Person on the Page

Ted and Joan sit on their immaculately maintained backyard deck, wearing their designer shades and sun hats and sipping iced tea from tall frosted glasses. Lounging on the kind of posh outdoor furniture featured in home and garden magazines, they watch as a team of landscapers re-mulches their flowerbeds, prunes their trees, manicures their lush hunter-green grass, and edges their lawn to perfection.

Meanwhile next door in my own backyard, I’m on my hands and knees pulling up the many prickly weeds that pop up seemingly overnight in the flowerbeds I dug and planted myself. 

In their mid-70s, Ted and Joan have been retired for a while. They moved to our town to be near their grandchildren and built their retirement home to their exacting specifications. Their house is the showplace of the neighborhood. 

Peeking over the fence that separates our properties, I admire their stunning backyard.  Green, green, green.

Perhaps it’s their underground sprinkler system that gives their grass the edge over mine, which is a decidedly yellower shade of green than theirs. Or perhaps it’s the lawn care company that mows and sprays for them regularly, while I trudge back and forth with my electric mower, doing my best to keep my yard looking respectable.

Ted and Joan both had long careers, and I’d guess they managed their finances wisely.  As Joan confided to me one day over the fence while I admired her rose bushes, “We have more money than we know what to do with.”

Meanwhile, like many others my age, I navigate retirement on a shoestring. A late start at a career, a divorce, and a few of life’s unexpected events have placed me considerably lower on the income scale than my next-door neighbors.  We are here together on the same street, but financially we seem to be worlds apart.

What’s that I hear? As I’m pruning my unruly hydrangeas, Ted is on his deck with his cell phone talking to a realtor about closing on a second home—in Florida. I imagine myself shoveling my way through the snows of Michigan while Ted and Joan winter in Boca Raton, lazing through sultry days like beach bums.

At times like this, that jolly green giant called Envy bends over, stoops down low, and mutters in my ear.

And at times like this, I have to stop and remind myself of a few things.

At least for the foreseeable future, I will be able to pay my bills. My pantry will be stocked; I will not be hungry. I will have all the necessities. I will be able to enjoy my backyard, however weedy and unmanicured it may be. And I can sit in the evenings and watch the same glorious sunsets from my deck that Ted and Joan watch from theirs.

Not all retirees can afford to do these things.  I am fortunate that I can. And I am grateful.

I’ve always been a do-it-yourselfer, and as I survey my current income and estimate how long I will have to make my modest savings last, I realize that I probably always will be. I come from financially modest beginnings, so I am adept at pinching pennies. It looks like I’ll be pinching them for the rest of my life. And that’s all right.

My retirement will be a no-frills adventure, but it will be an adventure all the same.

Meanwhile, Ted calls to me across the fence to tell me that he and Joan will be away for the next few weeks on a Caribbean cruise. Would I keep an eye on their house for them? 

Of course I will.

I’ll be peering over the fence, checking to see that their world is undisturbed as I focus on feeling content in mine.

But I’ll be noting—no doubt—that over there, things look so much greener.