Retirement for Dummies

I recently turned 49, meaning that I’m edging ever closer to retirement and/or death, whichever comes first. At my age I should be deeply concerned about retirement, but I’m not. I hardly ever give it a thought. Except to think that I should be thinking about retirement. Yet still I don’t.

It’s not that I have a big nest egg put away; I don’t. If the state of Texas didn’t suck money out of my paycheck each month for its mandatory pension fund, I’d have nothing. That’s reason enough for me to worry. Yet still I don’t. There are several reasons for this.

For one thing, I’ll be surprised if I live to see retirement. Sure, I’m in pretty good health, despite a diet that consists largely of bacon, cheese and beer. (But really, if it’s good for your muscles to get exercise, isn’t it good for your blood cells to have to squeeze their way through clogged arteries? I think of it as a corpuscular workout.) I never thought I’d live to be 40, much less 49. When I was a teenager, I thought I’d become a rock star or poet and die tragically young like Jim Morrison or Dylan Thomas. Obviously I did neither. But I still have trouble picturing myself as an old person.

Then there’s the matter of money management. B-o-o-o-o-r-ing! If I were Suze Orman, I’d kill myself. I can’t think of anything duller than being a money manager or financial adviser, unless it’s being a money manager’s or financial adviser’s janitor. Such concepts as “assets,” “investments,” and “planning for the future” have always made me recoil in horror. Maybe that’s a result of my Baptist upbringing. My parents were raised poor, and pretty much stayed that way. My mother in particular resented the rich and powerful. Her most beloved Bible quotes were “The meek shall inherit the earth,” and “…It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” She also loved the Blue Light Specials at K-Mart.

As a child I was fascinated by a painting in my mother's giant King James Bible of Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple. That image burned itself deeply into my subconscious. I wanted to grow up, become a prophet and kick some moneychanger ass myself. I’ve always had an aversion to business and commerce, and a love for the arts and humanities.

Thus, I’ve never been good with money—except for spending it—and I don’t like thinking about it. I’ve been through many financially tough times in my life, and resented having to worry about the absence of cash. I used to dream that America would become some Utopia that would value its artists and thinkers and would provide a small stipend so that we all could scrape by and do our own thing. God, was I stupid! Plus I was smoking a lot of pot back then.

As a young adult I considered myself to be a Buddhist, and spent much of my free time meditating, reading, trying to find the meaning of life and live in the eternal moment. Such a lifestyle didn’t lend itself to developing a 30-year plan to attain personal wealth, which many of my 20-something peers were already doing. I just wanted to become one with the Universe and be an enlightened (and probably obnoxious) sage. Stick that in your IRA!

Now here I am, an average working stiff and presidential candidate, doing okay financially but with no nest egg for the future. If I were one of the Three Little Pigs, I’d be the porker living in the straw house. I live pretty much from paycheck to paycheck, and only recently started tucking away what little money is left over each month into savings. At my current rate of saving, I calculate that I’ll have to work until I’m 138. That means I really need to tighten my belt financially—and it’s not a very loose belt—and start saving and investing heavily now. If I don't, I may have to join the legion of homeless mumblers on the street and panhandle my way through my twilight years, but Austin is really too hot in the summertime for that.

I’m trying to worry about this. Yet still I don’t. Maybe I really am a Buddhist. I’m not very good at living fully in the moment, but I’d prefer that to fretting about what my life might be like after age 65. Maybe I’m just a committed slacker. After all, a slacker is just a Buddhist with fewer goals.

I never did get the enlightenment thing down. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go meditate on a 401k plan.

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