Sunday, February 17, 2019

Our Golden Years

My last post gathered an interesting response.

There was lots of pointing of finger hard against who "you boomers are".

Smile

From 60 to about 75 are the "golden years" of our generation.
Many of us had jobs in high school
I know I started in elementary as a babysitter (translate that to a Nanny for this generation).
My husband had a paper route with eighty customers.

We did not have a "carefree" childhood.
We worked for our 5 cent allowance
and created great ways to sell people services.
Yes, it was a GREAT childhood and we both loved ours.
Both of us went to college and graduated debt free.
My husband took nine years-
 working for the forest service in remote areas every other semester and summer.
I did the traditional four, with tons of help from my grandfather and parents.
Side jobs paid for the extras.

My children did not have jobs,
they had golden years during high school.
Our son chose a traditional route, our daughter did not.
They are both successful, happy adults.
They loved that time so much they have started very early
investing, saving, growing a family  and buying their houses
getting ready for self sufficiency in retirement.

My husband worked in various professions for thirty five years
twenty of those were military, providing a bed for our retirement.
My degree enabled me to teach when it was reasonable.
Children came first,
and we chose that someone would always be home for them until they graduated high school.
This is not the judgement call, or even a possibility,  for everyone,
but it was ours.
We ran sports teams, college fairs, and crazy field trips.

We traveled a great deal with the military- 20 countries- living in three of them.
A later job  gave me the opportunity to see 49 states.

What we learned is individuals are the same everywhere.
They want what is best for them
they know they can work to get it or complain if they don't.

And so, my friend, work hard.
If you don't like something, change it in your own life
and give good example.
Complaining may "help" you now---but your golden years will be lifeless.

1 comment:

  1. I did have a carefree childhood, mostly b/c I was insulated from the world (except for those pesky air-raid drills in case of nuclear attack) but reality hit in the 1970s when trying to make my way into adulthood with a (if you remember) pretty lousy economy.

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