Join Momtastic (@itsmomtastic), Donna Ladd (@motherburg), Kim Bongiorno (@letmestart), and me (@kim_michelle), for a 45-minute long Twitter chat on Friday, October 16, 2015 at 11AM PST/2PM EST. We’ll be chatting about our visions for retirement (amusingly illustrated by our kids!) and will be giving away $400 in Visa Gift Cards and more throughout the chat.
To participate and win:
• Follow the twitter handles @itsmomtastic, @kim_michelle, @motherburg, and @letmestart
• Join in on the fun by tweeting with the hashtag #SeeYourRetirement during the Twitter chat
• To enter to win gift cards AND an artist’s rendering of you in your future retirement, find a picture that encapsulates your own retirement vision or have your child draw it, then share it with the hashtag #SeeYourRetirement when prompted during the chat!
“Retirement is what happens when mommy and daddy are all done with working for the rest of their lives.”
This seemed like a simple way to explain retirement to my daughter. In fact, she has four retired grandparents, so I thought it would be pretty easy for her to understand the concept. But since all she’s known is that mommy and daddy “go to work” most hours of most days of the week, this simple explanation provided a quizzical look in return.
“But what would you do all day?”
“Um, anything we want?”
And that’s when I started sharing my ideas with her.
“Well, since we would have unlimited vacation days, we’d try our best to travel to as many places as possible!”
“Like Kauai?” Sure kid, just like Kauai! I don’t think I’d mind hanging out in the sun over on the Hawaiian islands too much.
But what will retirement look like on a normal day? “I’ll want to spend time relaxing at home too. I’d definitely start every morning by going to a yoga class, and maybe running more often as well.”
“I guess I just want us to both have the freedom to enjoy doing what we love when we want to do it. And, of course, spending as much with you as we can! I mean, you’ll be a grownup by then!”
And after sharing those vague answers with my five year old, I realized that my picture of retirement isn’t as firm as I thought it was. What will I really be doing with all that time? And will we have the extra money to be able to travel to those distant places around the globe? Looks like I have to answer some more questions and dig a little deeper so that our expectations can match reality in twenty-five to thirty years! Luckily we’ve got time to make sure our money grows like we want it to for retirement, but we should probably start sooner than later!
Do you know what your retirement will look like? What do you really want to do? Join us for a Twitter Party on Friday October 16th, 2015 (details at the top of this post!) and we’ll go through exploring this whole process together. Remember, there are gift cards to be had, and what’s more, you may win an artist’s rendering of your own vision for retirement, similar to mine:
This post and the Twitter chat are sponsored by Principal Financial Group. Gift cards are furnished by TotallyHer Media.
