various fun countries around the world, chasing bar girls, drinking beer, eating lots of exotic food, and waking up at noon. A life well lived.
And meet a quick frugal death (preferably heart attack - with a beer in my hand, a bar-girl on my lap, and a big stupid grin on my face). If I happen to live longer then I will just charge my way to death. Dying with a couple hundred thousand dollars in credit card debt would be the ultimate revenge against the credit card companies.
Monday, July 21, 2008
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3 comments:
Excellent plan. Semi-retirement phase should include some sort of investments that can generate compound interest, and earn income passively as a hedge against a low paying semi-retirement job. Other than that, its prudent for a bachelor to hit 65 with almost no assets. Otherwise, in a nursing home (or uninsured medical) situation , the states "spend-down" will whack years or decades of savings almost overnight. Those married (with kids) might have to think of a different plan, because they have others to think about. Based on my observations, its not very common to enter age 60 without physical ailments of some sort, whether that be sports injuries, or chronic illness that requires (expensive) daily medicine. And going out with a mountain of credit card debt and no assets has to be the ultimate. All that said, I'd suggest frugal bachelor spend sufficient money to at least eat healthy, to help ensure that the 40s and 50s are healthy decades.
Only cost about $30,000 for mom's last year of nursing home care.
Of course, that's because 5 years earlier I moved her down to Mexico to a local facility with at least 2x the caregiver/patient ratio of any nursing home I found here in the U.S.
I will be taking a hard look at retiring down there, since I can speak that language, but not Thai! :)
There's always that terminal cruise ship vacation to shark infested waters :-)
I don't think life as we know it is over at 60 though. The top goalie in our hockey league is close to 60 and we have a few other players around 55 that are above average speed and skill. This league goes from 17 and up with most people being around 30.
In a world (country?) where physical activity is neglected basically from age 15 and up, it's not hard to set standards low. I mean, many lives are physically over at 20 and it's all downhill from then. It's in the mind.
My team mates kick ass, though. They play hard. It's a different attitude altogether. Like the opposite of "asking for the doctor's advice before starting fat burning program on the stair master" --- we played outside in 95F in full gear (as usual) during the "unhealthy" air conditions where strenuous activity is discouraged (the forest fires in NorCal). I hope to do that in 30 years too.
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