Liz Smith maintains that the only way to get old or sick or to retire is to have money. “I don’t think anybody can retire without money anymore, and it’s going to be proven now, in spades, with all of these people retiring,” says the legendary New York Post entertainment columnist in a group interview on wowowow.
The discussion itself is a trip, with Smith and fellow A-list (and aging) media mavens Jane Wagner, Judith Martin and Mary Wells discussing the possibilities of going to Germany for stem cell treatments, taking 200 “life-extension” vitamins a day and outliving their retirement incomes. I’d like to believe it was all tongue-in-cheek, but considering these women’s portfolios, I’m not convinced. They make bigger salaries, and likely pay less taxes, than anyone in my social set. (This type of post may be why I took wowowow off my blogroll. I just couldn’t relate.)
I have a friend who, every morning, rain or shine, checks her retirement stock portfolio. She is a nervous wreck. (Are we surprised?) I have other friends who have moved their long-planned-for retirement dates back by several years, and are still anxious. Me? I’m in one of those retirement salary lanes that will top out well before I reach 65, so I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Yet. But I will do something. I recently heard a great quote attributed to Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons, who said that, early in his pop stardom, he realized that he could only live in one room at a time and wear one pair of shoes at a time. It prepared him for the inevitable ups and downs of his career.
That outlook resonates with me.
Sometime around my late 30s, cranky and depressed about the growing income gap between me and some of my family members and neighbors (and my children’s friends’ parents, which is its own kind of problem), I decided to redefine rich, and I was surprised at what I came up with: Being rich is drinking fresh orange juice, having fresh flowers around the house, traveling and being able to eat out a few times a week. Oh, and the occasional pair of Italian-made shoes.
Most importantly, I decided, being rich is not about what you have, it’s about what you do. And do we did. We have a relatively modest house, a couple of used cars, 20-year-old furniture and a MOUNTAIN of ticket stubs: plane tickets, theatre tickets, movie tickets, professional sports tickets (for the boys), boat tickets, Disneyland tickets, valet parking tickets, etc. My kids didn’t get Mar-A-Lago, but they still talk about some happy summer vacations in a rundown beachfront house in Orange County.
While I cannot begin to predict what the future is going to throw at us, I know I can be happy with less. (So does Allison at Ask Allison. Heck, she’s even proved it.) Our one-level house will do for now, but we may have to relocate to smaller digs eventually. I’ll probably have to adjust my definition of “do,” which may not include triathlons, sky-diving and wind-surfing for much longer. Photography sounds good, as do yoga, writing, blogging and art history. For starters.
Will we Baby Boomers have to downsize? Short of an economic revolution in our favor, almost certainly. Do we have to be afraid of it? I hope not. It will all depend on the size of our retirement portfolios — and our souls.