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‘may I ask, are you and your wife keeping busy in your retirement years? Cheers.’

The first year I retired, our CPA warned me not to consider working as a large part of my retirement package was front end loaded as well as a good monthly stipend due to taxes.

After a few weeks,my wife said that I needed something to do. :)

So, I did a lot of local fly fishing and then in Oregon/Washington.

Also, I traveled to see family and friends. 2 adult sons were working in Portland or nearby. I did some joint outdoor vacations with them. My fly rods and gear went on these trips.

A good friend had relocated to Floriduh, and I went there to fish with him several times.

We went back to visit our Mothers, and they came out here.

My wife and I had a timeshare to swap and get good deals in Mexico, and we took a couple cruises to Mexico. We did a combo trip to England for some sightseeing, ancestral hunting, and some incredible fly fishing,for me. We don’t do the Mexico thing anymore. That stopped about 10+ years ago.

One son got married and a year later, our first grandchild was born, and we became semi parents on Wed., so Mom could get a break. That lasted with her and her later brother until they went to private high schools.

I did a lot of one man and committee work with our church re committees with a specific time span re job finish.

Then, I ran focus groups and got paid well. It evolved into lot of travel.

That was getting old, again our acct. told me to stop and focus on managing our IRA’s. Half of my pay went to pay taxes, state/federal, SS, Medicare/?. That was in May 2001.

At first my wife said no. Our CPA told her to buy a new Homer’s bucket and fill it with 10 and 20 dollar bills every week.

Then, when I came home for the weekend, my wife could get in the back of my Ridgeline and throw the money at the homeless as we drove by.

She continued to work until she was 70 something. She negotiated increased 401K donations by her bosses and maximized her payments into their 401k, and we set up her own SEP/Ira.

Now that she is retired, we can go to the Coast anytime for a day or midweek.

Our church, grand kids, sons and our families here and away are our main focus with some long term church friends are stymied with this shelter in place stuff.

My wife is known as the texting grannie, sister, cousin, aunt and friend, and she keeps in touch with a lot of folks. They also, wear out their ears on the phone.

I have a few surviving family members, whom I text or email regularly.

I have out lived most of my longtime friends, and those still on the top side of the grass,don’t text/email. So we chat on the phone about once every 2-3 months.

My wife is a rabid book reader. She gets and reads 5-7 books a week. I use kindle and sometimes keep 3 books going at the same time. About once a month, she suggests one of her library books. I like about half of them. She just handed me a new John Sanford book, “Holy Ghost”. I will start that today or tomorrow.

So, we keep busy with each other and out of each other’s way.

No daytime tv, and we cut the cable 3 years ago. We watch zero news and only a handful of CBS shows and a ton of old and new Brit shows. Our tv’s die of old age not over use.

We joke about how did we do a lot of this and working hard, decades ago.