Housekeeping AGAIN (sigh): People (not me anymore) are still facing the white screen of death when trying to comment, unfortunately. I will try to figure this out this weekend though I don’t know where to begin. Please bear with me – I love your comments! I’m not even getting spam anymore. Who knew I would ever miss spam?!?!?!?

I have decided to live until at least 90, then re-evaluate my situation every 10 years after that. Of course, this flies in the face of my shitty family genetics, which includes lots of cancer and heart disease. No matter.

So that means I will be retired for a long, long time.

A lot can happen during that amount of time – a lot that I won’t be able to plan for. Think about how much the world has changed in the past 35 years. Try to imagine how much it will change during the next 35 years.

I think it is of the utmost importance to remain flexible at all times, and I ain’t talking about yoga. It’s all well and good to have a plan for retirement but shit will does happen. So contingencies and adaptability are musts.

I usually like to have Plans B, C and maybe even D as backups when enacting a major Plan A scenario. I imagine the worst that could happen if Plan A didn’t work out…can I live with having to enact Plan B instead?

Let’s say for some reason I had lost all of my retirement savings and had to rely only on the Canada Pension. My Plan B would be to liquidate my assets (my home being the major one) to free up some spare cash, find a cheap apartment (or room) to rent and maybe even pick up some work if I wanted some mad money (or the Canada Pension went belly up). I’d scale back my lifestyle as much as I had to…it isn’t grand to begin with, but I could always go back to the way I lived when I was poorer. I know I would survive, and still find life cool and interesting. Because I have done this throughout my life.

I can’t predict the future (damn damn damn) but I predict I can get through life. I’ve managed so far despite abusive relationships, little money, and shouldering most, if not all, of the load. See this post.

I know I have that resilience and flexibility, that adaptability that is needed to weather life’s storms now, at my current age.

I hope I can retain this going forward. Attitude is everything…nay…it’s the ONLY thing that we have total control over.

Rock on,

The WB