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Thursday, July 10, 2014

So glad I didn't live long ago and that I will probably live a long time

I've been working on the family genealogy some more and am totally amazed at how many children my poor female ancestors had - and in some families, how many of the children died within the first 5 years. Wow, what hard lives they had and I am so glad I didn't live then.

Lots of the women (and men) died fairly young too and from diseases that are now preventable/treatable or from wartime injuries especially during the Civil War. Generally though I seem to come from pretty long lived stock. So it is not just my parents who lived a long time (87 and 92) but so many of my ancestors who did not have the advantages of the health care we enjoy now lived into their 70s and beyond. Hearty stock indeed and all the more reason to take retirement financial and life planning seriously!

I just read a book on that topic and it is a great overview. I already knew lots of this info but did pick up some good worksheets and things to think about.


7 comments:

  1. The 5 Years Before You Retire . . . oops, too late for me!

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    1. I'm with Tom - 6 years too late for me! We did think through where we were going to retire to, which forms the basis of my book "Retiring the Olé way". Where we are living in Spain is so much cheaper than if we had stayed in London, which helps our pensions go further, but I suspect that we should have given it a lot more thought than we did!

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  2. I'm about 15 years away, but better to start earlier.

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    1. Absolutely! We went to a fee only financial planner about 10 years out to see if we were on track and now need to think through the hard decisions like where will we live, how will be design income streams and how much do we need beyond social security and pension. Then there are required minimum distributions, etc. I makes my brain hurt LOL.

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  3. It is funny - before I had my son I used to have all these nostalgic, rose tinted views about the simple life in the past. Then I had my little boy, a breech birth and c-section, no milk production (due to a number of factors that become a perfect storm of No milk) and had to bottle feed him. And suddenly, and very quickly I was so very grateful for the modern world and had no desires to live like a Tudor or in Little House on the Praire anymore.

    By the way I came this way from the Make Do and Mend Link Up!

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    1. Wow, you had a tough time of it! Modern medicine trumps any of my desires for the past too. Both my Mom's parents died when she was a child and would not have with the medications we have now. Her Mom died in 1930 of TB and her dad of an infection in 1934. Mom was 6 and 11 years old and, although her Mom had been in a TB sanitarium for so long that she didn't remember her, she adored her Dad and it impacted her life tremendously to lose him too. What has amazed me as I look at my ancestors lives are the women who had a large number of children and then lived to ripe old ages despite all the risks and lack of medical care. Hardy and lucky.

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