And now for something completely different...

[ksmith]

...like a real post.



Hot day. Cool front supposed to move through, which should bring cooler temps tomorrow and possible rain tonight. I don't think we need any rain for a while yet, not that I have any say in the matter.

Did a great deal of yardwork Saturday. Didn't do much on Sunday except footle around the office, rake out King's kennel, admire the yardwork done the day before.

Hours later, I'm sitting in my living room, watching Buffy. The haunted house episode, with the eyeballs and the groans and screams and Anya in a rabbit suit and such. Just as Oz starts morphing and the green buzzy lights attack Willow and Xander vanishes, I hear a thump overhead, like something is on the roof. Nothing for a few minutes, then another thump. A little while later, another. By this time, Mickey Dog and I are both staring overhead, like in that scene in ALIENS when everyone figures out at once which way the aliens are approaching their hideout.

I go outside a couple of times and look around. Can't see anything. I know it's an animal of some sort. Images of zombies trying to drag Buffy down through the basement floor of the frat house are having no effect whatsoever on my mood.

After a few more minutes, the thumps stop. King barks and grumbles a bit. Then all is quiet. Buffy squishes the demon underfoot and saves the day.

Next morning as I gave King fresh water, I did an end-around through some trees in the front yard. In the course of cleaning His Royal Highness's kennel the previous day, I had raked out some spilled food and dumped it under one of the trees. Well, it was gone--the food, not the tree. Most likely thanks to the visitor from the night before. A raccoon, or a possum. Zombies don't eat dogfood.

Next week the company credit union is offering a seminar on retirement. I signed up. I would love to retire in four years, but 50 is at the lower limit of their official retirement scale and heaven only knows what sort of hit I would take on benefits and such...assuming they will still be offering pension and partial health coverage a few years from now. I fully expect to have to work somewhere. I would just like it to be somewhere else, even for a reduced salary, with the retirement fund covering the difference.

Bought the workbook that goes along with Don Maass's WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL. Some interesting exercises in deepening character and exposition. Building an antagonist. Don't know when I'll have time to work them, but I hope to get to them eventually. If anyone out there has gone through the workbook, I'd be interested in hearing your take.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

What's rain? What's cool weather?

(Bracing for the worst five months of summer yet ahead...)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Rain--it's like sweat that falls from the sky. Cool is that strange sensation you feel when the air temp is actually lower than your body temp.

Jiminy Christmas Pete, sartorias, where in blazes do you live?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

SoCal, armpit of the universe. (Drought being worse than ever, Arizona and its environs get about four times as much rain as we have over the past five years.)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I have heard that the drought is worse now than it was during the Dust Bowl years. It has to end eventually, doesn't it?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I sure hope so, but with all the dire discussion of global warming, etc, I dunno.

I want out of here, it's ridiculously expensive, you have to drive 100 miles to get out of the choking smog and endless suburbs, it's not safe, and I hate bracing for the next big quake.

But the spousal job is here, so we're stuck for now.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Eight days to Michigan.

Save some cool for me.

Lord, do I wish I could think about simple retirement.... I spend too much time thinking about SS Disability. I like the idea of making two different funds meet, though. Just don't try to tap the SS yet, I think we have to wait until 62 now?

[amyirene-40.livejournal.com]

62 is the age to get a reduced rate (roughly 70% of the full rate, with it going up a teeny bit each month until you hit the age where you can get the full rate). For kaygo, full social security doesn't kick in until age 66 and 8 months.

It is really depressing that I know all this stuff right off the top of my head.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

It is really depressing that I know all this stuff right off the top of my head.

Actually, some of us think it's pretty neat. So there.

Numbers....

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I've been told that if you run the numbers, it's better to start taking it the moment you're eligible--that you'll never catch up if you wait until you are eligible for the full amount. But I've never run the numbers myself.

Of course, this assumes that SS is still there by the time we need it.

Re: Numbers....

[amyirene-40.livejournal.com]

That's another "it depends" kind of thing. You can find good arguments for taking it as soon as you are eligible and good arguement for waiting.

The two big factors are:
1) How long do you expect to live? One of my retired professors (age 78) dropped by the office the other day with his wife - he was leaving for Rhode Island for the rest of the summer, and had some papers that needed to be signed. Why is he going to Rhode Island? To visit his mother and father.

There's a guy who has can reasonably expect to blow the life-expectancy actuarial tables out of the water. If you've got a genetic background like that and are basically healthy, wait on taking your Social Security.

2) Will you still be working? Prior to your full-benefit retirement age, your payments start getting reduced by one dollar for every two dollars you make once you reach a certain income level, and that income level is pretty low (I believe that this year it is around $11,600). Note that pension and annuity payments are *not* considered income when figuring this out.

Re: Numbers....

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

1) How long do you expect to live? One of my retired professors (age 78) dropped by the office the other day with his wife - he was leaving for Rhode Island for the rest of the summer, and had some papers that needed to be signed. Why is he going to Rhode Island? To visit his mother and father.

This is a variable question. I'm a person who has taken reasonable care of myself, and I come from a fairly long-lived group--Most family members make 75 without trouble, although my mother's mother died of a blood clot after surgery at the tender age of 65, so she is an unknown. But two counter weights--I'm left-handed, which can reduce life expectancy, and I currently have Lyme--no idea how much that has damaged me, it certainly has damaged my joints.

If the left-handedness has to do with carelessness (I avoid extreme sports) and the Lyme has already done its worse, I probably will make 88 at least.

I lean toward the "don't touch it until you must" theory myself. On the other hand, illness has damaged my earning power recently. So I may be working until I'm 70, anyway. (I hope to be publishing books until I'm whatever....)

[technomage.livejournal.com]

Your quandary is very similar to my own. People refer to "military retirement" as if anyone could survive on that amount. I guess if we moved to the middle of the Appalachians, went off grid and raised our own food maybe we could make it on the $1100 a month I'll get after taxes. Sure as heck can't do it in the real world. We need to bring home $2500 a month just to break even versus my military salary.

The good news is that I've found a job that will do this easily. The bad news is its a vocation - not an avocation. Maybe in about 10 years I can retire a second time, go back to school and follow my bliss.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

My bad news is that I know the job I love the most. The problem is, I can't make any money at it. Hence my references to books like WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL.

And here I am at this day job place. I tell people that it's like having settled for a marriage of convenience, then meeting the love of your life.

I phoned a retirement specialist referred to me by a co-worker. I'll be attending the next get-together they've scheduled for folks at my company. Prior to that, I'll be meeting with one of the retirement specialists--we'll go over a proposal based on the info I gave them over the phone. I'm kicking myself that I didn't think to do this 10 years ago, but at the time the 401(k) was pretty much taking care of itself and doing a dandy job.

I want to start some sort of supplemental savings/investment account. Put myself on a budget and stick to it. I know that they're most likely going to tell me that Out At 50 will be a hard row to hoe. I fully intend to keep working, but I wanted the flexibility to be able to take a lower paying job. *sigh* We'll see how it goes.

This grown-up stuff stinks. It's only my future, doncha know. Health insurance, roof over my head, stuff like that. Blech.

Rah for you--

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I think the supplemental savings is a great idea--I am so grateful I dumped money into an IRA while in my 20s. I foolishly stopped during that period it wasn't deductible--I didn't understand the numbers back then. Now, I try to make sure every teen of my acquaintance gets the speech--10 years of an IRA in your 20s will mean more money at retirement than starting at 35 or 40....

Most of my earnings will go into savings, after I take care of a few things I've put off, like doctor bills, etc. Getting a new job app ready myself.

I will add a caveat, though--I've got those breakout novel books, too. And I realized something important--if I can't figure out how to write what *I* want to write, using the formula, it would be a worse prison than my 8-5 job. Everything I came up with seemed too simplistic to me. If I have no drive to write the book after whipping off the synopsis, that doesn't bode well for a career writing the stuff--even if I did do the book and it sold well. I know someone who write a romance as a lark. It was so popular, the publisher pushed her into 3 or 4 more.

She hasn't written for a couple of years...burned out, didn't like the others.