Look both ways

As my wife drove Smallsteps to daycare this morning, she was quiet in the back for a moment thinking and then asked;

"When are you and Daddy going to die?"

When my wife took me to hospital, Smallsteps' grandparents picked her up and I went to the door to say goodbye. For me, I literally said goodbye to her, giving her hugs and kisses, told her how much I loved her and to have a good time. She could see that I was in some pain and knew I was going to hospital, but didn't of course understand all of the details.

Since I have been home, she has been a little standoffish in some way - when she remembers, but most of the time she has been her normal, clever and silly self.

We have discussed death before and she knows the concept well enough, but she has obviously been thinking about what death means and building upon her understanding from what she has known of it so far. It was just before Christmas that our beloved dog moved on and coincidentally, today is the first anniversary of my dad's passing last year. Coming to terms with the concept and then making the connection to those you see daily and rely on, must be quite a revelation.

My wife assured her that while nothing is guaranteed, we like most people will probably live until we are much older and she doesn't have to worry about these things. I am careful not to lie to Smallsteps about even this kind of thing, as if something were to happen to me for example, she would then potentially feel that her mother lied and didn't prepare her, leaving an avenue for bitterness and resentment to form.

There are probably a whole lot of books available on how to talk to kids about these kinds of topics, but then considering how much we supposedly know, children do not seem to be becoming more capable at dealing with the world of disappointment they inevitably meet.

Death is one of those topics we tend to avoid from sheer discomfort, even though it truly is the great unifier between us all, no matter our race, religion or economic position. Try as we might, there is no cheating death eternally.

Yet, despite the universal commonality of it, we are increasingly taking the approach that it is something unexpected, undeserved, unlikely. I am always when people say things like, "I am worried my parents will get Covid and die" when their parents are in their late eighties. At what point is it inappropriate to expect parents to keep on surviving life? When you are a babyboomer born after the first world war, it is probably time to at least mentally prepare.

But, I am 42. That isn't exactly elderly and considering that despite me having a few unwanted kilos stopping my abs from showing, I am in relatively good condition, my untimely demise would be just that, untimely. However unexpected though, it isn't unheard of, even in advanced countries, as disease, accident and misfortune are a constant companion of life and will be for the foreseeable future.

Some people take this to mean that they have to make every day count, as you only live once and you might get hit by a bus tomorrow. You do only live once and you might be hit by a bus tomorrow, but the chances are that you won't be hit tomorrow, or the next day, or any other day in your life and will probably live much like my wife described - a long and happy ordinary life.

It is because of the statistical probability of mortality and life outcome that guidelines can be made on what we may need in the years after retirement, and what we need to do now in order to get there. Living life as if we aren't going to get that far means not doing the work necessary or not using the work to prepare for those times adequately, leaving us well short financially.

Just think, the average Australian family drives 1.8 cars, yet the average Australian only has about 50% of the superannuation they need at their current age group.

ASFA estimates that the lump sum needed at retirement to support a comfortable lifestyle is $640,000 for a couple and $545,000 for a single person. This assumes a partial Age Pension.

This also assumes owning one's house.

Of course, not everyone wants a comfortable lifestyle in their old age.

While I want to be working for as long as I possibly can, I don't want to have to be grinding away for a crust of bread to eat in order to make ends meet. I want to have a "comfortable lifestyle" where I can choose what I do and how I do it. There are far too many elderly people I have met who are suffering and struggling, even though they had ample opportunity to prepare for a better experience.

People often say to me "you have to live life now" and the like, yet many of those same people are not actually enjoying the life they are living now, often complaining about not having enough in order to be able to enjoy their experience. Sure, life can't just be filled with work alone and preparing for a future that may never come, but what we do daily is going to affect what we can do daily, meaning that the future that people keep not preparing for will eventually arrive and they will inevitably find themselves unprepared.

Being unprepared for reality is more stressful than feeling like having missed out on opportunity, because it has an immediate impact on experience. I don't worry about all of the steak dinners I haven't eaten, but all of those steak dinners would be meaningless at the time I am hungry and have no money in my pocket.

But they aren't meaningless, are they?

It would have been all of those little decisions one way over another that would have eventually surmounted to those empty pockets. We see this played out time and time again, where people say "just this once" without remembering that last week or yesterday, there was another "just this once" and there always has been.

People have done the coffee a day into bitcoin calculations and the return is obviously insane over the space of years, but even with the most conservative of investment approaches, it would be significant over the space of decades.

Having a retirement fund doesn't replace a parent if they die, but if the parent lives, it means that a child doesn't have to try and live a life and also provide for a parent, or worry about whether they are able to feed themselves.

I don't know if I will survive til old age in this life, but if I do, I don't want to be a burden on Smallsteps. And if I don't, I want to be able to be a support for her even in my absence so she can have an easier financial life than I have had, because I believe she has far more important things to do with her potential, than spending all her attention and energy having to work for money.

We might only live once and we might be hit by a bus tomorrow, but I choose to be prepared for living a life beyond my own as I have a child, and making sure that I look both ways before crossing the street.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]