"Put money in thy purse." (Iago in "Othello")

Sunday February 8, 2009
"Put money in thy purse." (Iago in "Othello")

In June, 1982, I was told by--I don't remember whom...several people--that I would need less money to live on when I retired than I would while working. Not only that, but the "Bored" of Education offered me $10,000 dollars to get rid of me and the high salary I was costing them so they could hire someone to replace me for about half the amount I was earning. Just as it happens in baseball these days. A team trades a player making $20,000,000,000 a year so they can replace him for someone they contract for $100,000 a year. I was gullible because I never heard of $10,000 before, let alone owning that much cash at one clip. I could use it to get rid of my debts, sell the house, get out of town, and live on my pension of $21,000 a year for the rest of my life. $10,000 was beyond my comprehension and wildest dreams. Consequently, I didn't hesitate, and informed the Bored that I would retire--and I, therefore, collected my ten grand, and while salivating I wondered if it would pay for me to go to Roosevelt Field and run it up at the trotting races? Well, I, wise beyond my years, decided against that because if I lost any of it, I would take hemlock without hesitation.

Anyway, to get on with this too long story, the person or persons who told me that I would have a ball in retirement living on practically nothing were out of their minds. They were blatant prevaricators, or else they were idiots. Not idiot savants--but just plain ordinary idiots. You really need at least twice as much retired as you do when you are working and bringing up the family. And why is this you might ask.
Well, first of all, when you leave town for Florida, let's say, you have to take out a 30 year mortgage to buy your condo which by this time costs you five times as much as it did to buy your big house on Dogwood Ave. in 1956. When the salesman told me how much the down payment was, I broke out in a hot sweat (remember, this was Florida), but succumbed to his sales pitch because the community had a clubhouse with all the amenities I could possibly enjoy--a weight room, a ballroom, a poolroom, tennis courts, a golf course, an indoor swimming pool, a 600 seat theatre, an outdoor pool near my building, a sauna, a jacuzzi, a hot tub, racquet ball courts, and etc. How could I resist such a mesmerizing opportunity? Instead of retirement, I thought I had somehow died and went to heaven. So, I bought the condo.

Since it was a very new community, (only four buildings existed,) very few people had moved in--but still the lure was the clubhouse. I went there almost every day to swim all alone 80 laps in the pool. I pumped iron, I played golf, I played racquet ball (alone), I shot pool. All this in my very own clubhouse! No one else appeared there until several months later.

Let me continue with this story about the falsification foisted on a foolish fellow. In retirement, you need more cash than you do while working because you go out to dinner at least three or four times a week. If you are married and the spouse is also retired, the oven becomes a place for potted plants. Then of course there are the vacations--to Europe, to Asia, to China, to Australia, to Hawaii and wherever there is money to be ripped from your wallet. Each December often is the time to go on Caribbean cruises to enrich Carnival, Holland American, Royal Caribbean, and various other cruise lines. Now, lately, there has been a plethora of casinos opening up in Condoland. Several are run by Seminoles and several by the state. Each, however, has the lure of gambling--poker, black jack, Texas Hold'em, and slot machines galore. Of course, you don't want to lose your pension on these things, so you opt for your social security check instead--which means that at the end of the month you eat in Wendy's.

The lesson to be learned from all of this if you are still in the work force is as Romeo pleads with the apothecary, "Hold, there is forty ducats, let me have a dram of poison."