As for me, when I retire I’m going to buy a condo in a cheesy retirement development in Florida. Someplace with a name like Chupa la Fresa. I’m going to putter around in my electric golf cart wearing lime-green polyester pants, white loafers and a Hawaiian shirt. I’m going to play tennis and shuffleboard and pinochle. I’m going to hang out in the pool. I’m going to go to Walt Disney World whenever the mood stikes me. From time to time I’ll go deep-sea fishing, and then I’ll grill freshly-caught tuna steaks on my charcoal grill.
From time to time I’ll travel places. Las Vegas or Tunica for gambling and shows. Missouri for canoeing/kayaking. North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Arizona for rafting. Maybe Europe, Australia or Asia from time to time. A Caribbean cruise every now and then.
If I find the Florida summers too hot and if my investments pan out the way I’d like them to, then I might buy a condo on the Lake of the Ozarks and summer there.
I will not play golf.
I will not mow my yard (I’ll pay someone else to do it).
I will not be grumpy.
I will not sit around and get fat.
I will not have a yippy little dog.
I will not set foot anywhere north of, oh, say, Chattanooga, TN, between November 1st and April 30th.
And I will never rake leaves or scrape ice off my windshield.
<Firesign>I’m going to sit in a tree and learn to play the flute. </Firesign>
We’re going to move back East from California, and finance some of our retirement on our absurd house price. We’re going to travel. We’re going to enjoy the snow, and not having to go to work in it. I’m going to write. I’m going to catch up on the 2,000 sf books waiting to be read. I’ll probably stay active in some technical activities.
I’m not going to watch TV, or sit around waiting for my joints to freeze up.
I’ve always imagined myself becoming the grumpy old fisherman living by a lake a’la Henry Fonda in “On Golden Pond”. Even down to the Ahab-like obsession with a large trout.
After The Great Tech Stock Crash, I don’t think I can afford to retire. Ever. :smack:
When they finally take away my keys and kick me out of my classroom, I’ll probably just wander the streets, lecturing on “17th Century Art” or “The Role of the Printing Press in the Protestant Reformation” to random passers-by until my wife comes along and takes me home.
Then I will take to the computer-ways and be a pain-in-the-ass to everybody younger than myself.
Oh, responding to the OP,
When I’m tired of maintaining my house, I’m going to move downtown in San Jose or San Francisco, within easy distance of coffee shops, used book stores, theatres, all the resources of civilization. I’ll read. I’ll hang out with my cronies, read the paper, and criticize the government.
I’ll visit back and forth with relatives, and select the occasional strategic opportunity to influence the lives of the third generation. I’ll travel to places I haven’t been, and I’ll go back to old scenes from before, like the Mother Lode, and bring back memories.
I’ll write and vote, and I’ll study what I want. I’ll take on projects, from physical to political. I’ll walk and dance and hang out at the Y. I’ll love and flirt and laugh. And I’m gonna be in total denial of any physical problems, because falling over is better than not standing up in the first place.
I’m going to sleep my ASS off. I will NOT be one of those up-at-4 a.m. geezers. I’m sleepin’ til noon. Also watch all the movies and read all the books that I was too busy all those years working and parenting to watch and read.
I will drink wine every day with lunch and gab on the phone with my cronies.
Also really looking forward to yelling “You kids get outta my yard!”
Since I’m in my late 20s and SS is scheduled to go bankrupt in 20 years once all the boomers are of retirement age, the tax will rate go up to 60% in a deperate attempt to keep it solvent to support them all. Then it will inevitiably tank long before I’m of “retirement age.” I’m going to be working until the day I die. I’ll probably drop dead right in the middle of a meeting.
All I ever do in my spare time anyway is play video games and play softball. I see no reason to change that, except maybe I will play more video games and softball with my kids or grandkids.
If my finances will allow, I will move to a small place in western Europe somewhere (if there’s any beautiful countryside left in the world). I would hope to share it with someone but if I’m still by myself, plans won’t change.
I plan to expand on my current reputation. I’ll stay in my comfy Victorain house–the one with the bat hung in stairway window and the stuffed raven insouciantly perched atop a dubious plaster bust of Athena over a door in the library. (Beautifully crafted, hardwood shelves, silvery heirloom wallpaper and the heads of wannabe yuppies lovingly mounted on the walls They just get dusted last.)
Having been ground down by slow, excruciating degrees in public service, I plan on becoming an unapologetic Pest. I’ll wear tatty minkthings, the horrible moth-eaten kinds with ones flattend and attached end-to-end, get soused on cheap sherry and religiously attend all public meetings, rants prepared, the more irrational the better. My current inspiration is the wall-eyed, frothing screed about the city’s irresponsiblity for not using federal block grant funds to build aluminum houses.
I spent six years at home recovering form an tutomobile accident from age 32 to age 38. Personally I would rather die on the job or at least doing something.
