Grugger’s Way

Retirement Challenge THREE - Keeping Fit - refers to physical fitness. Not body building, not even extensive work with weights or extreme aerobic efforts are required. No need to run a marathon or a ten kilometer race. Being able to walk a few miles is good. Flexibility and suppleness are things you don’t even think about and don’t appreciate until it dawns upon you that you are losing them. You know, when you can’t get up off a couch or out of a car without being careful not to hurt your back. When you stoop over for the first fifty feet you walk until you loosen up again. Not only have I BEEN there; I AM there NOW. I am resolved not to allow myself to become a cripple before my time, if EVER! Continue Reading »

As a retirement challenge, Keeping Active means not seceding from society, not becoming a hermit, nor a misfit, nor a strange geezer.  I don’t want to be known as a grouch either.

So, when it comes to keeping active, I do know how to go about it; in much the same way as when I first moved to this neck of the woods and didn’t know a soul: I volunteered.

There are always non-profit and charitable organizations that would love to have help.  Political campaigns, if you can stomach them, are seemingly ALWAYS underway for some local office, or mill levy or bond election.  Anyway, they will always accept help to make phone calls, canvass neighborhoods, put up signs or lick stamps. (Oops, I guess that is outdated.) Continue Reading »

Retirement Challenge One is Keeping Solvent

Assuming that I could maintain financial solvency, I elected to take early retirement. I also hoped to maintain my lifestyle with minimal adjustments.  Before making that major decision I had to be able to answer a couple of questions; questions that concerned my spouse as well, since my early retirement would also involve her financial solvency. Continue Reading »