Every time I withdraw money from my IRA, I have a deep concern that I’m spending my retirement savings too fast. It doesn’t really matter how much I take out; it still feels like I’m tapping into sacred ground. For years, you save for a rainy day, but if you live in the Northwest every day is rainy. As a result, today was as good as any to pay off holiday credit card bills, pay taxes, and prepare for some upcoming travel. For years, I had done nothing but religiously put money into this account, so it seems counterproductive to now begin to dip into it. It’s only a finite amount of money, but the plan was always to spend it in the first ten years of retirement while we were healthy and travel hungry. After that, we would live on my pension, home equity, social security, and my wife’s 401K, with the majority of those dollars spent in the first ten years of her retirement. By then, I’ll be 80 years old and we won’t be spending $20,000 a year traveling back to Indiana to see family.

I certainly don’t want to admit that I will be tired of traveling by the time I’m 80, but I will have crossed off all the items on my current bucket list. I know that many others will be added, but by that age exploration will evolve into familiarity. I can see myself returning to some of the areas around the world that we explored years prior. It’s hard to imagine what life will be like at that time. Will I be in good health? Will there be money and motivation to travel? Will my running streak be at 23 years? My two current grand kids will be adults and my son will be 56, trying to deal with a 14 year old girl that will be born six months from now. It doesn’t really seem that far away, but the battle of spending now vs. waiting until later continues to weigh on my mind. After all, later may never come, so maybe we need to live for today.

Today includes some vet expenses for Tinker’s ear infection (Pet.Vet.Debt), pending 2017 taxes, spa treatments and shore excursions for an upcoming cruise, airfare/lift tickets for Colorado, airfare for our quarterly trip to Indiana, and ongoing Marriott Vacation Club payments. With this IRA withdrawal, I will zero out my credit card that includes these expenses, put aside some money for my soon to be 3 grand kids education fund (Oregon College Savings Plan), pay off some of my wife’s credit card debts, and shift some dollars to savings for inevitable Oregon and Federal taxes.

After a flurry of travel in February, our first March destination will be Amsterdam and the Anne Frank house. While we were waiting for our dinner reservation over my wife’s weekend, we walked over to the famous Powell’s Bookstore and bought The Diary of a Young Girl, along with Top Ten travel books for Venice, Croatia, Dubrovnik & The Dalmatian Islands, Athens, and the Greek Islands. We ADORE travel, as I emphasized in Post #396 – Anticipating, DOing, and REflecting. Part of the “anticipation” is studying the areas that we plan to see through these books and other resources. This is what we’ve saved for, and as a result, it’s time to spend!