Welcome to Shoestring Manor
Originally posted April 17, 2021
When I was a kid (in the olden days), Grandma lived out in the country on Rice Lake, Ontario. After a long drive (from wherever we were coming from), that final stretch down the oil slicked dirt road to was permission to exhale. At that point we could see all the memories. The lake, the small white house with the familiar whitewashed fence around the perimeter, the giant pines lined up behind the fence all greeted us through the car windows. As we pulled into the driveway, the sign, displaying the name of the house
“Shoestring Manor”
Originally there had been a cottage on that spot on the lake. However, after a fire destroyed the cottage, family and friends rallied together to rebuild and construct a house in its place. And because there wasn’t any real money, they accomplished the building of it “On a Shoestring”
Idiom: (do something) ‘on a shoestring’
(informal) (do something) with very little money: In the early years, the business was run on a shoestring
Thanks to a ‘frugal’ family, (We used to say Grandma was ‘tight as the paper on the walls’) I do know a thing or two about getting a pretty good bang for a buck. However, I failed the Marshmallow Test – and to this day, continue to fail the marshmallow test – I am NOT good at delayed gratification (read: not much in the way of retirement savings) and as far as I can remember, there has not been much in my life that was planned out in advance. I’m more of a ‘go with the flow’ kind of person so, I sit here now, not too far past my 60th trip around the sun, contemplating retirement when most people have already planned or even done it.
Fast Forward to 2021;
As a single mother of 3 kids, there was no space for savings, no wiggle room in the budget to put money aside for a rainy day and well, I prefer to live in the moment – we don’t know what will happen tomorrow so make the most of today right? I did make the most of the todays, and I don’t regret it – but making the most of ‘today’ now seems to involve some of that planning stuff.
As a result, I now spend quite a bit of time thinking about tomorrow. Not ‘worrying’, thinking. I have tried to envision what my retirement might look like. I have run through some scenarios based on what I expect will be my retirement income (Canada Pension, Old age security, and maybe a little savings) I will certainly be living on a shoestring but there will be no ‘building’ like my grandparent’s little house. In fact, I don’t think there will be a ‘home’ at all!
Shoestring Manor (dot CA) is where I’m going to try and sort out the details so that when I get to that magical 65, I’ll be ready. I have a lot of questions, a lot of ideas, and a lot of research and learning to do.
Update August 20, 2021: This was the plan all along. Contrary to my first hint at what I was after, dangling my toes in the water so to speak… I was a little afraid to say it out loud but now that I have taken a giant step towards…. the retirement plan is to convert a van to a camper and spend as much time as humanly possible travelling around North America. I’m going to be an eccentric solo Canadian woman living a nomad life!
I hope you’ll enjoy the story.