I have been planning my retirement for just over 2 years, with the original plan to go in August 2027. I even put a countdown timer on my website that shows 628 days left (a little over 20 months). Back in August of this year, I noted that with two years to go, I did NOT have everything on track for my planning. I’ve been doing more work since then on my original plan of touring across North America, trying to wrap my head around the possibility of a single RV unit or a towable trailer behind a truck. Andrea and I even went to an RV place and checked out some RV options. It still seemed doable.
I also went to a writing conference in New Orleans in September, loved both the city and the conference, and came back jazzed about writing. I don’t have kayaking, astronomy, photography, the fitness side in general, or continued learning locked down yet. But with 20m to go, it seemed doable.
And then work decided to confuse me with potential incentives to retire earlier.
A positive incentive to go earlier
The first announcement was a positive incentive, the Early Retirement Initiative, unveiled in the fall budget.
For those not familiar with the public service pension, you basically can work until 30 years of service AND age 55 or over, and you’ll get what they call an unreduced pension at 60% of the average of your best five years of salary. If you DON’T make it to 30 years, every year under that is reduced by 2% not earned plus 2% penalty. In other words, for me, I’m at 29 years. If I go now, I would have “earned” 58%, but would pay a 2% penalty to drop it to 56%. If you want to see it in action, you would get:
30 years –> 60%
29 years –> 56%
28 years –> 52%
27 years –> 48%
26 years –> 46%
The ERI waives the penalty and makes it:
30 years –> 60%
29 years –> 58% (save 2%)
28 years –> 56% (save 4%)
27 years –> 54% (save 6%)
26 years –> 52% (save 8%)
On the face of things, I could go now and save 2% penalty. Or wait until August and have no penalty. But I also have some pension paperwork in the works that would transfer money from my RRSP into the public pension, and thus I don’t need the waiver. I’m nominally above 30 years already. I could work another 4-5 years and get a 70% option, but that isn’t in the cards. My “plan” above aka the original one that is now in doubt was that I would likely finish with about 31.5 years and get 63% for my pension.
On the finance side of the equation, the Reddit forum Canada Public Servant has a really good post by one of the moderators, u/HandcuffsOfGold. You can find it here:
His first example is for a public servant earning $100K and considering the ERI, with 30 years of service. He shows that from the original $100K gross salary, you pay federal income tax, provincial income tax, public pension contributions, CPP/EI, union dues, disability insurance, and supplementary death benefit for a total of $34K in Ontario in the CAPE union leaving $66K in take-home pay. By contrast, the pension would be $60K gross, of which you would pay federal income tax, provincial income tax, health care plan, and dental care plan for a total of $9720, leaving $50,280 of pension. The difference is $16K a year which they could potentially make up through part-time work, gig work or RRSP/TSFA, or income+pension splitting (about $1300/m).
He also did the same calculation with 25 years of service. $66K in take-home pay from working remains the same, but pension would drop to $50K per year (instead of $60K). Total deductions would be $7522 (instead of $9720) leaving $42,478. As a result, they would need about $2K a month to top up.
The whole point of the calculation is not the exact amounts — it is showing that if you are close to 30y, and you have RRSPs, the difference might not be as huge as you think. In example one, while you lose $40K in income, your take-home pay only drops by $16K — because you also lose $24K in deductions. It’s a sobering set of numbers to see.
A negative incentive to go earlier
The new option, though, is normally a negative incentive. The Government announced that they are going with Workforce Adjustment (WFA) in the new year at my department, as well as lots of other departments. We received the formal heads-up email this week that letters will be sent to individuals in January. The WFA is basically a layoff notice, but with some big options to help you manage the possible transition. In effect, the notice says your position is being eliminated, and since you’re in it, you’re being laid off. While you can’t change the first part (the elimination of the position), there are ways to eliminate the layoff effect. Once you’re WFA’ed, you have 120 days to decide what to do. The official options are listed here: https://www.njc-cnm.gc.ca/directive/d12/v239/s669/en#s669-tc-tm_2.
Option A, as it is referred to, is basically that you have a year to find another job within the public service. You keep working, theoretically doing assigned work AND looking for a job. Still, the assigned work varies by group… some people do NOTHING but look for a job, others are given non-urgent work, others are worked hard. The priority is clearly on finding a new job. There are options if you change your mind halfway through the year or don’t find anything, but it mainly revolves around being paid at your current salary for a year to find another job. So basically PAYx1Y.
Option B is the “severance plus TSM” option. Basically, there is a transition support measure that will pay you approximately one year’s pay (52w if you are between 16y and 29y of service, and then 3w less for every year over 52w i.e., 31y = 49w of pay). Plus you get severance, which is about 4w for the first 20y and 1w for every year after 20. If you’re close to 29/30y, that would mean 13w of severance. And they code you as laid off, so you’re eligible for EI. While it isn’t completely linear, and you have options to play with WHEN the pay and severance are given to you (up to 2 payments over 2 years), assume you wipe out 13w of EI, leaving you with .75 of a year of EI remaining. PAYx1.25Y+EIx.75Y.
Option C is the “education” option, and it splits into two sub-options depending on whether you want to return after the educational period. If you do wish to return, you basically get up to $17K in education, go on leave without pay for 2 years, and, at the end of 2 years, go on a priority list to return to the government. A coworker did this back in DRAP, and it worked out PERFECTLY for her. An amazing option for her, and she returned to full-time work after taking two years to go to school.
Or you can just leave immediately, with no plan to come back, and it is basically the same as Option B, with some potential hiccups related to EI but a tuition bonus. (For EI eligibility, you are supposed to be both actively looking for and available for work, which would normally exclude full-time university attendance. However, there are some options for referrals through the province which might allow it to happen). As such, you can potentially get the TSM (PAYx1y + .25x1Y + EIx.75Y + $17K in tuition.
That’s not chickenfeed
If I get a WFA letter, and opt for Option B or Option C, I could potentially get as much as $200K in salary and EI, not including the education allowance. I would be giving up 1.5y of service and thus losing some on my monthly pension, but at the same time, I’m also not working for the next 20 months.
Which is a long way ’round to say that the government is messing with my verb tenses. Original plans, current plans, and future plans are all in a state of flux. And some people might look at it as either a #FirstWorldProblem (to which I agree) or a “wait and see” situation, i.e., wait to see if I get a WFA letter. Except there is a flexible component in there that if I know there are going to be SOME letters handed out in my area, I could volunteer in advance informally to WFA me. It saves someone else from being whammied. Or even if I’m not whammied myself, I could look at potential alternation options (where people who were whammied change jobs with people who weren’t but were hoping to be). And if I do get whammied, I would still have 120d to figure it all out.
I have to say…I have thought of little else for the last week. And don’t get me started on whether Andrea could retire too, and what that would look like for our finances. Likely workable, even if it wasn’t the plan, and I’m happy to have options; it would be great if they were a bit clearer.
I started writing about my retirement plans almost two years ago. I worked my way through some health stuff, end-of-life stuff, finances, etc. And then I did my big reveal for travel. A huge plan to travel all over North America in stages over several years.
The first stage would be 25,000 km, starting in Ottawa, heading for Alberta and then the North, over to Alaska and down to Vancouver, touring around as I went, finally ending up in San Diego before heading for New Orleans and then back to Ottawa. Lots of criss-crossing as I went. I skipped the Grand Canyon area for a future trip with the family — this would be, relatively-speaking, a solo journey with Jacob likely in university and Andrea still working. I’d cover Western Canada, Alaska, two territories and most of the US west of the Mississippi.
Stage 2 would be Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick, a bit of Maine, and back home. Stage 3 would be New England all the way down to Florida, over towards the Mississippi again, and back home. A fourth stage would head back to the US midwest and back up into Canada for Glacier National Park (both sides of the border) and then back home.
I figured the most likely scenario would be to get an SUV large enough to pull a small trailer…more than a teardrop, but still within the weight limits for an SUV. It would give me SOME options for extra sleeping space for Jacob and Andrea, but more importantly, gave me the best option for a bathroom. This boy don’t poop in a bucket in his kitchen.
It was a really good plan.
Life entered the chat
Within weeks of my writing those posts, with plans for more, our life changed. Or more pointedly, Jacob’s life changed, and ours adjusted to his big change. Over the last two years, what started as a suspected concusssion ended up being something else, messing with his day-to-day experiences a lot. The thought of planning for ANYTHING kind of went out the window.
For much of the last 2 years, we have been in some form of survival mode. Not thriving, not growing, just figuring out how to get through each day. What can he do, what can we do, how can we help, etc. And, to the extent that we thought much at all about future plans, it was more about “what are the long-term impacts of this, what does it mean for him and us?”. We could probably write a blog every day about what it was like, but that would be too much of Jacob’s story, as opposed to my portion of the experience.
A year ago, May 2024, after 7 months of adjustments, I was stressed out of my gourd. During that period, I was not thinking about plans for retirement, I wasn’t watching the countdown clock, I wasn’t focusing on the things I need to do physically to get ready for some of my long-term plans, I basically was chauffeur for Jacob to get to school and appointments and I worked. Outside of that, most of my hobbies went to the back burner. Binging TV shows occasionally, no astronomy, no photography, limited writing outside of some book reviews and the HR stuff. Every once in a while, I would get a burst of normalcy but it wouldn’t last.
So, I took a couple of weeks off to decompress just to get Jacob to the end of the school year. And then something weird happened. I realized that I wasn’t stressed about Jacob or his future or the challenges, I was stressed with our schedule. Every week, Andrea and I would work with Jacob on Sunday night to plan out the week. Jacob would plan to go to school for Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning, etc. Andrea would go to the office Monday and Wednesday, I’d go Tuesday and Thursday, etc. We’d add in the appointments and who was going, etc. And then Monday morning would arrive, Jacob would have a flare-up, and our schedule was out the window. So we’d adjust. Then Tuesday, something else would happen, and we’d adjust again. I started describing it as “game day decisions”. We literally had no idea when stuff would happen. So, with us working in Gatineau, the schedule was a mess. I got permission to work from home and/or the satellite office until the end of the next school year, and we made it work. There was still lots going on, but with me working from home, game day decisions didn’t matter — I was there, I could take him to school or appointments, etc., without having to figure out a commute home to get him, etc. And Andrea’s life became more predictable, too. But that’s her story to tell, if she chooses to do so.
Until about May of this year, I began to wonder if my plans to retire in two years would work out financially and logistically. With Jacob’s life disrupted, I began to worry about needing to be able to be around Ottawa to help if he was still in the same chaos in a few years, what would it mean for high school, perhaps longer university time, the potential for jobs to earn money to pay for school on top of what we have saved, etc. I started to question my likely retirement date. I was still nominally planning for it, but the excitement went way down as every day was game day. I don’t NEED to retire in two years and staying on for another couple of years would put a lot more income in our bank account. I want to retire, but maybe I should go a bit longer, right? At least, that’s where my thinking was going.
Reality also decided to check in regarding my travel plans
Now, I mentioned a bit of this when I wrote about it, but my excitement gave me a false sense of confidence. Here’s the thing. I am NOT a handy guy by any stretch of the imagination. I can handle some basic electrical stuff, at least I’m confident enough to try some of it, but I am not a mechanic, nor a plumber, nor a general fix-it guy. Can I **really** drive an SUV and trailer all over North America without getting myself into a giant funk somewhere when something goes wrong and I have no way to fix it myself?
Even if I ignore the need for basic maintenance and repairs, such as plumbing and toilets, there’s an additional component: some tasks are really hard to do by yourself, even if they are straightforward. Take backing up the SUV and connecting the trailer. Most people are doing this with two people, one driving and one standing by the hitch saying, “A little more, yep, keep coming, keep coming, whoa, stop, go forward an inch, okay, let’s try it there”. Or if they are doing it themself, they are using backup cameras, extra sensors, or really cool mini-pulling machines that will let you move your trailer TO the hitch rather than the hitch to the trailer. However, for other things, even having someone hold a flashlight and angle it up, or to say, “Hey, did you tighten the left one too or just the right one?” Extra brainstorming or mental capacity.
I started second-guessing my confidence. I was still buoyed by the trip, but was it really DOABLE by myself?
As I thought about that, I started imagining breaking down somewhere in Northern Alberta on a highway and having to deal with the headaches all on my own. Even finding a place to stay while finding a mechanic while finding food solutions, etc. When we travel as a family, I do all the driving, but Andrea and Jacob share the overall load by doing most of the destination planning, route choice, and accommodations booking. In a trailer, I would probably have most of my accommodations set in 3-day increments, but it would still be nice to have someone share the mental load.
Plus, to be honest, I am not always the most fun-loving guy when I spend too much time by myself. I am afraid that 2 weeks in, I’d be speeding through destinations just to get there, not taking my time, just bored and/or lonely. A family member suggested that one option would be to basically post my travel schedule to a bunch of people that I would be willing to travel with and say, “Hey, here’s where I’m going and what I’m doing, if you want to join me for a segment, let me know!”. My friend Stephan even suggested that if I wait a couple of years, he’d be interested in major parts of the plan.
Except then my squirrel brain started thinking, “Wait…travelling with the SAME PERSON for FOUR MONTHS? Am I nuts?”. 🙂 Yeah, it makes no sense to anyone but me.
But I started to wonder if maybe this travel plan is not the best solution. Maybe, instead, I could do what we just did…the three of us flew to BC, rented a car, and drove around the lower mainland. Awesome experience (and a bit terrifying, I’ll come back to that).
I had done Vancouver Island before, and Whistler, Abbotsford a bit, Vancouver. I thought I had an idea of what to expect. I absolutely did not. And it rekindled my desire for the giant trip.
Just before I left for the trip, I was reading an article that had been flagged for me due to alerts I had set, and it was about all-in-one van campers. Not the ones with widow’s peaks, etc., just the huge panel fans. There are three general models, one that sells about 120K units a year, another that does about 65K units a year, and a third that does about 55K units a year. Online fora are rabid about the differences in the models, and while I was interested enough to set an alert, I had relatively screened them out of my planning. Essentially, I wanted more space for a toilet…the vans were a bit too cozy for my needs.
Yet the article that I read was by a guy who had actually owned all three brands, and multiple models of each in fact, and he had come to a decision based on his experience. I assumed it would be about his preference for x or y, which might or might not be relevant to me, but it sounded cool. I like curation articles by knowledgeable people.
Except this was about something totally different. He was talking about repairs and reliability, and in part, the ability to run one by yourself. Hey! That sounds familiar! And here was his take. All three were good. You could come up with reasons to take any of the three, hence the rabid fans online arguing which is better. But for him, it came down to a question of whether or not you could get something fixed relatively easily or were you just “stuck”.
With a truck or SUV and trailer, you can always leave the trailer behind if you need to go get parts. There were a considerable number of trailers along the side of the road during our BC trip where they had a problem, maybe a flat, maybe something more serious, and they parked the trailer and off they went to get help or parts or whatever. I wanted the separated “drive” vehicle and “sleep” vehicle as it can be painful to pack everything up just to run to the store to get bread. I don’t have a lot of travel experience of that type of combined vehicle, but the little I do have made that clear fast. Plus I’m likely to want to go kayaking a lot during my travels, so a separate drive vehicle would work great.
But here was what he noted for repairs and parts, including with a test. He created a common scenario where each of the vehicles broke down with the same issue, and would require a certified tech/mechanic to install the parts. Something up on a hoist that you couldn’t do yourself, basically. He then called a few areas that he might regularly travel to that were a bit farther away from a big city, and thus not something you just run to the local store to deal with or get parts. For the 55K units per year model, one of the areas he called basically said they could get the parts in about TWO WEEKS, but they didn’t have a certified tech to install them. He’d have to have the vehicle towed quite a way to get to a proper dealership. Someone MIGHT be able to fix it local, but the garage owner wasn’t optimistic. For the 65K per unit model, it’s a bit more common in the US, so installation was more likely but parts would take several days at least to order in.
Then he tried the model that sells about 130K per year. The very first garage he called said they had the parts in stock, any of their mechanics could install it, and if they drove by that afternoon, they could do it before they closed.
Why the difference? Not the volume of units sold. It’s because the last model is the Ford Transit van. Which uses almost all the same parts from Ford’s F-150 and 350 series. So of course they had them in stock and of course the mechanics are all certified to install them. Ford sells more than a million of these units per year or something like that.
And suddenly, I was wondering if maybe the trip WAS manageable. Sure, I’d have to deal with electrical and plumbing and space. But it’s a smaller footprint aka easier to drive with no trailer, not much different from driving a large SUV or station wagon (according to some people, although I have some doubts that’s entirely accurate), and only one “unit” to go wrong. I’m not sure how kayaks would work for the height, and there are a LOT of options from DIY design to custom builds to existing commercial versions. Getting the passenger options up to 2+1 would be a challenge and there is NO extra room for sitting around, you pretty much have to be outside most of the time. But for one person, it’s easily doable.
I would be back to compromising on the toilet stuff, but well, if it means I can DO it afterall, maybe that’s the price.
Except the trip to BC threw an opposite curveball. I did the Coquihalla Highway in BC early on in the trip. And I discovered something I didn’t know about myself.
I confess up front that I already knew that I am not a big fan of heights…I can go up in hot air balloons, I can fly in planes or helicopters, I can be in tall buildings, etc., but I don’t like being on walkways or standing at the edge of platforms. If I look down, my legs start to go jelly-like. I could never do bungee jumping or parachuting (Andrea jumped twice, she’s fine, but not me, and likely not Jacob either).
What I didn’t know is that when I’m driving on a highway that has a giant cliff next to me, I’m not that happy about it. I’m better if I’m on the inside of the road aka I’m not next to the cliff, there’s a whole other lane and then the shoulder, and then the cliff. But when it’s next to the passenger side of the vehicle I’m driving, I don’t like it. There are parts of the trip where I was on switchbacks for 10-15 minutes, not very fun, but manageable. And then there was one section where I was doing it for about 30 minutes and I found it a bit much. I knew that the “trick” is to relatively focus on the road ahead, do not look out at the gap, do not look down, basically ignore the cliff. Not perfect, but workable.
And then we went to Lilloett. The last hour to there was really quite painful. I spent about 30 minutes dealing with some switchbacks and some other bits that were a bit annoying, but not terrible. I had to focus, lots of speed changes, and some places where I didn’t like having a large truck bearing down on me even if the turn ahead was rated to 60-70 kph instead of 40 in some places. Just enough to ramp me up a bit for stress. Hands at 10 and 2, gripping a bit tighter than I would like, strong concentration. Particularly as I was driving a rental, a Chevy Blazer with some power that met the requirements for big hills and steep grades, but which I wasn’t completely comfortable with nor that experienced handling. But the last 30 minutes? It was hell.
Every single inch was along the side of a mountain with a huge valley gap beside us. And we were going around a mountain so that my view was almost 240 degrees of drop. If I looked ahead, I could see the drop after the road turned; if I looked to the side, there was a drop; if I looked in the rear-view mirror, there was a drop. And I don’t mean a hundred feet. It was more like 1000 feet down. The views at the rest stops were great, but driving, hell no.
I made it, there were no safety infractions, nobody was on verge of death, but I hated the drive. I followed the speed limits PRECISELY. If it said slow to 50 for a curve, you bet I did 50. If I came to a pull-off area, and there was anybody behind me or I had gone 10+ minutes without stopping, I pulled over and let my arms relax. I was gripping so tight. It was fine, but it wasn’t fun.
And if I was driving one of these vans? I’d likely be sitting about 14 inches higher than I was in the Blazer. Meaning that I would see over the edge even easier. It would be harder to ignore. I have never seen roads like this. I’ve been driving in Newfoundland, Quebec, New England, and never once felt uneasy. But the Coquihalla really freaked me out the first time, and the road into Lilloett was the least fun part of the trip for me. I felt some residual angst on the highway from Whistler to Vancouver, one section kind of hangs off the edge of the mountain, but it was relatively minor in comparison as it was a big wide road.
Oh, and did I mention that the majority of the roads with the huge drops had NO GUARD RAILS???? Frak me.
Sooo…95% of my various trips would be fine, nothing like what I did. But there’s a stretch from Alaska to Washington I’m not as sure about now. And I would want to make sure that whatever route I went through BC even for the mainland was much simpler. And definitely not in rain or winter. Never in winter. Not even a glimmer of a possibility of doing it in winter.
So, where is my headspace now?
The “trip” stuff is probably a distraction…maybe I do it, maybe I don’t. I don’t need to decide for two years. I really like the idea of having a contingency plan where I go to a bunch of the destinations, even if I have to rent a car and stay in a hotel.
In the same sense that I don’t have anything that tells me retiring in 2 years is financially “sounder”, I also don’t have anything that says it is bad either. Jacob is doing way better, or at least was at the end of his school year. He has things going on, such as school, mobility, and driving, but he’s handling it. Some of it is just basic teen stuff, with an overlay of some extra stuff. So maybe nothing to worry about now. Or nothing more than normal, anyway.
Which is also partly true on the retirement plan side. There’s nothing I have to tell work yet officially. I’ll definitely wait to see if there are buyout packages that look lucrative or manageable for me; I will still focus on writing when I retire; and, I’m hoping to do some special projects for work before I exit. All of that stays relatively the same for now.
I feel like I’m still on track for two years. As of today, August 27, my father would have been 98. Fast forward two years, and I suspect even you can do the math to realize August 27, 2027 would have been his 100th birthday. It’s still my target. Things may slip, I’m not hardcore planning right now, but I will return to some of the ideas in the coming months. I suspect I’ll make my real decision on January 1, 2027, or at least the decision if I’m going that year. If I choose no, I’ll decide again on January 1, 2028, or 2029, etc. I know I won’t go past 2030, that is my max for pension. I’d be 62 by then.
Two years. Start your engines!
Next up on my plans? A writing conference next week in New Orleans. Fingers crossed it goes well, it’s a bit more expensive than I would like but I have wanted to go for a very long time. And I get to try travelling by myself for the first time in a very long time. I’m not exactly Dora the Explorer, nor her cousin Diego. Well, for that matter, I’m not even her knapsack.
It would be nice to start this post with a clear statement of the problem. A diagnosis of a pinched nerve, sciatica, a lower lumbar misalignment, something clinical. Definitive.
I don’t have that.
What I have instead is a collection of symptoms.
Traditionally, I have had upper back issues, often tied to ribs being out. A good adjustment by the chiro, some massage release of tension, and I’m good to go. I had some back exercises to do, and when I did them, my upper back stayed okay. Then I would feel better, stop doing them, slump and slouch more, and bam, back to massage and/or chiro to get me going again.
In the spring of this year, something else happened. I didn’t tear anything, I didn’t move anything and feel intense pain, I didn’t fall, I wasn’t in a car accident. I just woke up one morning and the lower left part of my back was spasming a bit. I thought maybe I just slept on it wrong. In the past, I’d had pain there before but it was usually a “walking” discomfort…I would be walking along, and suddenly I’d get a tightness there. If I leaned into it, or stretched my thigh muscles and IT bands, it would lessen, and I could keep going. Weirdly, if I had my shirt tucked it and it was pulling somehow, the pain would get worse. However, this morning, I had no “cause”. It just hurt.
As the day went on, it got worse. Until early afternoon, I was trying to go to the washroom, stood up, and my whole lower back felt like it was in a vise. It was brutal, fast, unrelenting. I literally screamed. I couldn’t get it to stop spasming. I eventually had to have Andrea come down and help me. In the interest of full disclosure, and embarrassing myself to ensure I never repeat these issues, I needed her to help me wipe my own butt cuz I could not bend or reach. I got my pants and underwear on with help, and then I sat down in the basement on a bench. It seemed okay. Until I got up and tried to go up the stairs. It was brutal again.
I booked a registered massage therapist who refused to treat me until I saw my regular doctor and got some X-rays. The regular GP said it seemed fine, which was easy to say as it subsided to dull pain for the next two weeks. No need for an x-ray unless it didn’t respond to massage and osteopathy. Fast-forward another week, and I had another complete breakdown. It spasmed and I couldn’t stop it. It was excruciating, the worst pain I have ever felt. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t breathe when it spasmed. We attempted an ambulance but when they came, they just had me walk out to the van rather than trying to put me in a gurney, and the ride to the hospital was more like a bus ride…I practically held on to a strap the whole way to steady myself, feeling every bump along the way. I know the next time to just take a taxi; it would have been way faster and more comfortable, damn the pain. I spent the night in the ER, about 8 hours for someone to actually look at me and get x-rays, etc. Nothing structurally wrong, got some meds, and generally got told I completely wasted their time. The only thing that really helped is that I had ordered a back brace from Amazon, and it was giving me enough support to function.
Over the last six months, osteo was helping for a while, and then it really stopped helping. Certain movements were more clunky and painful, so I’m mostly relying on release through Chiro right now, more about my upper back than anything. Hence the need for back rehab. The only thing that is going to work is a systemic series of exercises designed to stretch certain muscles and to strengthen others.
I have a long regimen to work through, divided into three main stages. Back rehab, let’s go.
To start with, I’m supposed to do two sets of ten reps daily (or hold for 15-20s) within a pain-free range and only do what I can tolerate. There is an initial list of eight exercises but I’ll start with Group 1, then add Group 2, then Group 3:
Group 1
General Exercise 1 — Knee raises to chest (either alternating or together)
Lower Back 1 — Hip rocker A (side to side)
Group 2
General Exercise 2 — Knee rocking (laying flat on back, knees bent to 90 degrees, rocking side to side)
Lower Back 2 — Hip rocker B (forward and back)
Group 3
General Exercise 3A — Modified cat / cow exercise (smaller range of up / down motion to avoid pain)
Lower Back 3 — Mackenzie side wall (elbow at 90 degrees, healthy side only toward wall)
Piriformis 1 — Ankle pull (Knee to chest, close hand on knee other on ankle, pull towards opposite shoulder, 3 reps, 10s hold)
That will likely keep me going until at least January.
Stage 2, ramping up (February, March, April)
February is where I start to do a bit of growth, not just getting it back to where it should be already. I should be able to drop a few of the initial exercises though as I start to add in the new ones.
Group 1
General Exercise 2 — Knee rocking (laying flat on back, knees bent to 90 degrees, rocking side to side)
General Exercise 3A — Modified cat / cow exercise (smaller range of up / down motion to avoid pain)
Lower Back 1 — Hip rocker A (side to side)
Lower Back 2 — Hip rocker B (forward and back)
Piriformis 1 — Ankle pull (Knee to chest, close hand on knee other on ankle, pull towards opposite shoulder, 3 reps, 10s hold)
Glutes 1 — Standing Glute Pulses – backwards
Upper back 1 — Doorway pushups
Hamstring 1 — Straight leg raise (strap around ball of foot, pull up with leg straight until feel stretch)
Group 2
Quadricep 1 — Straight leg raises (45 degrees, slow and controlled)
Group 3
Glutes 2 — Standing Glute Pulses – side out (abductor)
Upper back 2 — Upright row (not until all lower back pain is gone)
Quadricep 2 — Toes on board, toe raises
Stage 3, strengthening legs and knees (May, June)
By the time I get to Stage 3, I should have most of the regular exercises down, and then I’ll have to decide if I’m going towards mostly Bowflex exercises (which I feel are really good for the upper body, but a little more complicated for the lower body), or repeating stage 2 with some additions from the list below of lower body work.
Quadriceps:
Abduction raises, bottom bent 90 degrees, foot horizontal
Adduction raises, bottom straight and raised inward pass back leg that is raised for stability
Heels on board, vertical squat, knees over toes (not out or in) — 10 reps … can use chairs to push back up
Band resistance squats (pushing the bands outwards with thighs)
Power band side steps/walks … Band around ankles, help hip stabilisers
Power band leg extension backwards … behind thigh, start knee bent, extend leg to push back
Hip abduction, adduction — sideways away from you (narrow, wide), towards you (wide, narrow)
Box steps — step backwards., to side
Box assisted squats — sit, stand (use lower box later)
Onward!
I have some cardio and upper body stuff to add to the plan with the Bowflex, but most of what I need to do is the exercises above to fix my back. When I get that under control, I can expand outward. But I can’t keep dealing with ongoing spasming and pain. It’s just too limiting. And, reluctantly, I have to stop using my back brace as a metaphorical crutch. It helps, but it is not a cure, just a temporary, well, crutch to lean on. It gets me through bad days, just as taking the anti-inflammatories does. And I need to stay on top of the meds while I’m doing the exercises.
Onward, as I said. Except I know this is not a simple “do it” type item for my to-do list. A simple checkbox or schedule won’t cut it. I need some extra help / enhancements and in fact, I’m going to combine seven to help me stay on track.
I will use the checkbox, scheduling, quantity (min 1 set per day), chain tracking, public announcement, formal accountability (reporting every two weeks to my chiro), and a simple yet large reward…my reward will be that if I can get my back sufficiently rehabbed in time for my birthday in June, I’ll reward myself with starting the process to choose a kayak (trying different types, renting different places, etc.).
In month 1 of my preparations for retirement in three years, I covered financial, legal, and end-of-life issues, and then I covered all my travel plans last month. I had intended to do health stuff, a natural progression from the EOL stuff in month 1, but I was slowly getting drawn into all the info on campers and RVs. And I went with the passion.
As I mentioned in previous posts, pre-planning for retirement is about seeing if I’m making the right “investments” in the various “areas” of my life, just as you would for financial planning. The biggest one that most people talk about, even if they don’t use those words, is health: “Are you making the proper investments in your health to smooth your transition into a healthy, active retirement?”.
Now that I’ve blasted through all that fun stuff, this month’s focus on health is likely to totally suck mentally and emotionally. Part of that is my historically dysfunctional emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical relationship with health, nutrition and fitness. Part of that is optimism tempered by a reality check that will hinder my efforts. Part of that is the fear that those big travel plans I mentioned in month 2 are only possible in their current form IF I can make changes before I retire; if I don’t make them, many of my retirement plans fall away. I will have failed to invest adequately to do what I want and need to do.
But the biggest challenge is that my health planning differs from almost all the other “areas” I’ll blog about within this first year. On most of them, the goal is “pre-preparation”…for example, on travel, I didn’t have to decide yet whether I would travel in an RV, campervan or towed trailer, I only had to decide what the big options would be for later. The detailed implementation planning can happen in the first year after I retire to “start” the trip about 11-12 months later. I don’t have to DO the planning work now, I just have to come up with a viable framework. If, however, I’d discovered in there that I needed to do some advanced driving course before I even get there, sure, I’d have more work to do in the coming months or years before retirement. Instead, for the most part, most of the planning stuff is to monitor developments in the industry and options for the future, handle a bit of savings to ensure I have the money if/when I need it in retirement, and then hit it hard after retirement.
By contrast? The health stuff starts now. I’m not just building a framework for the future, I’m building the framework and full-on implementation plan now. I’m jumping out of the airplane and sewing my parachute together on the way down. I don’t have time to wait, I need to start now. And if I’m totally honest with myself, I’ve tried some of this before, and failed miserably. I can’t afford to fail this time. In many ways, it feels like my last chance.
My starting point
So how’s my health? Well, generally, it sucks. If you compared it to financial planning, I would hit retirement with very little health assets to support me in my aging years. That’s a bit overdramatic, but well, not completely.
At the moment, my back is in rough shape. I did something to it about six months ago, and it has been terrorizing me ever since. I’ll bop along for a couple of weeks, seems to be going well, and then one morning I’ll wake up, roll out of bed, and it starts twinging like an SOB. When it “killed” me the first time, I had never experienced that kind of pain from the spasms. I literally was crying and occasionally screaming. Six months later, I know how to control the pain, keep it down to a dull roar, and I have a back brace to use when I need it. Massage helped, and I thought osteo was helping too for a while, but then it stopped helping at all.
Right now, I need to focus on three things:
Taking my over-the-counter meds to reduce inflammation…I confess I really don’t like taking pain meds of any kind, they can make me kind of foggy or loopy at times, but I need to get over my reluctance and take them regularly to reduce the flare-ups;
Actively do my back stretches and strengthening exercises, increasing into the more advanced ones; and,
Continue my chiro treatments.
I’ll also consider some myofascial release (after Christmas) or increased regular therapeutic massage.
After that, there’s my weight. It’s stable, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. I have plans, and most of those right now are around getting a solid workout routine going. Even if it doesn’t reduce the weight for now, it will give me more strength, energy and flexiblity for the future.
And then I need to get moving again. I’d love to start kayaking next summer, but my back needs to be “fixed” first.
What comes next?
I don’t know exactly all the “pieces” yet for my plans.
I want to look at the roll-over elements from my End-of-Life work;
I’ll be doing a full physical this fall, including A1C numbers, BP, colon, prostate;
I want to get hearing aids or at least have my hearing fully checked and evaluated;
I need to get some dental work done;
My feet have the same issues most diabetics have, so I’ll get that looked at, see if there’s anything to worry about;
I need to work through a full assessment regimen for regular evaluation of my fitness level;
I’ll start looking at flexibility, strength, movement, etc; and,
I’ll need to do a bunch of work on cognitive functions as well as mental health.
I confess that I’m not fully ready for the work I need to do this month. And, as I said, it’s not just the framework; it’s the full implementation plan or at least the pieces I need to do now to support my back rehab and be ready to move into the strength and energy levels work in about three to six months.
But the hardest part will not be that part of the equation. The most challenging part will be figuring out how to harness all the rituals and enhancements I came up so that I’ll stick to the plan and make it work. As I said, it feels like a last chance to get this right before I retire.
If I succeed, I will have the health foundations to do what I want to do; if I fail, well, that is a much more sedentary and disappointing retirement than I want to contemplate yet.
At the beginning of the month, I had a long list of ideas to write about. As I started to write, however, things moved around and morphed. In the end, here’s what the framework looked like:
A total of 10 posts about my vacation and travel plans in retirement. I admit I was pretty excited at the start. Some of the content was based on old versions of my bucket list; others were ideas generated by conversations with Andrea over the last 20+ years; others came up based on Jacob’s input and interests. It’s exciting…literally, the potential for thousands of kilometres and hundreds of days, even just for the walkabout options. While I am a bit nervous that most of the walkabout trips would be by myself, Andrea is interested in some of them, too.
Yet what really threw me for a loop is that I got almost zero comments on any of the posts from anyone. I mean, it’s not like I’m some viral blogger, but the travel ideas didn’t provoke any reaction? As I said, it surprised me. On the other hand, it reinforced one of the central tenets of retirement — I’m retiring, not Andrea or Jacob or the various friends and family reading the posts. And while I thought people would find the posts to be some of the more interesting things I have posted, they fell pretty flat. Which is an important lesson learned, too…if I want to engage people on things like camping trailer options, maybe I should try and join groups that are focused on camping trailers and talk to them. 🙂
In the end, what I did was figure out the types of trips that I wanted to consider later and the viability of the logistics. Many of them wouldn’t creep into the planning matrix until 2027 or 2028, of course, so I’ll set many of the “to-do” list items quite far out. But I drilled deep enough to narrow some of the options. And I added some enhancements, where warranted. While the “list” side is just tickboxes and scheduling, I also added the “buddy” side for Andrea and Jacob for many of the destinations, my brother Mike for some stuff on the trailer side, and my sister Carolee and niece Liz for some bundled trips. I also added Liz as I may want her suggestions for solo cruise options / repositioning options without single supplements, etc. I’ll also engage some online communities for both the trailer and kayaking options in the distant future. I’m good for now.
