Retirement and a strategy for life

Thank you for sharing this video Jim. I am wishing the same thing, that I should have seen this when I was younger. Then I could strategize better on what I want to be when I reach those target numbers.

All the strategies are nice and good, but then there's an oft-happened occurence in reality called Man Plans and God Laughs. 

Been there, done that, and came out, thankfully, alive, although not without scars.   At my age and after trying to make things happened (sometimes successfully, other times not so much), I've finally learned a big lesson: Providence, or Fate, have more power than all the spreadsheets and 10 or 20-year plans combined.

Ciambella wrote:

Providence, or Fate, have more power than all the spreadsheets and 10 or 20-year plans combined.

Some years ago I decided to emigrate to ASEAN.

I would have had a job in Singapore, but could not sell my condo in my country
(due to the lower income in Singapore my bank would have cancelled the mortgage).

If I could have sold the condo, I would have lived and worked happily in Singapore for several years.

But I would not have met my present wife.

Fate alone has guided it that way.

Andy Passenger wrote:

If I could have sold the condo, I would have lived and worked happily in Singapore for several years.

But I would not have met my present wife.

Fate alone has guided it that way.

We planned to retire at 55 and moved to New Hampshire (a state in New England region, North of Boston, South of Vermont).  Bought a house there already with very small mortgage, a river at the front door, hiking trail and ski trail by the back door (husband was/is a swimmer, body surfer, mountain biker, and skier).  Planned to continue with our annual international trip.

Strategies?  We had plenty.  Plan?  Our future was more stable than 60% or 70% of US population.

Then something happened and I had a choice, either to quit my job or go out of my mind, literally.  Husband talked me into doing the former.  Overnight, we lost 50% of our income.  We were okayed financially, but not to retire at 55, not even at 60.  And not to travel as often as we did.

I fell into depression for almost a year, not because of the money, but because of the loss of self-confidence and self-esteem. 

Then husband talked to me at length about my lifelong dream.  We took a leap of faith.  At 47 and 50 respectively, without planning, without any strategy, we sold everything we owned, I forfeited my future pension, moved to Italy alone, bought a 12th century house in cash.  Husband stayed behind for 3.5 more years at his job to support me, while, 10,000 miles /16,000 km away, I threw myself into fixing the house and established a new life for us.  He took a pension reduction and retired at 54, joined me in our new life, new home, new adopted country. 

No plan, no strategy.

The end of my job and our comfortable old lifestyle became the beginning of the second half of our lives, which ought to be uncertain.  Instead, I learned that we didn't need $7500/m and investment portfolio, we just had to prioritise correctly.  And we did, on a very small fraction of our old income. 

The result:  We visited 19 countries in 7 years.  We immersed ourselves in the community and Italian culture.  We had ultimate peace of mind.  Our quality of life was beyond our imagination, and we achieved that on a very small pension and with neither plan nor strategy.

We're still very content in our lives, 18 years after I left the workforce, shredded the spreadsheets, and torn up all future plans.

I am very happy that fate worked well for you two. I had three jobs that placed me exactly at the right place at the right time also. I think Red Pill was saying to not go out and do something stupid. There have been so many things that happened to me that absolutely couldn't have been planned or foreseen. He obviously oversimplified but his point is valid.
Now, that being said, I really wish I had retired 20 years ago. I think retirement planners actually force people into a working retirement.

Ciambella and Andy Passenger thank you very much for sharing your stories. How wonderful.
Strategies are good at war and in business. One thing that is common to both of them is love has no space either in business or at war. It is all about winning and harvesting profits. What comes after you become a rich winner? Any man can find a woman and any woman can find a man and live a successful strategic life.
But can that kind of strategic husband feel the same level of love that Ciambellas husband felt after all the things he did for her and when he was on the way to Italy after his mission that he accomplished mostly for her? Did he ever planed or dreamed to feel that feeling? How much can that kind of feeling worth inside a strategic mind?

My choice of a wife was one of those "stupid" things I mentioned. she came to the marriage with a bad credit rating and a lot of debt. The writing was on the wall. I designed and built a single-board computer system that was wildly successful. I made over a million dollars over the next five years, and she spent almost every cent. All I had left was the pension plan which she couldn't touch. We divorced and split the plan. Then she spent a half-million dollars and went $100K in debt all by herself.
So I did have a plan B and it worked. But I worked my ever-lovin' tail off to make it go.

Ciambella wrote:

All the strategies are nice and good, but then there's an oft-happened occurrence in reality called Man Plans and God Laughs.

Yes indeed. Here below is a report from an old blog-post of mine of an interview I once watched on the BBC. The theme of the program is exactly what Ciambella is talking about. Plans don't always work!

I recall reading a comment made by some English woman in a newspaper interview, about how she and her husband had been forced to pull in their horns financially, after they both stopped working. “He always dreamt of spending his old age on a seventy-foot yacht with a seventeen-year-old companion,” she said. “Instead, the poor old chap has had to settle for a seventeen-foot boat with a seventy-year-old companion. Hah!”

It makes all the sense in the world to trust to luck every so often. My son and I pretend to believe in Loki the old Norse god of luck and caprice. Caprice is a natural and necessary companion to luck. Luck can be nudged in the right direction, but you have to meet him (Loki, this is) half-way. As the old joke has it: you might win the lottery, but first you have to buy a ticket. No investment, no profit, right? It's how I've managed my life, during the fifty-six years since I left home at the age of 23. Here's the full (600 words) blog-post referred to above.
https://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2014 … yacht.html

Now I have a  better idea of the origin of Ciambella's handle.

Jim-Minh wrote:

Now I have a  better idea of the origin of Ciambella's handle.

Just recently (perhaps two months ago), I explained to Bazza its meaning and the reason I adopted it.  Don't remember the name of the thread though.

I read about your Italian connection and recognized the Latin root(s) of your handle and it clicked....