My Early Retirement Control Center

 

That's a photo of the desk area in my home office. The rest of the room is neat as a pin, scouts honor, but my desk area always looks like it's on the brink of becoming out of control. To be fair, my husband thinks it is out of control, but I disagree - I know precisely what and where everything is, and more importantly, what it's there for.

Crafting a stimulating and satisfying early retirement lifestyle doesn't just happen - it takes a lot of behind the scenes time and energy. I spend a considerable amount of time planning out our travel schedule and our at-home schedule, which is much of what you see scattered around my computer in the photo. From left to right, in a semi-orderly circular fashion, here's what balls are in the air this morning:

• OLLI college catalogs - I check these daily to see what classes we have time and interest in attending.
• Wild Words from Wild Women calendar - I have no clue what day it is until I sit down and take a look at my funny little daily calendar, a gift last Christmas from my husband. Today's quote: "Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement."
• Small notebook I use to track my exercise routine and weight. I'm a bit unhappy with this notebook at the moment - the trend lines appear to be heading in the wrong direction!
• My daily spend notebook, which I use to track all of our transactions. I make one checkmark when I've transferred the entry over to our budget spreadsheet, and a second checkmark when the transaction has cleared the appropriate account. 
• Our ballroom dance studio's monthly group lesson schedule.
• A timer for the lemon squares currently baking in the oven. These are the best lemon squares ever I swear. I modified the recipe slightly to increase the amount of lemon filling, which made a world of difference. Mike loves it when there are baked goods either on the counter or in the freezer to pack in the sack lunch he takes to the college, so I do my best to accommodate. (See recipe below)
• A flyer for Spellbound with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, this week's free classic film showing at OLLI.
• A scrap of paper reminding me today is the last day to order a photo book online at Shutterfly in order to receive a 50% discount. I really need to hurry up and finish my photo book on our recent trip to China! 
• Next month's read for one of my three book clubs (Peace Like a River by Leif Enger in case your curious). I got it free from the library of course.
• Scraps of paper listing interesting things to do in Encinitas, Palm Springs and Malibu, the next three locations we'll be taking our trailer to.
• A cruise ship brochure. I'm always on the lookout for a good deal . . .
• Our earthquake policy renewal. It went up - a lot - and I need to chat with my agent to discuss possible alternatives.
• A TravelZoo dining voucher for a winery in Temecula that we'll be visiting during our upcoming Encinitas trip. It's out as a reminder that I need to call and make reservations. I am not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants person - I make reservations for everything.

I manage our activities via my online Google calendar. Since it resides "in the clouds," I can share it electronically with Mike, and vice versa. It provides much of the functionality I used to utilize at my job via Microsoft's Outlook, or at least as much as I need to keep our little retired household of two moving along.

If I look at this all from the perspective of my pre-early retirement office routine, not much has really changed. The items I'm handling are slightly different than before, but the ongoing initiation, organization and timeline demands are pretty similar. I very much enjoyed organizing my schedule and staying on top of my projects at work, and I still enjoy doing the same in retirement here at home. I spend about an hour at my desk in the morning doing budget entries, organizing our calendar and reading up on my favorite blogs, and then again for another hour or so in the evening catching up on my email and doing future travel planning.

So what's on your desk currently, and how you go about organizing your life in retirement? I'd love to know.

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Best Lemon Squares Ever

6 Tbl butter

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup all purpose flour

--------------

3 eggs

1 & 1/8 cup granulated sugar

1/2 tsp finely shredded lemon peel

4 & 1/2 Tbl freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 Tbl all purpose flour

3/8 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8x8x2 inch baking pan. For cookie base, in mixer, beat butter on medium speed of electric mixer for 30 seconds. Add 1/4 cup sugar and salt; beat till fluffy. Stir in 1 cup flour. Pat into bottom of pan. Bake in oven about 15 minutes or till slightly and lightly browned around edges.

Meanwhile, beat eggs till mixed, just a few seconds. Add 1 & 1/8 cup sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, 3 TBL flour and baking powder; beat about 3 minutes or till slightly thickened. Pour over above baked layer. Bake in oven for 25 minutes, till lightly browned and just set in center. Watch carefully at the end so you do not overcook! 

Cool completely. Cut into squares and top with sifted powdered sugar if desired. Makes about 16 - 20 squares, depending on how you decide to cut them.

These keep for about 3 days with minimal loss of texture, and they also freeze beautifully for later enjoyment.

Shifting Priorities in Early Retirement

It's been quite interesting to observe how my priorities have been shifting over the 18 months since I retired. It's also been interesting to observe the change in my perspective, but I'll save those thoughts for another post. For now, suffice it to say that people were absolutely correct when they suggested I would continue to change for many months and years to come.

As the year draws toward a close, a review of our 2012 budget worksheet shows how our priorities have changed. Keeping in mind that our budget is very specific, containing some 35 categories, this is what just a few of the more telling categories seem to be showing so far:

• Clothing - I had fully expected to utilize this category at 100% based on my pre-retirement clothes shopping behavior. To my pleasant surprise, we appear to be on track to end the year at less than 30% usage. Entering retirement, I had wondered how much of my pre-retirement clothes shopping behavior was a form of stress-release. It appears I now have my answer.
• Electronics - This was more my husband's category than mine, but again, as we approach year end, this category is way under budget, at just 14% usage currently. In discussing this with my husband, it would appear that similar to my using (abusing?) clothes shopping as a way of relieving stress pre-retirement, he enjoyed hanging out at Best Buy for pretty much the same reason. Now that he's retired, he's finding that he rarely daydreams any longer about chasing down the newest electronic gadgets because he's far too satisfied with the life he now has, just as it is.
• Entertainment - We're way under here as well, primarily because we utilized Goldstar so heavily, saving 50% on almost every entertainment decision we made. Many of the discount offers on Goldstar were last minute, but because we were retired, we had the flexibility to jump on them.
• Groceries - I was concerned about staying on budget initially, which I detailed pretty comprehensively here in this post, but once I began following a meal plan and preparing almost everything from scratch, our spend fell back in line, and we're on track to end the year right at 100% usage.
• Hobbies - We are on track to be at 100% usage in this category as well, which I had expected, because pursuing our various interests is, of course, so much of what we had hoped to do in retirement. What surprised me however, is how much more bang we ended up getting for our buck. We modified a lot of the expensive hobbies we used to do, like buying new books at the drop of a hat, or taking private dance lessons, by changing over to equally satisfying, but less expensive, alternatives, like getting books from the library and taking group dance lessons. As a result, we ended up doing a whole lot more of everything we enjoy without blowing our budget.
• Gardening and Housecleaning Services - These are my guilty luxuries, and even after 18 months of retirement I have no desire to give either one of them up. Ever. I have, however, cut down on the frequency with which my cleaning service comes to the house, primarily because of how much less often we're even home to mess it up.
• Pet Care - I'm very sad to report that we exceeded our annual allocation here by about 100%. The reason for the overage is what I'm particularly sad about - our dear, sweet dog developed liver disease, and we almost lost her as a result. She surprised all however, including our vet, by making a full recovery. Although we do have a Major Expenditures allocation we could have turned to, we had enough under-utilization in our other allocations to more than make up this category's overage, so it's ending up to be a non-issue, budget wise.
• Restaurant Dining - Up until now, we've been running well under budget due to our regular usage of Groupon and TravelZoo for obtaining dining deals. Entering December, however, it feels nicely decadent to have a surplus. I'm looking forward to using up some of it on special holiday meals out with friends and family. 
• Travel - Well, you can probably already guess the situation here . . . it appears we will end the year at almost exactly 100% usage - just $3.00 under as a matter of fact. And I wouldn't change a darn thing, nor take back one single trip we enjoyed this past year.

What I'm finding at this point, is that we are quickly distancing ourselves from the type of spend that results in an accumulation of things, and are instead focusing our spend on an accumulation of experiences. This is exactly what we had visualized for our early retirement when we first began discussing it some years back, so I'm very happy to see that that appears to be precisely what is occurring.

As my very wise blogger friend Suzanne wrote below, Funny how the things that used to matter get replaced with what truly makes us happy when we have the time to enjoy life.

Beautiful Newport, Rhode Island

Oh, but we've had a wonderful time here in Newport, Rhode Island visiting our daughter and son-in-law . . . what a charming little part of the USA this is.

Originally the "kids" were going to leave us a car to get around in while they headed off to work each day, but we quickly realized that walking wherever we wanted to go in this charming little town was the much better way to go. Between walking our grandpuppy, Hazel, each morning, plus the additional sightseeing we did on foot, I would guess we walked somewhere between 20-25 miles during our visit. I just love getting to know a new locale on foot. By getting around under our own steam we were better able to soak up the local atmosphere, see the town's charm up close, enjoy the brisk fall air, say "hello" to dozens of "townies," discover where the really good coffee houses are, and get a little taste of what living here full time might be like.

Our grandpuppy, Hazel, on squirrel patrol during one of our walks

We toured several of the famous Newport mansions - The Breakers, Marble House and The Elms, and came away with a whole new perspective of what life in the Gilded Age was like. (Holy smokes, life before income tax was apparently good!) In addition to the over-the-top decadence of the homes themselves, the tours provided different perspectives on what life here during the late 1800's /early 1900's was like, depending on whether one was a rich tycoon, the wife of a rich tycoon, a family member, a guest, or a servant. Each mansion was newly done up for the Christmas holidays, and they were all absolutely beautiful, particularly, most particularly the lushly decorated Breakers mansion.

The Marble House estate 

We walked along Newport's famous 3 1/2 mile Cliff Walk, which meanders past 64 mansions on one side, and the ocean cliffs of Newport on the other. Parts of the walk were recently damaged by Hurricane Sandy, but I'll confess that when we saw some locals bypass the fence meant to redirect people onto the street and around the damage, we followed suit and did same. And are glad we did. The storm damage appeared to be minimal, and we wouldn't have wanted to miss out on any portion of this gorgeous walking trail.

Nonstop views along The Cliffs walking trail

We enjoyed possibly the most delicious, amazing sandwiches we've ever enjoyed, at Rosemary and Thyme Boulangerie. I had The Mediterranean - grilled eggplant, sauteed spinach, roasted red peppers, sweet pepper relish, topped with oven roasted tomatoes and asiago cheese on a freshly baked baguette - sublime! Be sure to stop by if you are ever in Newport . . . I promise you will not be sorry.

We loved our time here, and we're sorry to be leaving. But the Christmas holiday season with all of it's festivities, plus a mid-December RV trip to seaside San Elijo, await us when we return to California, so we have lots of good things to look forward to.

(By the way, do I seem upbeat and happy most of the time in my posts? I hope so, because increasingly I am. And it's not because my life doesn't contain it's share of curve balls - it does - but, really, why dwell on those things I cannot change? More and more my philosophy these days is to simply deal and move on. Life is simply too short to waste precious time doing otherwise.)

I was captivated by the beautiful fall foliage on these trees

A more modest Newport home's front porch, charmingly done up for fall 

 Hazel and me at Fort Adams State Park, the largest coastal fortification in the United States. Hazel didn't care two hoots about the park, but she did love going into high alert over all the Canadian geese and squirrel  that were everywhere.

Living Like No One Else

I had a little epiphany yesterday as Mike and I were walking along Bellevue Avenue, here in Newport, Rhode Island, where we're currently vacationing and preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving with our family. As we were talking about the over-the-top excesses contained within the beautiful mansions we were seeing and visiting, I suddenly made the connection between the fairly frugal way we conduct our lives when we are at home, and the fairly luxurious travel schedule we enjoy when we're not. To borrow one of financial guru Dave Ramsey's oft repeated lines: When we are at home we try and live like no one else, so that when we are on vacation we can absolutely live like no one else.

We're hardly living on beans and rice when we are at home, but we do watch our pennies. We eat most of our meals at home, and going even a bit further, I make most of them from scratch. When we do go out, 90% of the time we're using a discount deal of some sort. About 90% of our entertainment choices are the result of discount deals as well. We shop for needs, not wants, meaning never as a recreational activity. We are always on the lookout for enjoyable, free things to do in our community. We keep an eye on our utility and technology usage to ensure our bills don't creep up on us when we're not looking. On top of our daily exercise routine, we also walk and bike wherever possible, primarily, I'll admit, because we find it fun to do so, but also to save on gas and vehicle wear and tear. We focus on function, not fancy bells and whistles, when we shop for big ticket items, and we pay for them in cash. (It's amazing what paying cash can do with regard to keeping us in line with our budget.) We track our bills, expenses and general spend diligently, entering them daily into a spreadsheet to stay conscious and aware of all monetary transactions . . . even the very small ones.

We withstand a fair amount of good natured ribbing from friends and family about our new found frugality, but we are becoming pretty proficient at letting it all go gently in one ear and out the other. Because increasingly we are home only long enough to check the mail, do the laundry, and prepare and repack for our next adventure.

The very happiest of Thanksgivings to you all.

Picking Up Speed In Early Retirement

A friend asked me tonight, after she and I had battled it out over tennis for about 90 minutes, whether I was getting tired out yet from all of our traveling. Coincidentally, I'd just spent the morning planning out three more trips, after reviewing our 2013 calendar and spotting a few months where we'd be home more than we'd be away. As a result, I was able to answer her with complete conviction that no, I was absolutely not getting tired. In fact, the more we are on the go, the more exciting life is becoming, and if anything, we're actually trying to pick up the pace even more going forward.

After spending the first year or so of early retirement discovering my passions (travel, dance, running, hiking, biking, reading, learning, photography, piano, live theater, live music, yoga, tennis, vegetarianism, RV'ing, blogging, cooking, Spanish) and then waiting another few months for my husband to discover his (my list, minus blogging, photography, cooking, running and tennis, and with the addition instead of politics, classical music, backpacking, meditation and service work), then spending the necessary time to find avenues where we could enjoy these activities within the realities of our budget, our lives are incredibly full, and very, very satisfying. 

I say all this, not to simply sound like we have it made in the shade, but rather, to share that a rich and satisfying life is really just the sum of those things that make you feel excited, stimulated, satisfied or some other positive emotion, and that you make an effort to do on a very regular basis.

Today my husband and I met at our local university to attend a discussion on the State of the Economy being presented by a member of the San Francisco branch of the Federal Reserve. As we waited for the lecture to begin, we were excitedly comparing notes about our various mornings (I'd gone to yoga, then a book club meeting, he'd gone to a financial discussion class, then a presentation on the outcome of the recent elections) when someone tapped us from behind and asked if we were newlyweds. We laughed and said, no, we'd been married over 30 years, but we were each other's best friend, and never seemed to run out of things to talk about.

What a wonderful mistake to have had made! Particularly because prior to our recent early retirements we were generally too exhausted at the end of each day to do much more than flip on the TV and zone out. Now the TV generally stays off untill late into the evening, if it even comes on at all, as we increasingly spend our time on other more satisfying activities. 

I'm writing this blog at 12:30 AM as a matter of fact, because I'm too wired from my first ever tennis set win tonight over my long time partner, to settle down and go to sleep. 

So I'll sleep in and run a little later than normal tomorrow morning. But I will run . . . because passivity simply isn't an option for us - we know where it leads, and it isn't to anyplace good. 

Enchanting China

Our visit to The Great Wall of China was definitely the standout day
of our marvelous trip

We are just now home, and although important things like grocery shopping and laundry are calling my name, I wanted to quickly post just a few brief thoughts about of our trip to China, plus share some photos.

China was utterly amazing, and Mike and I are forever changed by having visited this beautiful, mesmerizing, overwhelming and complicated country. We now better understand what living alongside 1.4 billion people is like. It means you are virtually never alone anywhere, it means there are tremendous demands for food and energy production, it means constant and severe air pollution as the government struggles to move away from coal as the primary form of energy, it means massive traffic jams, and it means monolithic structures going up everywhere as people relocate from the country to the city to take part in China's surging economy.

But in spite of all of these challenges, the people we met couldn't have been more gracious or welcoming. We sensed tremendous pride about China's rising economy and place in the world, and delight that people from the West were pouring into China in increasing numbers to enjoy it's historic treasures and culture. Everywhere we went people greeted us with smiles and waves, said "Hello" to us in English (possibly the only English word many of them knew, which made it all the sweeter) and invited us to share their lives.

On our first night in the country, in Shanghai, we were walking along the river and encountered a group of people ballroom dancing to Chinese popular music. We asked permission to join them for a waltz and a rumba, which we were quickly and smilingly given. When we were done and ready to move on, we were applauded and asked to please come back tomorrow to dance again. Our hearts melted.

In short, we ended up falling utterly in love with the people of China. My hope going forward, is that Mike and I can exhibit the same level of graciousness to foreign visitors we meet here in the USA.

Here are just a few photos from our trip:

A young Chinese Communist Party soldier on guard at Tiananmen Square in Beijing

A beautiful lion on guard outside of The Forbidden City in Beijing

The outer most courtyard of The Forbidden City

Beautiful building paintings were everywhere. The gold leafing in this one, from The Forbidden City, is most definitely real.

We were greeted with a light dusting of snow in Beijing, but it made our pedicab ride through the narrow alleys of Hutong all the more enchanting.

The Terra Cotta Warriers in Xian, now considered the 8th Wonder of the Ancient World

Street food in Xian - note the tofu skewers in the lower right. With so many to feed, and limited usable land, soy, and soy products, are a protein staple here.

Dates and other luscious dried fruits abounded in fertile China

Sesame flatbread displayed outside a shop in the Muslim corridor of Xian.

Beautiful display of rice variety found in China

The ship we sailed on for four days up the Yangtze River

How we felt the entire trip - happy and excited.

The beautiful Yu Gardens in Shanghai

Although China is definitely do-able as an on your own trip, I can't say enough good things about the tour company we went with, Gate 1 Travel. Their local guides were excellent, and we saw more in our brief 14 day visit then I suspect we ever could have if left to our own devices. Gate 1 Travel's mission statement is Seeing more of the world for less, and they most definitely delivered. Although we both returned home just a wee bit sick (a common occurrence when we travel so far and so hard) we've already booked our next trip with them and can't wait for it to get here . . . Thailand in February 2013.