Category: Retirement Countdown

I paused yesterday morning as I was heading out the door on my way to work. It seemed like I was forgetting something. "We must be getting closer," I said to Gerry. "I don't think I have any tasks to give you for today!" We are, indeed, getting closer to retiring, relocating, and repatriating to

Writing this post feels a bit like playing a part in that movie Groundhog Day--you know, the one where the characters in the movie experience the same day over and over again. Two months ago my post had this same title and displayed the same image of my retirement countdown chain with three links left. Our

Last weekend was a big deal. It was the culmination of eighteen months plus worth of work by an amazing cross-functional team of people who worked around the clock to upgrade the payroll/HR/benefits system at the company where I work. In the almost twenty-five years I've worked for this corporation I've been involved in my

I've been thinking a lot about Tarzan. The image of him swinging from tree top to tree top, the sensation of motion, the coordination and careful execution it of letting go of the vine behind just in time to grasp the one in front, the exhilaration of making a successful transfer, of being propelled forward, already reaching for the

"I'm sending you a house." And with a few touches on the screen of my iPad I send another real estate listing to Gerry's email. It's Saturday morning and we're lazing in bed later than usual with a second cup of coffee and our iPads reading the news and catching up on favorite blogs. In recent

Six months left and the news story I'm seeing everywhere these days says that retiring later may prevent dementia. A couple of years ago I read an actuarial study done by Boeing that showed a correlation between retiring early and life expectancy that went so far as to say that every year  you work past age

Maybe I'm slower on the uptake than I should be, but it just recently occurred to me must how much change there is ahead for Gerry and me. Perhaps the biggest change comes from the fact that not only are we retiring, we are repatriating to Canada which, by definition, means we will be moving

I have a rock paperweight in my office with the words "Success is a journey not a destination" printed on it. It's a good reminder for someone who has always been a "keep your eye on the prize" kind of girl. That characteristic served me well at various times of change throughout my life, but

For the past few years Gerry and I have been talking about taking up photography together as a retirement hobby. He has a background in the craft that goes back to his original 35mm camera, actual film, and developing his own photos. Me, I cut my early photography teeth on my mom's Kodak Instamatic. Recently,

I've been dealing with back pain for the past few weeks and some nights it keeps me from sleeping well. Now I'm no stranger to physical pain; I've dealt with chronic pain for a good part of my adult life so I know what it's like to get up in the morning feeling like a