It Takes Money to Retire

Here are a few of my thoughts and suggestions about retirement , I wrote this a few years ago m but for new readers I think they'll find it a good read 

Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy. -Groucho Marx
"Early to bed and early to rise -- till you get enough money to do otherwise.
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One thing I learned about retirement very quickly was that you needed money and lots of it , and that there is no retirement fairy that comes along and zaps you on the head with her or his magic wan and says "now you are retired, do what you want when you want and where you want." Retirement as I have already said" takes money", and you have to plan to save it ,retire from a job that gives you a pension , win the lotto, sell a business, marry someone rich ( if single) inherit from rich relative , or as I did start drawing your SS check when you reach the ripe ole age of 62. And at 62 the check is not enough to live on and especially if you have a wife , which I had when I reached retirement age .I took a look around me and and at my SS check and I knew that with that amount of money coming in every month, that there was no way we could live in our present location . My brother lived in Tennessee and offered to let us build a small house or put a trailer, or manufactured home on a little piece of land on his property and we went there to check it out , I loved the idea of being close to my brother and living in the country, but Ciejay just did not like the area, and expressed that she did not think she would be happy ( and her happiness was very important to me ). I think we could have lived there on my SS check (bearly getting by), with the amount of MONEY we would have coming with each check . I could do like a lot of folks that say they are retired and work another full time job just at a different company or they get a part-time job and their wives get one too , Soooo they say they are retired , but in reality they are working just as much as before , just drawing their SS check, (selling the house that they bought for twice what it was worth (when the banks were loaning money to anyone that breathed and had any credit (good or bad) young or old )moving to a different location , most of the time only renting and to a warmer climate and calling themselves retired, with the MONEY they had saved (if any) and the MONEY gotten from the sell of all the things they had collected over the years , the yard and garage sells, and their SS checks . All of this adding up to the Money that it takes to retire. If you don't have the Money or a way to get it, then you really can't retire and will have to work till you drop dead , paying for that new car and big house that you bought and really didn't need in the first , but you have no choice because nobody will buy that used car , not even what you owe on it and the house that you bought for $250,000 dollars, now with the collapsed housing market is worth half what you paid for it , and no one wants to buy it because you owe more to the bank than it's worth , but you still have to make the payments because the banks want take it back , or file bankruptcy, Which means your. credit is ruined and you can never buy anything on credit again ( the thing got you into this mess in the first place ) which means you can't retire , Because to retire takes Money. 
I hope you have thought about these things way before it's time for you to retire and have started to save as much as you can every month and started living a little more frugal that you did before you started getting close to your golden years, and remember , when you retire you want need all those TOYS and THINGS you spent your hard earned Money for , Heck most of them you 'll be to old to play with anyway , get rid of them!!!!!!! Now!!!!!! while you still can .When you wait till retirement time , folks know it and will try to steal them from you , remember their not retiring you are and your down sizing is their Wind -Fall. It's all about Money yours and theirs.
When we (Ciejay and me ) retired we had not been married bur two years and I had never saved a penny in my life and had no thoughts of retiring at all , I planned on working till I dropped dead, but when I meet Ciejay all that changed and I wanted to spend all my golden years with her , laughing , loving and enjoying life and the blessings of the Lord to the fullest, and that did not include working every day from dawn till dark, 6 or 7 days a week and not even a part-time job, but how to do this was the problem , because as I stated in the first of this post it takes Money and that was something I didn't have much of , and very few toys to speak of .And as I said before there was just noway I could see us retiring on our small SS check .
I know that there are lots of folks in the same boat we were in and are wondering how they can retire and enjoy their golden years ,and not have to work themselves to death . I hope they have a plan and the MONEY to make it work, I didn't , BUT----- God did and in my next post I'll tell you all about it , this post is getting way to long and I don't want to loose any one along the way , stay tuned for the next post . Malcolm
ps:
I know some folks will not agree with the things I have said ,BUT some will relate and these are the folks I hope this post gives a little inspiration to

LEMON GRASS and a few things to do with it

wild orchid

SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2009

HERBS and SPICES, AND, MEDICINE IN OUR OWN BACKYARD

THIS PART YOU CAN PUT IN A CUP TO ROOT FOR YOUR GARDEN

HERE STEMS ARE ALL CLEANED AND READY FOR THE SOUP POT

READY TO TAKE TO THE MARKET,OR TO SELL WHOLESALE TO THE VENDORS AT THE MARKET ,OR TO SEND TO BANGKOK OR KANCHANABURI, TO THE MANY THAI RESTAURANTS FOR THEIR KITCHENS.

OTT: CLEANING AND TRIMMING THE LEMON GRASS, ONLY THE STEMS ARE USED FOR THE SOUPS, AS A SEASONING AND THE LEAVES THEY CAN BOIL DOWN FOR LEMON OIL.

DIRTY WORK , BUT, A VERY GOOD MONEY CROP FOR OTT AND HER FAMILY

RUBBER BOOTS ARE A MUST WHEN HARVESTING LEMON GRASS IN THE RAINY SEASON

THE STEMS IN ONE PILE AND THE LEAVES IN ANOTHER, GETTING READY FOR THE WASHING ,THAT WILL CLEAN THEM BEFORE TAKING TO THE MARKET TO SELL.

The other day I saw my neighbor,Ott going down the road with a load of grass in the side car of her scooter, and being one ,not to miss a good photo shot ,went to investigate the scene. It was grass, but a special kind of grass, called Lemon Grass. I thought to myself ,I'll share these pictures and do a little informative (not thesis) post about Lemon Grass and it's many uses around the world and here in Thailand SOOOOO here goes.

Lemon Grass is a native to India, It is used as a herb in Asian cooking,it has a citrus flavor,it can be dried or powered or used fresh in many Asian dishes . No tum Yum soup would be complete without a few chopped up pieces of lemon Grass put in the water along with many other kinds of veggies and meats and fishes,for that all important lemony taste (not to be eaten but to flavor only) that makes Tum Yum sooooo good .

Lemon Grass is also used as a pesticide, Ciejay always pulls off a leaf and crushes it in her hand and rubs it on her arms and legs ,when she goes out to work in the garden or to pull weeds around the flower beds , to protect her skin, and to keep the mosquitos from biting her while outside, when we eat outside in the gazebo some evenings, we burn candles that have been made with lemon grass oil to keep them away too, seems to work ok.

Something I didn't know is that Lemon Grass is used as a preservative to put on ancient manuscripts to keep them fluidity and to keep them from getting brittle it has a hydrophobic nature and keeps the manuscripts dry ,so that the text is not lost to decay due to humidity.

When we bought our home Thailand and I made a couple of the tables we use in our home from wood that we removed from the sides of the building, and replaced with concrete, I used lemon oil as a preservative to protect the wood againts termites, and also when rubbed in very good and polished after it drys , leaves a beautiful glossy finish.

Lemon grass also has a lot of medicinal properties and is used extensively in ancient Indian medicines,it is supposed to help with relieving cough and nasal congestion .Ciejay says that tea made with Lemon Grass is good for stomach problems too.Also she said you can shampoo your hair wit the oil ,to get rid of dandruff.

Most of the information and some of the pictures came from the Wikipedia Encyclopedia. Hope you enjoy.

It is easy to grow ,in fact we have several stands of it growing out our back door , we took the ends of the pplants we bought in the market for soup and put them in a cup of water till roots appeared and then I planted them in the yard and Kazam in a few months we had our own stand of lemon grass , it also grows well in a pot and makes a great house plant. Malcolm

Lunch Time in Wang Pho

Right beside the Hot Dog man is his wifes noodle stand , and it doesn't get any better than this.

Hot coffee, Iced Coffee, a Smoothie fruit drink and ice cold or Pepsi or a Coke

This lady is here every day except thursday and she picks the corn fresh every day, Thais boil their corn till all the taste and sugar is gone , but she will boil mine for only eight minutes for me , just right .And the hot dogs are chicken.

This lady is a great cook and every evening she has a couple choices of Thai food for sale to take home and enjoy.

They line up every day for this fresh corn on the cob and believe it or not she will sell out every day , so you have to get there before to late or you will be out of luck.

This is the pork meat ball and beef Hot Dog man , he grills them to perfection and them dips them in to his special secret sauce and they are to kill for . Yummy.

Ciejay and me made a couple agreements before we got married , having been married before we both knew how much work goes in to making a happy home and each one doing his or her share of the work and chores, to make life and home a happy and enjoyable place to live and love. One of them was that she cooks four days a week and I cook three days , and we pretty much stick to that agreement even after  12 years of marriage. Now I just love when it comes my time here in Thailand and the LOS , I just jump on the old Honda wave and to the market square I go , there is always a lot of vendors selling some of the best food, cooked right there in front of you. Fresh hot off the grill ,or out of the pot. Ciejay never complains that I take the easy way out , since we have moved to Thailand , and the best part is ,I can buy lunch or dinner for the both of us for about 60 baht .Less than three dollars US. Such a deal. Ciejay is a great cook and it is always a treat to sit down to her table , she prepares everything she cooks with love and kindness and always sits a beautiful table , never just throws stuff together and never just throws it on the table . Everything is served most meals , in our collector set of coke cola dishes that our friends brought over when they came over for a visit , we had given them to these folks and they saved them , for four years to bring over to us because they knew we loved them .Bowls and Cups and little dishes for the sauces, all with the coke trade mark and always a napkin, for the fork and spoon A rare sight in most Thai homes, ( I always carry napkins in my back pocket when we go out to eat or to some Thai friends house as it seems like they never set the table with napkins, and most small village eating spots don't have napkins either, most just set a roll of toilet tissue on the table , doesn't clean your hand very well.)

If you ever come over to our house , we'll make sure it's Ciejay's day to cook.
That's just one more reason why we're Retired in Thailand and Loving It

Oh yes, and one of the other things we agreed on was I COOK YOU CLEAN. works out real well in the Burgess  house whole.  Thanks for the read  leave a comment if you enjoyed .