Travel like a broad liberal education is one of the few investments you make that really leaves you richer, not poorer. With nearly 13 years spent in mission service, Deanne and I are not wealthy, and do not have adequate savings for retirement, so I should be working a lot while productive and saving a lot for the decline.
I see too many patients, however, who did this, working for retirement, and then after a short time of retirement either loosing interest in their non-work, or loosing health. So since I see no way of being wealthy and retired, I sort-of-have-a-plan to keep working as long as able, but enjoying life as I work.
I have done a few things like cut out a few appointments from my schedule so I don't feel as rushed day after day always running late and harried.
And I want to enjoy the ride which for me includes vacations and travel when I can enjoy it. Last years 60th birthday celebration with my children and friends in Austria's Salzkammergut was a wonderful beginning. It is still sweet to memory, every minute of it, thank you children and Basshams, thank you.
It was a little harder this year to get Deanne to see the wisdom of this plan, since she will no doubt outlive me and a cash cushion is more important to her than to me, and besides she has a hundred thousand dollars worth of house repairs and renovations on a list someplace for our present 1974 home.
But when I worked it out for our frequent flyer miles (we paid college tuition on Visa) combined it with a medical meeting I needed, and just generally was impossible, she agreed, when we talked Sue and Don into this she was fully happy about it. We got FF tickets leaving Sunday September 18 on British Airways (ALW-SEA-PHOENIX-LONHeathrow-VIE) and we returned Wednesday October 3 (VIE-LON-SEA-ALW). Although the medical meetings were in Budapest, the cheaper tickets were for Vienna which is only a 2 hour drive away, and I wanted to enjoy Austria again, as well as investigate Budapest in Hungary.
Back Home I can now offer you 3 conclusions. In case you don't want to spend the time to read all the details of what a great trip we had!)
1.) Late September/early October is a wonderful time to visit Central/Eastern Europe. A little less expensive tickets, less tourism in the places you visit, and perfectly wonderful weather. Clear, sun most days, a day of light rain. Comfort in a shirt most days. Add a T-shirt others. Sweater or light jacket for evenings. Rooms available everyplace we went.
2.) Hungary is a very nice place to visit. Great food. Reasonable prices for lodging (with our bottom sucking dollar this becomes more important) and good infrastructure. Wonderful food, especially at harvest time.
3.) Don't travel through London Heathrow if you can help it. The security screeners there in Terminal 4 make it so hard to move around that they incense most all of the travelers. They appear lazy (standing around in groups doing nothing, out of 6 lines and 3 groups of employees one line was working for hundreds and hundreds of passengers), inefficient (8 of them cluster around a picture for 10 minutes arguing over what they see), and appear to have not the slightest interest in the needs or inconvenience to the travelers (It's SECURITY ma'm!).
I have vowed to not travel through there ever again if I can help it. The British gentleman in front of me mutters, "If we were dogs, the SPCA would be all over these blighters!"
I see too many patients, however, who did this, working for retirement, and then after a short time of retirement either loosing interest in their non-work, or loosing health. So since I see no way of being wealthy and retired, I sort-of-have-a-plan to keep working as long as able, but enjoying life as I work.
I have done a few things like cut out a few appointments from my schedule so I don't feel as rushed day after day always running late and harried.
And I want to enjoy the ride which for me includes vacations and travel when I can enjoy it. Last years 60th birthday celebration with my children and friends in Austria's Salzkammergut was a wonderful beginning. It is still sweet to memory, every minute of it, thank you children and Basshams, thank you.
It was a little harder this year to get Deanne to see the wisdom of this plan, since she will no doubt outlive me and a cash cushion is more important to her than to me, and besides she has a hundred thousand dollars worth of house repairs and renovations on a list someplace for our present 1974 home.
But when I worked it out for our frequent flyer miles (we paid college tuition on Visa) combined it with a medical meeting I needed, and just generally was impossible, she agreed, when we talked Sue and Don into this she was fully happy about it. We got FF tickets leaving Sunday September 18 on British Airways (ALW-SEA-PHOENIX-LONHeathrow-VIE) and we returned Wednesday October 3 (VIE-LON-SEA-ALW). Although the medical meetings were in Budapest, the cheaper tickets were for Vienna which is only a 2 hour drive away, and I wanted to enjoy Austria again, as well as investigate Budapest in Hungary.
Back Home I can now offer you 3 conclusions. In case you don't want to spend the time to read all the details of what a great trip we had!)
1.) Late September/early October is a wonderful time to visit Central/Eastern Europe. A little less expensive tickets, less tourism in the places you visit, and perfectly wonderful weather. Clear, sun most days, a day of light rain. Comfort in a shirt most days. Add a T-shirt others. Sweater or light jacket for evenings. Rooms available everyplace we went.
2.) Hungary is a very nice place to visit. Great food. Reasonable prices for lodging (with our bottom sucking dollar this becomes more important) and good infrastructure. Wonderful food, especially at harvest time.
3.) Don't travel through London Heathrow if you can help it. The security screeners there in Terminal 4 make it so hard to move around that they incense most all of the travelers. They appear lazy (standing around in groups doing nothing, out of 6 lines and 3 groups of employees one line was working for hundreds and hundreds of passengers), inefficient (8 of them cluster around a picture for 10 minutes arguing over what they see), and appear to have not the slightest interest in the needs or inconvenience to the travelers (It's SECURITY ma'm!).
I have vowed to not travel through there ever again if I can help it. The British gentleman in front of me mutters, "If we were dogs, the SPCA would be all over these blighters!"
