Too Old To Retire "Young"

[FIRE 2018]

Seems like we are all raised differently and how we view our loved ones. My mom is everything to me, she showed me caring and tough love. The last 6 months of my father's life was to truly a blessing to me in caring for him even when he was bedridden and on hospice care at home. I took pride and joy bathing and cleaning him even when he could not speak anymore. I FIREd because I could but also to be a caregiver is the toughest and proudest role I took on my own.

[EdithKeeler]

Seems like we are all raised differently and how we view our loved ones. My mom is everything to me, she showed me caring and tough love. The last 6 months of my father's life was to truly a blessing to me in caring for him even when he was bedridden and on hospice care at home. I took pride and joy bathing and cleaning him even when he could not speak anymore. I FIREd because I could but also to be a caregiver is the toughest and proudest role I took on my own.

It feels like there is a lot of judgment in this post. I’m going to assume it’s not intended.

Not everyone had a fabulous childhood and had a great relationship with their parents. I admit that the phrase “I was raised to...” pushes a lot of buttons for me personally, but I’m going to leave that implication alone.

It’s hard to gently bathe your sick parent when you have memories of them using that same body to beat you, molest you, or otherwise intimidate you. It’s really hard to “be there” for a parent when they couldn’t “be there” for you when you were a kid. It’s hard to take care of a parent when you are regularly told how selfish you are, even when you open your checkbook to them, while recalling how they planned for nothing in retirement.

All of those scenarios and more are things that some people are dealing with, and situations leave their marks in different ways.

I’m glad you were able to take care of your parents and felt good doing so. I love my mom dearly, too, and the positives outweigh the negatives in our relationship. I do a lot of stuff for her, and have done now for eight years and probably will for several more. I’m sorry for the loss of your parent—I lost my dad to cancer in 2006, and he went quickly. He’d also taken some steps to plan for his future.

All I’ll say is that my mom’s situation is different. I know 7W’s situation is different.

Please don’t say things like “I was raised differently...” and then talk about your own experience, thereby implying some moral superiority. I hope you didn’t mean it that way, and I’m going to assume you didn’t. Every person deals with circumstances, I believe, to the best of their ability, unless they’re killing their parent for the social security check or something. I’m glad your experience as a caregiver was positive.

[FIRE 2018]

@Edith

Thank you for your feedback however implying moral superiority is farther from the truth.
Raised differently - fact
My experience- fact and sharing story with others

[jennypenny]

My aunt—who’s 2 years older than my mom—just drove 600 miles down here. I can feel the judgment emanating from her in waves, that I’m not doing enough for my mom. ... I’m pretty sure my aunt thinks I need to quit my job and take care of my mom 24-7.

@EK -- I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but there is sometimes a double standard with people our age when it comes to caring for aging parents. If you were a guy with the same career, would your aunt expect you to quit your job to take care of your mom? I'm guessing no. Don't give in to the pressure to justify what you do/don't do for your mom. If someone is inclined to judge you, then no matter how much you do it would probably never be enough for them.

Congrats on the move and selling the old place.

[1taskaday]

"Like, yeah, early retirement that's a thing if you are a man without children living in another country from your FOO. Otherwise, you've just traded sipping coffee while staring at a pivot table for helping somebody put their socks back on after a colonoscopy"

7Wannabe5 in this sentence you've just nailed the reason there are more men on the journey to ER than women.

I see it all the time,whenever I bring up ER with middle age females they look kind of horrified at the prospect...becoming the unpaid full time carer/always available aide to their family and extended family needs...much better stick the full-time paid dull/stressful job.

I also see this happen to men with young kids that could retire early (with a full pension),they often stay on working or get another job straight away to avoid a caring role.

I certainly can't blame any of them.

If you have the "caring" personality type ...lucky you in this role as you will get buckets loads of energy and joy from doing it...otherwise it's a depressing energy drain.



Who could

[Bankai]

Helping family is a choice. So is having children. You make it sound like it's a destiny.

[1taskaday]

Of course it is a choice.

Stay working and avoid full-time "caring" for young or elderly.

Makes sense to me...

[1taskaday]

Yes I lie.

None of my extended family know I work a 2 day week.

Everyone has to do it the best way for themselves.

There are no judgments as Bankai stated only choices.

[FIRE 2018]

Choices on how to live is a personal one so no one has to respect or admire it. It's their lives and if they "f up" so be it. Life is too short, some of my peers and neighbors never got to enjoy retirement and ended up in an early grave due to different circumstances. One funny thing I heard from tourists from Europe vacationing in Florida " wow, there are so many "old" people still working in the USA" . "

[EdithKeeler]

Helping family is a choice. So is having children. You make it sound like it's a destiny.

Or, stop working and say "no". Or lie. Those are other possible choices.

I think that those decisions seem a lot easier until you are actually faced with them. I know that 20 years or so ago, I might have said the same thing. But now.... I struggle with it almost every day.

Part of it is the kind of personality I have, kind of a “take care of it, git ‘er done” kind of person. Problem solving is my job at work, and kind of my role in the family as well. So there’s this problem: my increasingly feeble and frankly pathetic mom. She came to my house last night and it takes 15 minutes to get her from the car into the house. She’s exhausted from the walk (with a walker— it takes three of us to get her over the 2-inch door threshold), and I’m pooped, too. We have dinner, and she’s sort of slumped a little sideways at the table, but she can still feed herself. She uses two hands to hold her cup, and it takes forever for her to finish. It’s hard to watch the fork shake as it comes up to her mouth at each bite, and I can’t help but think about the fact that before too long someone’s going to have to feed her. When she goes home it’s the same painstaking trek to the car, and she asks me to “get her legs” because she can’t use them well enough to get them in by herself. The thing is—the whole situation is an unfixible problem.

All of this makes me super sad, because i love my mom, and mentally she's still pretty ok—we still have some good conversations.

She doesn’t want someone—a stranger—to come in and take care of her. I feel like I should be taking care of her.....but I know what my life would look like.

People often compare dealing with an aging parent to having a child. To me, they are not the same at all. First of all, you’re probably a lot younger when you have a kid. You feel better physically and have more stamina. You get older, even if you’re still in great shape (I’m not), you’re not 20 anymore. With a kid, you’ve got a timetable. By three the kid can feed himself and is out of diapers. My mom is about 8 years into incontinence. They get older, they do more and more stuff on their own. Your aging, ill parent can do less and less stuff, and they’re frustrated because they remember being independent, being able to go out and do. You have a kid, they fall down, they get up on their own or you pick them up. My mom falls, we have to call the fire department. About 6 times so far this year. And of course, our society is set up to be all about kids. Employers seldom have issues with an employee leaving to go to daycare when there’s an issue. Employers are often less patient when it’s an elderly person.

Of course you have a choice not to be a caregiver. But I do think one way or another, most kids are involved with their parents’ caregiving, even if it’s finding and managing care, dealing with bureaucratic red tape, or managing the checkbook.

I always say that we have to look at ourselves in the mirror every morning when we brush our teeth. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I just said “no,” or refused to help. I still have a lot of guilt and second guessing, but mostly I’m okay with the compromise we’re at right now.

Honestly, I hope every one reading this never has to face the issue. I never imagined this would happen to my mom.

[7Wannabe5]

@EK:

Coffee would be great.

[Sclass]

My aunt—who’s 2 years older than my mom—just drove 600 miles down here. I can feel the judgment emanating from her in waves, that I’m not doing enough for my mom.

EK I feel your pain. It brings tears to my eyes. There was nothing like having a relative telling me I wasn’t doing enough. I had all kinds of people telling me what to do with just no understanding of the cost of the demands. And then there is the self doubt that we aren’t doing enough because there really is no limit to what can be done in terms of care.

I’ve been following your story awhile now and I can say you are doing a lot. You are an amazing child. Don’t let your aunt bring you down. It’s so easy for people on the sidelines to point out deficiencies and complain about your lack of effort. It really sucks. Ignore and power on.

Good luck with things.

[Jason]

Honestly, I hope every one reading this never has to face the issue. I never imagined this would happen to my mom.

What didn't you imagine? That a parent that you had ambiguous feelings about would get old and their health would fail? I mean that's par for the lifestyle course.

I understand that doesn't eliminate all types of powerful feelings. My internet guess is that you're own feelings of mortality are in there and possibly being misidentified. And although I'm not an Edith Keeler scholar, it's my understanding that you don't have a semi-pissed off daughter to whom you can pass the wiping of old ass torch. If I'm wrong, call me an armchair douche. Its already on my e-business card.

[EdithKeeler]

What didn't you imagine? That a parent that you had ambiguous feelings about would get old and their health would fail? I mean that's par for the lifestyle course.

Well, yeah, kinda.... Seriously, though, I watched my grandparents get old and then die. There wasn't a prolonged period of deterioration, really. They had some old age issues, but of a kind I'd seen with other people's grandparents. My paternal grandfather just woke up dead one morning in his 70's. My paternal grandmother had some kind of blood disease; she wasn't feeling well, left her own apartment and went into the hospital and died a couple days later. Pretty much the same with my maternal grandparents. Two days before he died, my grandfather walked up the street (couple doors down, actually) to get ice cream. My dad was diagnosed with cancer, played some golf, and 30 days later was dead.

I guess I'm naive or unimaginative, but no, didn't really expect the level of deterioration and failure that I've observed in my mom. She was a formidable woman--I've always been kind of scared of her--still am! and I think I imagined her marching around and scrubbing her house and cooking and gardening until she got sick and died after a short illness, or stroked out while she was yelling at me or something.

I just never imagined her having to have someone help feed her and get to the point where she really can't sit in a chair. I'm still in some ways getting used to the reality.

And although I'm not an Edith Keeler scholar, it's my understanding that you don't have a semi-pissed off daughter to whom you can pass the wiping of old ass torch. If I'm wrong, call me an armchair douche. Its already on my e-business card.

Well, yeah, you are a douche, but I like you anyway. But true--I don't have anyone to wipe my ass, and I'm OK with that, as my long term care planning includes probably hoarding my pain pills and then offing myself or something. I really have no problem with that when the time is right. My only fear is that I'll wait too long until I'm physically or mentally incapable of doing it.

[EdithKeeler]

So I'm tired of angsting about my mom, so I'm going back to ERE planning. It's occurred to me, with the sale of my little house, that I'm in the home stretch of getting to the point of calling it quits. I have to admit it was FUN plugging numbers from the sale into my spreadsheet. That house turned out to be an EXCELLENT investment. While I'm glad to be rid of it, I'm really glad I bought it and lived in it for 7 years. I bought it for 37K in 2008; I think I've written before about how it was a foreclosure I found on the HomePath website, had my mom check it out, and I paid cash, sight unseen. I lived in the house for 7 years, and it cost me $100 a month for insurance and about $200 a month for taxes... and that was it. Over the years I put a little money into it--I paid about $15K when I first bought it for paint, a little work in the bathroom, and to have the floors refinished, and some electrical redone, and a new AC condenser. Later I bought custom woven blinds, some nice light fixtures, redid the bathtub, and installed a new tankless hot water heater. Probably another $15k or so... plus appliances.

I ended up selling for about 3x the purchase price, so I lived almost free for 7 years and invested the savings, plus tripled my initial investment. Which I probably would have done had I invested the money in an index fund... but you can't live in an index fund.

I just went ahead and dumped a bunch of the money on my new house mortgage, and paid off a small debt from last year where I fixed up my rental house and hadn't quite paid for yet. For now I've parked the rest in a savings account until I decide what to do. I mentioned earlier that I'm thinking about selling my rental house. I haven't quite decided, but I do feel a little bit like the time is right. But I may wait a couple more years, too. Either way, when I sell my rental house I'll have enough to pay off the mortgage on my house.

And once that's paid, there's really no big need to keep working, except for health insurance and to continue to build up my pension.

For now, I'm going to just keep socking cash into my investments. But it's a weird (and by cool i mean EXCELLENT) feeling to look at my spreadsheet and know I could do in really, really soon, and it would be a pretty comfortable retirement, I think.

[FIRE 2018]

@Edith

Looks like you have a good plan. Good readings. Take care of yourself. I learned from many around me. Life is too short. Tomorrow is not guaranteed.

[EdithKeeler]

I was just sitting here having a lovely brunch on my patio. Brunch is an open face egg salad sandwich on whole wheat bread with a slice of tomato. I’d post a pic but it’s a hassle.

Anyway, I was just calculating the cost of my brunch. Eggs were 67 cents a dozen at Aldi yesterday (guess whose cholesterol is about to increase, haha!) and the bread was under $2 for a loaf. With mayo, a bit of diced onion and celery, and a “free” tomato from my yard, even with coffee my brunch is less than a buck. And: it’s delicious!

I bought an Egg McMuffin and a coffee yesterday to take to my mom (she’s in the rehab hospital—fell and broke her shoulder) and it came in at just under $7.

I wish my older self could go back in time and tell my younger self how quickly all my little Starbucks stops and grab and go bites could have added up. My older self would tell my younger self she could be at the beach right now!!

Eating out continues to be a struggle for me, but it is getting better. I’m waiting til the end of the year to dig into the numbers, but if I had to guess right now, except for meals and stuff I buy for my mom, I bet my food spending will be halved over last year’s.

[Jason]

I know how you feel. If only I could travel back to last Thursday.

[jennypenny]

I can't believe your mom is injured again. I'm sorry you have such a burden to bear.

[EdithKeeler]

I can't believe your mom is injured again. I'm sorry you have such a burden to bear.

Thanks. She’s going into a nursing home tomorrow. Hopefully it’s just temporary until her shoulder heals, and she’ll get additional PT while she’s there. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything works out. Frankly I’m not really sure what “works out” is in this context.

But thanks.