Posted by Canadian Dream on May 13, 2010
Have you ever noticed that some people attribute a lot of their lives to either good luck or bad luck or both? In some cases, I think this is true, while other times it’s more about having a good plan. Well the other day I was struck by two rounds of luck: one bad and the other good.
The bad luck started less than a kilometer from home. I heard a snap in the car and then the battery light came on and then shortly afterward the car started to overheat. Of course this was quickly followed by check engine light. Our plans to visit my mother for supper on Mother’s Day were suddenly canceled. I did manage to get the car home and then the following day my wife arranged a tow truck and called the shop to get the car fixed. The initial estimate was the shop would not have time to look at it until Friday so I would be carless for a week. They did mention if they had time they would look at it sooner. What a great way to start my Monday morning.
Then the good luck came later that day. My wife called just before I left work, saying “Guess what?” I decided to play along “Ok, what?” Then she replied “The car is fixed, if you can get there before 5:30pm you can pick it up today. “ All I managed to get out was “WHAT?!?!” So I took off and went to pick up the car. The problem had been the serpentine belt snapping and once that was replaced they looked for secondary damage and didn’t find any. They did warn that there might be some damage that they can’t see, so watch to see if we start burning oil in the car. Total cost including the tow job: $250.
I typically don’t consider myself that lucky (after all I NEVER win on gambling), but that day I was definitely thinking I was VERY lucky. Given we were heading out on the highway when the car broke-down, the fact the damage had occurred in the city right near our house had been good luck. The quick fix had been good luck (the guy at the shop even pointed out not to expect this all the time). Then it occurred to me that I haven’t had a major problem with my car for nine years, which is partly due to good maintenance, but maybe I was just lucky after all.
So how about you? Are you lucky or unlucky? Or does it matter because you have a plan and an emergency fund?
Posted by Canadian Dream on May 12, 2010
So there is another round of thought running around the blog world about is early retirement selfish (see here and here)? The answer of course is: yes! Yet not in a bad way. I think everyone is inherently selfish to a degree. How much varies from person to person, but in the end we all are a bit. The issue with early retirement is people for some reason assume you are no longer a productive member of society and thus try to put that selfish bit in a negative light.
The issue of course is life isn’t so simple. Let’s examine a few things. Is buying a new TV selfish? Yes, I think we could argue no one would die without a TV so it isn’t a need. So if that is true then buying a big house is selfish, and so is buying a new car every five years. Yet when you choose not to buy the new TV, the big house or the new cars is that selfish by choosing to save the money instead? On the one hand is you are just keeping some savings for emergencies or regular retirement I think people would consider it more prudent planning than being selfish. Yet if that is the case, where is the line between prudent planning and being selfish? If you retire one year early are you selfish? Likely not, so why is doing it five, ten or even twenty years any different? In reality there is no difference other than the difference you build in your mind. So why do you feel there is a difference? I’ll take a stab at this, you feel guilty about retiring early.
Which brings us back to the concept of a productive member of society. I think for some reason people assume that early retirement means doing nothing and thus you are not productive. Yet that is a false assumption. People are never doing nothing. Kids who are five and under don’t attend school and don’t have a job, so in some people’s definitions of productive would be seen to be doing nothing. Yet in reality we know small kids are learning machines who are figuring out balance and gross motor control, fine motor control, language skills, defining their environment, learning object permanence and literally thousands of other little things that you take for granted every day of your life. There are definitely not doing nothing. The same applies to early retirees, they might appear on the surface to be doing much but the reality is they are learning gardening or a new language, helping others, starting small business, driving up your property value by picking up trash on their morning walk…you get the idea. If you try to call early retirees unproductive members of society you might as well extend that to small kids or even artists since they don’t produce things that people need or pay enough tax. The label of unproductive is really, again, just in your head.
So after deconstructing those two concepts it easy to see early retirement is only selfish (in a bad way) and unproductive if you want it to be. Yes early retirement will always be partly motivated by selfish goals, but that doesn’t mean it is a bad goal. Early retirees do have the difficultly of adjusting to find more meaning in their life than just their career. Most working people don’t have to think of how they contribute to the world, they just assume it is their job. Which is sort of silly when you consider how many useless paper pushing jobs there are out in the workplace. It’s entirely possible by retiring early you will contribute more to society than you ever did as a working stiff.
So in the end you need to find your own answer to: why do you want to retire early? I won’t judge the answer, but you will in our own mind. If you get it wrong, then you will feel guilty. So be honest with yourself and really think about the question.
So why do you want to retire early? In my case, I want more time to learn and write. How about you?
Posted by Dave on May 11, 2010
I get five weeks of vacation with my job, meaning that until I am done work, I have plans for approximately 47 weeks of the year, and have control of the rest. My idea of a great vacation includes a lot of sitting around, reading and perhaps having a few drinks. These are activities that I am normally not able to do for any length of time the rest of the year, and I look forward to them. Growing up, I really didn’t do much in the way of summer vacation because I grew up on a farm and summer meant a lot of work that was fairly time sensitive – if the weather was nice, there were things to do like harvesting hay and building fences, and if the weather was bad there really wasn’t a lot to do inside or outside and those were nice, relaxing days during which the public library got a lot of use.
This year, my wife’s family would like to do “stuff” on their family vacation (of which now, I have been told I am a part of). So far, this “stuff” includes going to Marineland in Niagara Falls as well as several other attractions in the area. For anyone who has never been to Niagara Falls, Ontario I guess the main thing you need to know is that it’s basically a money pit – especially in the summer – almost a perfect tourist trap.
My wife is very excited to go to Marineland, while I am not really at all interested in going. It’s not really my idea of a good time to go hang out where a few thousand people are milling around. I’m not terribly interested in spending the $100 to get into the park for the day to wait in lines for rides and be annoyed by other people. My wife says that it will be fun because my nephews will really enjoy themselves and it will be something fun to do as a family. My response to this is that there is probably something more interesting for them to do (as 6 and 4 years old) that would not require the money and time that will have to paid out to have this family day together.
Last year, we as a family rented a cottage on a nice quiet lake, which had a lot of up-front costs but for a week of vacation together was reasonable as a majority of meals were cooked at the cottage. There was more opportunity for visiting and hanging out than will probably be experienced with this year’s more “touristy”-based vacation which from what I can see will require a lot more driving around and general headaches.
Who knows, maybe it will be a really good time. I know there are better places I can spend money and probably receive more enjoyment from, but as it has been explained to me, this is a family vacation and my idea of fun is not the same as other peoples.
How about you, what is your ideal family vacation? Have you had any good or bad experiences in the past? Any tips for someone who will be stuck in a tourist trap?
