Considering Retirement

[talon]

Because I lost 2 previous, perfectly good, retirements due to business bankruptcies, I had to start over rather late in life. I restarted my retirement funds from scratch when I was in my 50's - way too late to have a pleasant or comfortable retirement, I thought.

HR just ran the numbers for me, though, and I could - theoretically - retire next year and have my bare minimum absolute basic bills paid from my retirement fund. If I wait 8 years instead, I can double that, and if I wait 5 years beyond that I can double the 8 year retirement, and if I wait a mere 3 years beyond that (16 more years total), I can double that and I'd be retiring on an income that will be twice my projected paycheck if I were to keep working.

I'd be 80 years old by then. If I live as long as my family genetics and my general health predicts I will, I should have at least another 30 years of life as a retiree.

That's plenty of time to have a 4th career as a full time fiction author, especially if I spend the next 16 years honing my craft.

You'd think, having once been a professional writer with several books under my belt and a host of articles, I wouldn't have to hone any skills, but you'd be wrong.

See, I used to be (and often still am) a non-fiction writer. I wrote (and sometimes still write) employee handbooks and job training manuals. That kind of writing skill is Very Different from fiction writing because I am writing to be clear, brief, propagandistic, and to pass any intense legal scrutiny. Plus, it has to be written to a third grade reading comprehension level. Company lawyers and CEOs have the final say in what I write and in the end, it's not terribly creative. It's a mere step above "See Dick Run" and not near as fun. The only real, transferable skill from that sort of non-fiction writing to fiction writing is the ability to divorce myself from what I wrote so criticisms can be approached with a nod and a request for clarification and not have a dramatic meltdown over changing a word or two, let alone rewriting the whole thing from scratch.

I think that skill will be Very Useful as I transition from non-fiction to fiction.

I started out writing fiction when I was in grade school, and even managed to win writing contests and awards based on my writing. I managed (back in the late 60's and early 70's) to get a few pieces published, and then life hit and I had to back burner writing for work that paid well.

I didn't stop writing, mind you, I just stopped editing and re-writing. Consider it, if you will, as a 40 year hiatus as a NaNoWriMo writer - write fast, ignore typos, ignore sentence fragments, ignore inconsistencies and plot holes and never, ever look back at what you wrote before because you're doomed if you do! Turn off your inner editor and allow the plot bunnies to breed wildly and randomly.

But -

I could retire next year, if I didn't mind living on half what I get now. I'd have to give up things like all my charity work, I'd have to stop rescuing puppies, I'd have to go full time into gardening because I'd have to grow at least 3/5 of my food (I wouldn't be able to afford to buy it, but gardening isn't as time consuming as a lot of people think - an hour or two a day for a really huge Victory Garden type garden), and I'd have to give up the car because I couldn't afford maintenance, gasoline, or insurance on it. I'd probably have to sell my house and move somewhere cheaper (I could do that if I didn't have to worry about getting to and from work...).

It's possible.

But I'd rather not. If I can work another 8 years, I can retire comfortably, and if I can work another 16 years, I can retire really, really well.

Still, I'm glad to know that if I had to, I could retire next year on July 4th.