$$$ PLANNING APPOINTMENT

Yesterday, Ray and I had our annual appointment to mostly discuss our future with our financial planner.  Before I go on with his ideas, views and opinions about us retiring to Panama (he mostly kept them to himself but enjoyed hearing about it and just stated he wasn’t ready to quit work and couldn’t relocate outside of  the States), this is a little side story.

One year ago, we had a pretty basic, boring meeting.  Pretty much the usual of “keep it growing so we can someday afford to quit our jobs and pay for health insurance and travel a bit”!  It turned into an expensive meeting though, because we had had some Panamanian-style rain that day.  I drove up to meet Ray for the appointment, and we left his car in a busy parking lot in Springfield, Virginia. We then drove my four month old car to the appointment.  On the way back to picking his car up, the rain was out of control and so was the traffic.  The beltway from Tyson’s Corner, Virginia to Springfield would lose lanes every so often to high standing water.  We stopped at  Mike’s American Grill for dinner (we needed a break from the rain, we never get to Mike’s enough, and the traffic was horrendous).  Little did we know we were losing Ray’s car to high water in that parking lot while we ate dinner.  His car and a pickup truck were the only cars sitting in the parking lot when we got to it.  The water had been up to the hood but had receded by the time we arrived.  Ray drove it home.  All the wiring was, of course, messed up.  And he drove it to work the next day.  Then he decided to just get it to the service station after work to have it looked over and declared totaled.  It took the appraiser one week, but he finally deemed it totaled and we were calling the FP to tell him we were taking a bunch of that money we were just talking about “letting grow” to buy another car.  Last night’s meeting stayed cheap.  Oh, I did make Ray take me back to Mike’s though.  $55 later.

Back to the meeting and the real reason for this post…

 Our financial planner’s company recently merged with another company.  One of the things the new company does is have the FP go through a check list when considering retirement.  Since we have fun with our planner at these meetings, there is really no stress, and we are all very relaxed during the meeting, he used Ray and me as guinea pigs for the new format. 

One question asked was: Is there anyone you would model your retirement after?

I spoke up and answered that it would be my dad.  He lived life when once he retired (at the age of 54 ½).  Sure, he did what he wanted by lounging in a lawn chair in the driveway (why sit out back when the action was taking place out front) with a beer soaking up the sun, but he also volunteered, worked a part-time job, and spent time with the grandkids. My dad, Fred, drove a bus for a retirement community. He went through the trouble to get a commercial drivers license for this job.  He would drive the residents a few miles to the grocery store but more often he was responsible for taking them to the theaters in DC and up and down I-95 and I-66 in Virginia.  Heck, he could then enjoy the shows for free (being on a fixed income and all), and sometimes my mom would drop what she was doing—like cleaning the baseboards or something that could wait a hundred years—and not  hold a grudge that he was “working again” to go with him.).  I think at times he worked too much and should have been traveling more to appease my mom.  Ray and I told our planner that our parents would love to do what we are hoping to do in the near future.  Living outside the box, going on an adventure, and if it’s right, we will know it.  We know that we can always create a Plan B.    

Mom, dad and me (dad at the start of his government career).  No, he didn't keep the mustache for long!

Another question asked was:  how do you realize your retirement?  I answered, “we just spoke about it for the past hour.  Panama is our reality.  It’s what we want to realize.”  At the same time, Ray was saying, “living life and our dream”.  Our planner then said that they were the perfect answers.  And while we have crunched the numbers ourselves over and over again, it was wonderful to get the reassurance from him that yes, we can go to Panama and see our dreams come true.  Whew!  Three weeks until we visit………….