Retirement Plan, or, Plan for (Lite) Living?

Finding lightness in an inspired life, before and after retirement

It was almost ten years ago now that I sat across my husband in a Montréal restaurant when he accused me of not having a retirement plan. It was supposed to be a romantic dinner that started off on the wrong foot. My husband chose to wear the $20 battered hiking boots that he had bought at Value Village for this occasion, which I think was symbolic of the value he attached to a night out with me. Me not having a retirement plan was yet another belligerent comment that was meant to make me feel bad about myself, because he had already established that I had “no sense for business.” Never mind that I was running my own yoga business, had designed my own website, and had rented our apartment on airbnb to keep us afloat while he had been out of a job for over three years.

And I believed him.

What my husband had in mind as a retirement plan is the kind of retirement plan his parents had who live in the outskirts of Ottawa in a big (and now mostly empty) house with four bedrooms and two cars. His parents who worked in the same job for over forty years were happy to retire and have more time to read, travel, play curling and of course, spend quality time with their grandchildren and friends.

And my husband was right. I had no such plans. Not because there is anything wrong with this retirement plan that works really well for his parents, but because it was not the way I want(ed) to retire.

For a start, I wasn’t born in Canada and a country with six months of a brutal winter is not my natural habitat. So, although my husband never bothered to actually ask me what my plans for retirement were before he declared that I had none, I knew pretty clearly that:

1. I didn’t want to retire in North America, especially not in suburban North America.

2. I had no desire to own a big house and a car.

3. I would never make jams and likely not to do much gardening either.

Instead, what I wanted was:

1. To continue to travel and learn a seventh language.

2. To own a small apartment somewhere in Europe with lots of books and a spare bedroom for my daughters when they come to visit.

3. To make my living from writing and teaching yoga.

4. To surround myself with good people who will inspire me to grow.

5. To keep on learning and never stop being curious about the world.

6. To be in a loving relationship in which we can grow together as a couple and separately as individuals (as “guardians of each others solitude,” as Rilke so beautifully wrote).

And what I also knew in that moment was that my husband and I were not going to retire together. I walked out of my marriage less than a year later with a queen-sized mattress and my girls’ art work.

The last decade, as I have been rebuilding my life from the ground up has been full of challenges. I still live in Montreal because my daughters have to finish their high school and there is nowhere else I rather be than close to them until they do. And no, I have not learned to love Montreal more, but I have learned to appreciate what life in Montreal has to offer me and my daughters. I appreciate the diversity, the opportunities (especially the artistic ones) and the close friendships I have made here. I am still far from renovating that run-down villa in Italy and turn it into a yoga/writing centre, but I am renovating a small apartment in central Budapest with the help of my architect mother.

Budapest, November 2022. Me, standing in front of my new Budapest home with the classic inner courtyard.

Since my divorce I have learned Italian, which I continue to perfect, and have my eyes on learning Portuguese one day. My heart is open to meeting a life partner who can grow with me, side by side, but I don’t feel a desperate need to be in a relationship in order to not feel alone. I actually love, and value my solitude.

My 71 year old mother who has no plans to “retire”

I draw my inspirations for retirement not from my ex-husband’s parents, but my mother. Now at 71 my mum looks more youthful (without any surgery or Botox) than she looked twenty years ago. Finally she has let go of all the BS that was holding her back and she is busier than ever creating and planning beautiful homes. She wears her grey hair proudly and accessorizes it with a whole range of vibrant colours. She has no plans to “retire,” because work brings her tremendous joy and a sense of purpose, the way writing continues to inspire my life. Why ever stop doing something you enjoy?

But my mother is not the only woman who has remodelled her life in a new and inspiring way. Substack is full of the most incredible women doing the most extraordinary writing and work. I always love seeing the beauty that

Diana Strinati Baur

produces with her magical hands, and read about

Amy Brown

’s new chapter in Barcelona. These women are seriously inspiring to me, and prove that there is more to life than just one way to retire, if retiring is what you are after. Because as

Sabine Breit

so wisely reminded me, this is not a plan for retirement, but a plan for life; a plan for an inspired life that you get to design any way that makes you feel most alive.

And speaking of retirement plans, I can barely hold back my excitement on the travel opportunities that Home Exchange has opened up for me. If you are like me, someone who loves to travel but has a limited budget and you feel comfortable inviting people to your home, I highly recommend you look into Home Exchange that enables you to facilitate not only reciprocal home exchanges, but exchanges for guest points with a trustworthy community of like minded people. Yes, it requires trust and quite a bit of preparation, but it has saved me thousands of dollars when I was planning my summer holiday this year with my daughters. I will be staying four days in Rome, a week in Lisbon and a week in Barcelona for the total investment of 220 USD (the cost of a yearly membership). And I had the most wonderful Sicilian family stay at my home two weeks ago, leaving everything clean, with some tulips and the kindest note!

There is magic in here!

If this sounds interesting to you, click on this link before March 31 and you will get my special referral code that will give you 500 guest points (3-6 nights stay somewhere).

---

In case you missed it…