Retirement Planning – Don’t Sell Yourself Short

Retirement Planning – Don’t Sell Yourself Short

Once upon a time I was 48 years old. I had a one-man business and barely made enough money to support my family. Often I gave thought to retirement but shuddered at the small amount I would receive from Social Security and my small VA Pension. Finally it got through to me that it was imperative I find some way to drastically improve my monthly pension income.

You can’t know how close 48 is to 65 until you are there and I didn’t have 20 or 25 years to develop a pension fund with an employer. I did hear that government jobs included pension qualifying after 10 years service. So I started looking at city, county state and federal levels.

To make a long story short, I was soon working for Dade County Florida and was delighted to learn that I would be given credited toward my pension for my 5 yrs service during the war (2nd World War, that is).

After 13 years plus the 5 years Army credit I retired to Costa Rica at the age of 61 and with a pension sufficient to allow me to live comfortably. I now have been living in Costa Rica the past 28 years and they have been the happiest years of my life.

If your income isn’t sufficient to afford you the life you wish, you might give a thought to living in a 3rd world country that has a program inviting retirees and granting many benefits. Costa Rica was just such a country at the time I retired. That pensionado program has been closed for many years but there are other countries making similar offers.

A lot of people consider retiring a necessary evil. You can be expected to spend at least a quarter of your life as a retiree, yet few people plan these years. They just stop working one day and start spending their time watching TV or down at the local bar to meet a friend. If they are married, they drive their spouse crazy. And they are quickly bored to death – not a life to look forward to.