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Retarded Retirement
The woes of a slow learner
When I was a kid my mother used to tell me that I was mentally retarded. I didn’t believe her. I knew she was just saying that to try to get me to try harder.
While I may not be officially retarded I am, however, a very, very slow learner. What takes most people six months to learn takes me thirty or forty years to learn.
In recent years I’ve been trying really hard to learn how to retire. So far I have been quite unsuccessful in both learning how to do it and actually doing it. I have taken some baby steps but I have yet to take the full plunge.
What got me thinking even harder about retirement was a phone conversation I had with an old friend yesterday. He is in his seventies now and he still works 50 to 60 hours a week (in construction). He has resigned himself to the fact that he will keep working right up to the time he finally kicks the bucket.
“Aren’t you getting Social Security?” I asked him.
“Oh sure, but it’s not even enough to cover my monthly house payment. If I quit working I’d be homeless within two months.”
His father, who also worked construction, was the same way. He spent his entire life working and working and working right up to the day he died on the job in his seventies.
