Can I go out to dinner? No! I’m saving for retirement.
Can I go to the movies? If it’s not a matinee, no! I’m saving for retirement.
Shall I buy a $3750 mattress? Had the countdown begun six weeks ago, no!
Should I order $150 worth of truffle bars from Seattle Chocolates? See answer immediately above.
Might my appearance be enhanced by a $115 haircut? There is no doubt, but I will not do it!
In regard to the truffle bars and sugar in general, I was kind of inspired by Rita L. saying that decades of depression had vanished and that her natural joie de vivre had bubbled forth irrepressibly once she stopped eating sugar, and I decided at least to take my sugars and sugar-based products out of the cupboard and put them into a paper grocery bag for storage in the closet. It would all be there, but just not right in my face.
I must admit I was a little shocked when this project immediately overflowed one grocery bag (granted, I couldn’t fill it all the way to the top, as the items were heavy) and required much of a second such bag.
There were the truffle bars (40 of them?), the Venezuelan chocolate (20 bars?), the Newman’s sweet dark chocolate bars (six?), the brown sugar, the coarse sugar, the powdered sugar, the organic sugar, the this sugar and the that sugar, plus I put the white flour in there, since what would I do with white flour that wouldn’t involve sugar?
Later I had to take the two bags back out of the closet and put everything back on the shelf, because I kept having to go into the closet every two minutes to get a truffle bar.
Anyway, in regard to retirement, I’ve been saving for retirement but now I’m really going to save for retirement, because I would like to retire yesterday at the latest.
I live fairly low on the hog, certain recent extravagances notwithstanding, but my standard of living has inexorably crept up since I got my first job with a grown-up paycheck about nine years ago. It is much easier not to buy something when you really don’t have the money than when you do have the money but are trying to pretend you don’t.
I felt rich when I got that job. I remember telling my therapist I would now pay the top of her sliding scale and her having to break it to me gently that there were actually people in
While I vowed to save as much as possible now that I had some disposable income and have done a pretty good job, I don’t think it’s wise to deprive yourself of every possible thing so you can have a lavish retirement, because who knows if you’ll live until the projected day of retirement? Or will still be able to walk, or see?
As for the job, it’s not my dream job. I know if I told Oprah about it, she would think I should go for something where I get to express myself absolutely and that changes the world for the better.
There are many entrepreneurs in my family, including three of my great-grandmothers. (The fourth would have been, too, no doubt, but she died in the flu epidemic of 1918, along with her young son, leaving my grandfather and his father.)
One great-grandmother ran a corset company while her husband was in Florida for a year recovering from TB, and served as her own general contractor for the building of a house (for $18K) that still stands in Ann Arbor and recently sold for 1.35 million dollars.
Another had a candy store and tourist cabins. Another took in boarders, had a soda fountain, and also had the brilliant idea of opening, in the days before movie theaters sold refreshments, a shop located between the State and
Plus one of my grandmothers opened her own recording studio, albeit short-lived. And two of my uncles have their own businesses, so the genes may be there, but I’m way too lazy for anything of this nature. Meanwhile, the jobs that look fun tend to pay about five dollars an hour, except for the ones that are unpaid internships.
Therefore, I have decided to suck it up, as my mother advised in exactly those words not a week ago, and step up my saving and investing, if possible.
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