Wondering Wanderings

Today I'm wondering why I never wrote that book, traveled to far away places, saw the movie because the title fascinated me and so on and so on . . .

As I round the bend to full retirement I begin to wonder what on earth do I do to finish my work here? Maybe I am finished already. I married twice had 7 children by four different men, adopted a daughter, endured all that was required of me as a parent and am now a grandparent and great-grandparent.

I found eternal happiness in my second marriage and look forward to spending my last years on earth with the love of my life, Tony. The focus of our lives has changed drastically in the past two years. Until then we were content taking care of children, grandchildren and friends and other family. Now we are foot-loose and fancy free. Well, almost. We have a huge mortgage on a monstrously huge home - debt that is crippling and the desire to continue to serve in our church here. Now we probably won't have anything to look forward to except selling our home for next to nothing, retaining only enough to pay it off and our bills and to rent an apartment to live in for the next twenty years. What a life!

We planned so carefully for our retirement, financially that is. We have enough to live on, but no nest egg to fall back on, no extra money to buy the 'rose covered cottage' in the dale. That was what the equity in our home was to provide. But now the economy has collapsed, and there are not enough years to recoup our losses.

I know this has happened to other people in the past - but it wasn't supposed to happen to us. In 1929 my paternal grandparents lost all their savings in a bank that collapsed in the 'crash'. Oh, well I remember them telling us to be so careful about our savings, not to trust the banks. So we decided to invest in property, you know, the land will always be there, etc. Beside that, the FDIC doesn't insure moneys more than $100,000, and now I heard on the news yesterday that many banks are about to default on their FDIC insurance for their investors.

Here's where I really whine! Tony and I have always been at the airport when our ship came in. We've missed out on three huge real estate investment deals in our lifetime, both of which would provide us with a very good living to the end of our days. We forwent the profit bearing deals because we wanted to keep our home(s) in order to keep our family safe. We should have sold our homes and moved on, our choice of family first always trumped doing that because we believed our homes would save us financially - they never did. In fact every time we've sold our homes we've lost money. Okay, whining done.

So now the next era of our lives is tainted with a home that won't save us financially - again. Partly I am publishing this because I'm hopping mad at being caught in this web of financially insecurity, the other reason is that hopefully you, the readers can learn something from this to use in your lives.

I want my children to know they were always worth more than anything else in the whole world to me, so I'm not really sorry for anything we did in trying to get ahead in this life for them and ourselves. Just never put all your eggs in one basket like we did.

Don't think we don't have enough money to live on in our retirement, we do. We will just not have our hearts' desires, i.e., travel and other perks.

Thank goodness we have each other. Ha! I think of a funny line we always use in regard to money --

We started out with nothing and still have most of it left!