Spring Awakening Moon
When we drove over to our financial consultant this morning, I looked up and saw a crescent Awakening moon tucked in behind three wispy rows of cirrus clouds. The moon, faint and slightly out of place, added a moment of mystery.
It was an omen. Ever had a really pleasant surprise? I had one, Kate and I had one this morning. We sat down with Ruth, our consultant, and began going over this and that as we always do. She got caught up on matters personal and physical like Kate’s back surgery and asked questions about Kate’s impending retirement at the first of next year. That was why we were there, to make sure about our resources after Kate leaves full time medicine.
We tossed ideas around and looked at a 2011 budget Kate and I did last week. It was, in my view, tight but manageable. Ruth made a comment about the amount of money we had coming in from social security and pensions and then how much more we needed from money in Kate’s retirement account. Wait? What was that?
We add the money from the retirement account to the social security and the pension? My mind went blank for a minute as parts of me processed what this meant. It meant I’d viewed our post-retirement budget from a very restricted perspective. I had, for reasons I no longer understand, folded the our social security and pension payments into the total from the retirement account rather than adding them all together. This means our available cash after Kate retires just went up by about 50%! 50% is a big number. That means our budget goes from being adequate to pretty damned good.
A pleasant surprise, indeed.
Afterward, we ate lunch at Spoonriver, Brenda Langston’s place by the Guthrie. I saw Brenda there and complimented her on her class and the restaurant. It was a great, healthy and damned expensive lunch. But, what the hell? We can afford it.