This year, my husband and I will complete 10 years of retirement. The most important thing is that we both still love our retirement life. The good, the bad and everything in between. As time has gone on, things that seemed very important at the start, seem less important now, and indeed other things have become more important.
2020 has changed us
2020 has indeed changed us, and sadly not for the better. We have become more sedentary, not through choice, but due to lockdown, there have been fewer things to do, and certainly No Slow Travel. Never, before in our more than 40 years of marriage, have we spent so much time in one place. I thought that we might find it a bit of a challenge, and there would be many arguments, but amazingly we haven’t fallen out! If anything, I suspect we are closer, because we have had so little interaction with anyone else. Our connections have shrunk to just a few very close friends. We haven’t even seen our family.
What is still very important to us
Travel
The worst thing for me this last year has been, not to just get on a plane, and head off somewhere. I have spent 4 years working on my Spanish (Still needs a lot more work!) I want to go to Spain and practice it. But I can’t, nor will I be able to go anytime soon.
The world of travel, I suspect has changed, at least for the next 10 years. Will I want to join a throng of tourists like this at the Acropolis again? I very much suspect not. At the same time, places such as Venice and indeed even Edinburgh are rediscovering their cities without the tourists, and quite enjoying it. They don’t want packed streets, they want to be able to enjoy quieter places again. Our world had got so much busier. When I first went to the Vatican, in Rome, in 1981, it was busy, but not mobbed.
When we visited again in 2018, it was uncomfortable to be there. Do we really want to be part of this crowd in the map room?
We were swept along among big tour groups. The opportunity to stand and look just wasn’t there.
So I suspect as our world opens up again, people will be more careful about what they want. Not only the visitors themselves, but the residents themselves who live in the tourist spots.
My idea of Slow Travel was dependent on being able to rent apartments at a reasonable price, and take time to understand how locals live. Maybe we will have to become locals for 6 months, at a time. What a lovely idea.
Health
If anything Covid has made us aware that the single most important thing we could do for ourselves, was to get healthy. It is no surprise that the countries who were hardest hit by Covid, were also those who had the highest levels of obesity. UK and USA to name but two. However, is also not a surprise to find that teh countries who have a very low population of overweight people, also had the lowest death rate. Vietnam being a very good example, Second lowest death rate, lowest level of obesity.
Ironically, lockdown has also reduced the opportunities for exercise, and made so many people comfort eat, myself included!
However, personally I am trying to address that, but it is a long road!
Creativity
I admit I have struggled this last year. My creative side went into hibernation, it just went to sleep. Fortunately, it is reviving itself. I did not feel a whole person without it.
I managed to make a couple of things, which I was very pleased with… Here’s my wee optical delusion. All the pieces are the same colour, and its flat! It is your eyes that change them to give the 3d effect!
This one was a bit more challenging – it took rather longer to plan and make. Each of the 108 pieces has been hand enamelled using my kiln. A labour of love. It now hangs behind my head when I am in Zoom meetings!
but again, like this blog, it has been a couple of months since I made anything! However, with spring now here in the UK, I can already feel myself wanting to make things again.
What was important, but isn’t any more?
Money.
A strange thing for someone who partly started this blog to write about money things…. After 10 years of retirement, we have put Money in its correct place in our lives. Something that facilitates our lifestyle, but is no longer important in itself. When we first retired, we had taken a bit of a risk. I had just turned 56, my husband was 63. We had done a lot of sums, we jumped ship on the basis of those numbers. Were we correct in our assumptions? We hopefully had many years ahead of us. Were we going to be able to afford our intended lifestyle. Would the piggy bank hold enough?
10 years on, we are able to have confidence in our decision. We save more than we spend (particularly in this Covid world, where our shops have been shut for months). Even now, as they open again, I have little desire to go browsing in shops. Overall our net worth has grown by more than 50%, in our 10 years of retirement, not stayed the same, or reduced slightly as we expected. We have a process in place, where our money manages itself, which is the way it should be. I look forward to getting the chance to spend money on travelling again.
Blogging
This blog has had its 4th birthday. I still love writing, but I feel no need to force myself to churn out posts, just because I havent written one in a while. I don’t have any advertisers to keep happy, neither do I need any extra income. When the law in Europe changed around Data Protection, I got rid of my mailing list, so I don’t have regular readers any more. I can please myself what I do with it. I recognise that it is never going to be a Mr Money Mustache blog, or even a Retirement Manifesto one. I have no desire to write a book, or change the world of retirement & or money.
Stuff
I was never big on acquiring posh clothes, expensive jewellery or extravagant furnishings. Recently, I have definitely gone the other way. I have vastly reduced the amount of ornaments, on show. (easier to keep clean, and I prefer the ‘new, simple, look’, some might say bare!) For months I didn’t wear any jewellery, not even my wedding ring or bracelets, which were previously fixtures. I decided they were germ catchers, and made my hands harder to keep clean. Though the wedding ring is back on, none of the others are. 99% of my time is spent at home, so casual clothes are the norm (on the rare occasion I go to the shops, I almost feel that I am dressing up, making sure there are no obvious holes or marks…) Every year I normally clear out my wardrobe, and ask myself whether I have worn an item in the last year and if not, it’s time to part company. I daren’t do that this year!
Time to Move On
As we start to come out of the Covid stranglehold, there are so many freedoms that we can no longer take for granted. I mourn their loss. However, as humans, we show time and time again, that we can cope with change. This last year has been no different. I hate the term – the ‘new normal’, but June 2021 will be a very different normal to June 2019… Onward to the next 10 years!
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We’ve been retired for 5 years and our 2020 experience was much different from yours. We still ran with our group of runners three days a week in the pre-dawn. We still played tennis, including team matches, several times a week. We took our boat to area lakes and hundreds of miles to the coast to fish frequently. We trail rode with our side by side ATV in several states. We hiked out west and in the wilderness areas in our own state. We took 1000 mile and longer road trips to camp with our grown kids. All of these were deemed safe by the CDC because it’s simple to maintain your distance when you are outdoors, especially in rural wilderness areas. The only change in our plans was no overseas and air travel but since we love road trips that hardly mattered. Covid only restricted activities where social distancing was not possible, there were still lots of fun things that were socially distanced by nature.
Lucky, lucky people!
To put it in perspective, there is a Costco 1 mile from where I live. It has been illegal for me to cross the city boundary to visit it for about 5/6 months. They even had police doing road checks on the two main roads south out of Edinburgh, to ensure your journey was essential.
We looked after a friend’s children for an afternoon in early March (emergency childcare, so allowed!). Their father was our ‘first foot’ for 2021, no-one except my husband and I had crossed our doorstep since November! Immediate family members have been unable to visit their loved ones in care homes for over a year.
Your pre-dawn runner group would have been illegal since end September here, no outdoor exercise for more than 6 people allowed! In January, it went down to 1 person from 2 households to meet outdoor for exercise! Outdoor tennis, football all shut, and as for travel – forget it, even camping has not been allowed. Do not leave your town area!
Ah well, rant over, at least the restrictions are easing now! Happy days!
I’m right there with you on the crowds. We didn’t like crowds before covid, and I can’t imagine tolerating them after covid. I sure hope the previously overrun places can find a happy medium in a post-covid world, even if it makes visiting them a bit harder and a bit more expensive.
I think the changes to the cruise industry will reduce the visitors in many tourist spots, certainly in Europe. Let’s face it, in the near future, there won’t be available flights, certainly not the cheap, frequent ones we are used to.
We have parked the idea of any trips abroad for this year. We’ll do some local UK trips to visit family & friends, and just see what happens as the world opens up again.
The lack of tourists wondering around my little city has been a big change. I feel for the tourist operators and all their employees. Aurora Borealis viewing was a growing attraction.
I’ve only been retired for 7 months at 54. Love it! I definitely would have done a few trips to visit friends over this time. I’m hoping at least some local travel is possible fairly soon.
Hi Michelle
I’m glad you are enjoying retirement. There’s nothing to beat it in my view!
Tourism will recover, and I think it will re-invent itself in a slightly different way. Certainly there has been some discussion here in Edinburgh about the benefit of tourists who stay for a day or two, enjoy the area and support local facilities, as opposed to those who take a quick bus tour round the city sights, and who don’t even buy a cup of coffee!
I’ve booked a trip to Antarctica for December this year but I doubt it’ll go ahead. That’s ok… there’s always next year.
I retired in December last year at 57. Being in lockdown for 13 weeks made me truly realise that I wouldn’t get bored being at home. The border between Victoria and South Australia is open because we’ve had no community covid cases for a couple of months, so I took the chance to take a little road trip. Just got back.
Glad to hear the retirement is still fun after 10 years. I’ve enjoyed the last 4 months!
Hi Frogdancer
Sounds fantastic. I hope it does go ahead. By then, hopefully, all infection prevention measures will be well understood, and many more people will have been vaccinated. Glad your road trip went well. I think that will be our main travel option this year.
Glad you’re enjoying your retirement. You’re right, lockdown makes you realise you wont get bored. I think many people are reviewing their work options. Certainly my two sons and their families are
Thanks for your nice comment in the tweet too!
Erith
Great to hear you’ve been retired 10 years and are still loving it. Astounding to hear that your net worth has grown 50% – I am sure you will enjoy spending it on travelling once you are able to. Love your 3D artwork!
Hi Weenie
Like you I was amazed that my net worth has continued to grow so successfully, because in the same time we have also been a tad extravagant with travel, including several business class trips to NZ. We decided it is such a killer trip, that we might as well enjoy it! However when we aren’t away, we don’t spend over much.
Glad you like my art work. Starting to feel a bit more creative these days, as lockdown eases, and the sun comes out (even in Scotland!)
I retired early at 54. I’m glad I did as I got to travel before all this Covid lockdown. But this last year of lockdown has me actually questioning the value of retirement. There is still some value in work, if not for money, then for a change in the world. I just haven’t figured out how to add contributions to society with all the extra time from both lockdown and retirement. If the lockdown had continued longer, I would have seriously considered returning to work. Because if I’m going to sit at home I might as well be productive. Just trying to figure out what to do with the next five years of retirement!
An interesting view Nancy. I wouldn’t consider going back to work full-time, but I did find value in volunteering as a university governor for 6 years. I agree that giving something back is a good idea. I’m sure you’ll work how to make the best use of the next five years. Have fun