Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Retirement
Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Retirement
Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth and others are not. Some people’s zero interest credit cards stayed at zero interest for years while other people’s converted into thirty percent interest after using the card two times. Some people’s kids paid them back for all the money they lent them to go to college and others didn’t. I am in the latter lot of unlucky retirees and therefore I must obey the eleventh commandment which is “Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Retirement.”
Still I cannot help but raise my fist to the sky and cry “Why!” Why didn’t the company I worked for provide me with a decent dental plan? Why do I have to pay full price for endodontics while my neighbor pays a small deductible on his shiny new veneers thanks to health coverage from his pension? Why did I work for the same salary for carrying burdens like a trained donkey year after year while he regularly got raises for just lifting his little pinky and spraining it? Why oh why am I sitting here griping in this cheap lawn chair with the broken plastic ropes while he lounges on a fabulous neo modernist Swedish wooden lawn chair from Urban Mode?
I try to remember those words of wisdom from the holy texts to try an allay the green eyed monster that lurks inside me every time I see them book a first class train ticket to see their family at Christmas while I huddle in misery on a cramped Greyhound bus. “It is easier to put a camel through the eye of a needle then it is to get a rich man into heaven.” I tell you one thing – it is a lot easier to get thread through a needle if you can afford to pay for the proper prescription for your glasses like he can.
I know that I will get my rewards in heaven but out of the corner of my eye I just can’t help but make a few comparisons between his life style and mine. They feast on shrimp in front of a cascading waterfall while I feast on cheezies in front of a falling waterfall screensaver. They contact their kids via web cam on a $400 TREO phone with a $200 a month plan while I chat on a wireless phone that is so big and awkward that it looks like it belongs on the set of the Space Family Robinson. They drive their big shiny black SUV to the Loblaw’s Superstore while I haul my plain wire shopping cart on wheels to the No Frills.
There are other humiliations too. For one thing their front yard looks a lot nicer than mine. They have stone lions guarding their front door – I have a plastic garden gnome. The path leading to their front door is made of washed river pebbles. Mine is made of cracked concrete. They open their garage door with a remote control device. I don’t have a garage. In fact I don’t even have a car! They own. I rent. You get the picture.
If I do get my rewards in heaven I wonder what they will be. Will one of the rewards be watching a video of my wealthy neighbor being electrocuted by his new X-Box 360? Will he acknowledge that he felt just a little bit bad that his ostentatious displays of wealth caused me such covetousness? If only God had the mercy to have this guy give me half of his money now. Now that would be the meek truly inheriting the earth as the good scriptures say.
The website for baby boomers who blew it – no pension, no bank account, limited assets and no rich relatives to inherit from… but expect it all in retirement, and are trying to figure out how to make a little bit of money to a VERY long way…