Fifteen Years Left To Live

Fifteen years left to live.

No one really knows how long they have to live on this planet. There is always the danger of life coming to an abrupt end by catastrophe, an accident or foul play. We simply do not know but the notion of living each day as if it were your last is quite unsustainable. People make plans and have goals for tomorrow, next week, next year that means today cannot be the sole focus of life.

And yet people can forget to live in the moment, acknowledging that if the past is gone and tomorrow has yet to come, the only time we have to do anything is today. But for many, the content of ‘today’ is usurped by anything and everything other than what we want to do with our lives.

Life is filled with mundane responsibilities like taking the kids to school, maintaining a home, going to work and paying bills, etc. And if you were to live today as if it were your last, would you want to spend it doing any of the above?

What if we knew that tomorrow would be the end of the world? What kind of things would people do with that time? Obviously making plans for next week is suddenly pointless and any goals for next year an absurdity. So we make plans for the future based on the tentative notion that we have time to fulfil them.

Which brings me to the title of my article. A week after my 59th birthday, I started looking seriously at plans to retire from work; that is to say I plan to stop working for other people so that I have the time to do the things I want to do with my life. The reason for making these plans arose from the evidence of the males in my family tree having the inconvenient habit of dying at the age of 74. My father died at 74, as did my grandfather and great grandfather. As I am the next in line it would be foolish not to recognise the pattern, no matter how much I have the intention of living well beyond that age. My mother died at 66, due to ill health, so while this might be a stand-alone event, it is a factor I must consider even if the ancestors on my father’s side offered more incentive to think longer term.

So barring any major catastrophe, accident or foul play, there is a possibility that - given the evidence of mortality on my father’s side - that I may have only 15 years to live.

At the time of writing this article, I have taken a week’s leave from the job that pays the bills. I started full time work at age 17, denied the opportunity for university as my parents could not afford for me to spend more time in education. Having spent 42 years working for other people, just to pay bills and have a roof over my head, has left only moments of time to do the things I would rather be doing. But this is not to say that I don’t appreciate that working to get money, within the system we are all forced to follow, has earned the opportunity to build a secure foundation for myself and my family.

My parents were unashamedly working class but still my father bought his house with a mortgage that took two and a half times his salary alone (1955). My mortgage was made up of three times the salary of my wife and myself (1988). The same house prices today (2019) would take a mortgage value of ten times a couple’s combined salary. This suggests that young couples today would have to commit to more than 30 - 35 years of mortgage payments to do what my wife and I managed in 25 years.

So we spend half a lifetime paying for the security of a home with home comforts if we are lucky. The rental market is a more brutal option because you never stop paying rent until the day you die; and it never gets cheaper.

I know I am in a fortunate position and I am grateful for that, although I also know I worked for every privilege I now possess and made certain sacrifices along the way to ensure security for myself, my wife and the possibility of retiring with some comfort but also to enjoy retiring while we were both young enough to do so.

The State retirement pension entitlement in the UK rose from age 65 to 67, meaning if I followed my mother’s lifespan, I would die a year before eligibility. Advances in medicine meant that the baby boomer generation of the 1960s expanded the population at the point of an increase in the mortality rate. People are living longer instead of dying at an affordable age. The Government only really wants people as ‘working units’. Pensioners are a drain on the economy, so we either had to work longer or die earlier.

For me personally, it means if I had not considered investment into a pension, I could not even consider retiring for another 8 years; half of my life span that I have left if I am destined to live only to 74. I suppose I could work another 8 years and enjoy the benefit of additional money but when I get to the end of my life, what would I have to show for it? Would I be happy knowing that the only reason I lived at all was to work for other people and pass my inheritance to the next generation (only for them to do the same perhaps or to squander it without purpose)?

I have no idea who was the first person to stick this notion in my head but someone instilled in me the sensibility to leave somewhere looking better than when I first went in. Clearly this directive was designed for when one spent time in someone else’s property, promoting the respect for people’s possessions and sharing in the value of hard work and care that they represented. But living a life should also be more than maintenance and the value of acquisitions and security. Should we not also leave this life leaving the world in a better state than it was when we were born?

Making the world a better place takes time, time no one has because they are too busy working to earn a living and all the other stuff mentioned above. A number of very rich people have made the world a better place for themselves, which is not the same as making the world a better place for everyone else. When I was a much younger and idealistic person, I had the fanciful notion that somehow I could change the world. With age and experience I now realise that this was a bit more than ambitious and settled for changing my immediate world.

Changing anything takes time and energy. Both become precious commodities as one gets older. Young people may not look at health in the same way as they look at money but as one gets older, good health starts to outweigh money. It doesn’t matter how much money you have if you are too old or too unwell to benefit from it.

Taking all this into account, I decided that I wanted to retire at 60, or close to it. The pension I paid into sounded great when I started it but it is astounding how the devaluation of currency and inflation has effectively halved the value before I even get to draw on it. But in many ways I am still more fortunate than the generation that comes after me. The UK government has introduced a compulsory ‘workplace pension’. It is a real basic pension scheme that will not pay out masses of money if one is lucky enough to be able to retire. What people are not aware of, and as I spent many years working for the Department for Work and Pensions I have some insight into what is being set up, the UK government are in the process of phasing out the State pension entirely. So where I may yet benefit from a personal pension and also a State pension, those who come after me will have only one source of income, with little chance of earning enough to do more than that.

I conclude that I have a choice between the potential of further earnings or a pontoon-style ‘stick’ with a fixed income that has to sustain the expenditure demands for 8 years until I qualify for my State pension. However, it is also a choice between working for someone else for another 8 years or doing something that I want to do while I still have health, energy and enthusiasm to do it. The fact that I am even considering retiring means that I have instinctively chosen my goal, selecting to accept a loss in income over a gain in a more productive use of my time.

So what would I do with my time, bought at the expense of further fiscal reward? What possible attraction could life have to offer me that is better than working for money to pay bills and keep a roof over my head? Would it surprise you to know that when I left school at 16, my main ambition was not to spend 40 hours a week doing what other people wanted me to do and in return earn enough money to reach the next pay day? I did a few different jobs in my time. My first job was manufacturing spectacle lenses. I then worked in bingo (yes I did spend some time as a bingo caller), I did some stock control in a warehouse, spent a short stint as a petrol station cashier and a betting office manager, interviewed people in an employment agency, worked in a job centre and end my career as an advocate supporting people detained under the Mental Health Act (the most rewarding job of them all).

All of the jobs that paid money do not define me in the slightest. I was never going to be known (neither would I want to be) for my vocations. My avocations are far more interesting and yet they have had to take a back seat for most of my life. I want to spend my time on something that I find meaningful

When I first sang on stage at the age of 5 (see my autobiography ‘Walking The Path’ (part 1)), it was my first taste of music and sharing my joy of it with the outside world. Then, when the voice of an angel turned into the voice of an angle grinder, my musical talent turned to composition. I learned to play violin and piano. Making music became a passion but when you don’t get the breaks in life, it doesn’t matter how good you are. Over the years I have composed many songs from pop to classical. I have five musicals and a symphony among other things. I still have four more symphonies in my head that need my time. I would also like to spend more time playing the piano; for no other reason than it gives me joy and teaches me discipline.

Of the 5 non fiction books I have published, there are two that demonstrate my interest in the esoteric. When I saw my careers officer at age 14, his first question to me was, ‘So what do you want to work at when you leave school?’ to which I shrugged my shoulders and declared I did not have a clue. Most vocational questionnaires pointed me in the direction of becoming a psychologist but as mentioned, the opportunity of university was sacrificed on the altar of expense. Never the less, this inherent trait in me expressed itself by way of learning about esoteric principles, which the more I delved into it the more it became obvious that psychology had been discovered long before the appellation existed. While I felt confident enough to write on and be published on two of the methods, I have continued to learn others. I count myself fortunate to have been introduced to mundane astrology, as it has helped me reach a position in the real world where my choices were better informed about global trends and has informed me of the best pathway to even consider retiring from paid employment.

There are, at the very least, two novels I would wish to write and have published. Both books are started but time to work on them properly is just not there. The article I am writing now would not be written but for the fact that I took some time off work to take stock of where I am now and plan a direction for the future.

And if the above were not enough to keep me occupied, I have also discovered the delights of gardening. My first house had an average sized garden that one could swing a cat in but not grow an orchard. I have a much bigger garden now and the physical work involved promotes my continued good health; in contrast to sedentary pursuits. Aside from the health benefits, I also get to grow my own fruit and vegetables in addition to some floral displays. The uninitiated would be amazed at how much esoteric doctrine can be explained within the processes of gardening, so it was inevitable that not only would my garden give me some much needed exercise but would also give me pause to stop and think about the nature of all living things and be able to appreciate the way we absorb ourselves into systems that sustain us, for better or worse.

The avocational self expression has until now been snatched and stolen in between large chunks of compulsory depletion of my valuable time. Because of it, time has become my most precious resource, usurping money only because I have worked myself to a position where I have the luxury of making that choice. Had the world’s capitalist system been more equitous, then maybe my time could have been shared more evenly between the work I had to do versus the work I wanted to do. But this was not the case for me and I long ago accepted the pragmatic perspective that life is not fair. So I did what I could while I was younger and planned to spend more quality time to devout to my personal pursuits at the earliest opportunity.

Reaching the age of 75 is not my greatest ambition but I do hope I get the opportunity to break the pattern of my male forebears. The retirement age for them was 65, so they had 9 years before they died. So, if I hedge my bets, I get at least 15 years if my fate is to follow their precedent. And if I live longer, I will be blessed for knowing that I have made the world richer with a legacy that lasts a lot longer than the next wage packet.