I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I am hosting the January Swap and I noticed how early things seem to pop up for the Incredible Edible Swaps. Anyway, I will try to get this one listed by Dec. 8. I know it is hard to find seeds right now but hopefully everyone has some stashed away. I would like to allow seeds saved from your garden and partial packets of seeds for the January Winter Sowing Seed Swap. First of all, to help out if you don't have many appropraite seeds and secondly, I think some who sign up for the swap may not have winter sowed before so when experimenting, no need to do that with a lot of seeds! When I post the heading, I will include some sites that give guidlelines on what type of seeds to sow when and according to zones. I found that the herbs, tomatoes, and summer squash that I winter sowed were really vigorous plants. Some herbs do great, too. I have only been winter sowing for two years so I am not an expert, but I really think it is a wonderful method for planting. Jeanne

I've rented what used to be step-uncle's house and have had a substantial garden (actually, about three, now) for several years. I figure that I can live here, 30 km. (20 mi.) from the city as long as I can drive. I'm thankful to be enjoying good health: it's seldom that my body tells me, "Listen, you darned old fool - you can't DO that any more!". Had a pulmonary emboloism last fall, but apart from some discomfort and some pain for part of a day, alleviated with rat poison, I'm pretty well functioning as before. I rather figure that I won the lottery - for clots hitting one's heart cause heart attacks ... and hitting one's brain cause strokes. In the lung ... pain awoke me in the early morning, but when I was upright the pain went away, and after most of a day in emerg., finished with a shot of blood thinner, about 20 min. after which my breathing pretty well returned to normal ... and now I'm on the pill - well, a pill a day for five days and half a pill for each of the other two. Good wishes for a fruitful retirement, folks. And do some things to help build a better and happier community, not only here but world-wide, for we have some serious problems to which we need to attend. ole joyful

Devorah, After he retires, will your husband have each and every hour of each and every day crammed full of stuff to do? After a short while of running around kicking up their heels and getting a lot of the stuff done that they'd been looking forward for years to doing ... ... some freshly-minted retirees ... ... sit around and get bored. Some wives get fed up (well, frustrated) with hubs spending quite a lot of time around the house. They were used to having the house to themselves (for most of the day). When I talked to folks in seminars about retirement, I suggested that some men, used to being involved in many things, take to following their wives about the house, suggesting that if she were to do such and such a task in a little different way, it would be easier, take less time, be more efficient, etc. But that it might not be a god idea to follow that practice if there were a gun in the house. Or a baseball bat. Also said that Tom retired one day, and next morning was sitting in his favourite chair, reading the paper. After a few minutes, he put the paper down and looked around. Picked it up again and read a while longer, then put it down again and looked around. After about five times of this, Marje says, "Something wrong"? "Where's breakfast?", asks Tom. Marje replies, "You retired yesterday, didn't you?" "Yes," says Tom, "What's that got to do with anything?" "So did I", says Marje, sweetly. After Tom contemplates that answer for a moment or two, Marje continues, "I'll tell you what - I'll get breakfast now, and after breakfast is over, we'll sit down to discuss who's going to do what around here. How does that grab you?" We don't have record of Tom's reply. But this story seemed to receive a more positive response from the female portion of the audience than from their counterparts. Are there some interests of his in which you might develop an interest? Some of yours that might interest him, when he has more time on his hands? Perhaps you can develop some new paths that might be of interest to you both, when he isn't burdened by work any longer. Paid employment, that is - I realize that he's not the only one that works around your house, now. Good wishes to you both for a blessed New Year. ole joyful

No, duluth, you're not the odd one out, but you're one of the sensible ones, LOL! DH and I were sloppy about a lot of things and didn't catch on until our mid to late 40s. We're fortunate things worked out but like you, there was a pension for DH that we could rely upon. Sadly, fewer and fewer have that option any longer. Anyway, it occurred to me I hadn't actually answered some of the OP's questions, so my bad. Here's my answers: 1) At what age do you hope to retire? I retired in 2006 at age 55. DH retired at the end of 2009 at age 56. I retired because I couldn't find a job within reasonable commute distance that was worth being away from home 10 hrs/daily, 5 days/wk. Salaries had dropped precipitiously (and remain low even now). I had job offers, but they would have involved a killer commute - using my car in SF Bay Area traffic for a 3-hr roundtrip would have essentially negated any extra salary above what was being offered around my home town. Had the money been really needed, I could have continued working for another 10 yrs, just with lower $$ expectations. I enjoyed what I did and met a lot of great people, many of whom I'm still in regular contact with. A large factor in my retiring was when my MIL moved in with us. We discovered our weekly visits had not shown us the real issue - a very gradual dementia. She is functional day to day, but there's no way she should live alone any longer. Because she shares household expenses with us, it makes up for what I would have netted from a full-time job. 2) Will you stay in your current home or move? We are staying put for now. We like where we live; we love our neighbors and they love us; it's convenient in location to our friends, family, and a wide range of attractions/activities. However, this is not a home for the disabled or elderly. It cannot be retrofitted at a reasonable cost. The area is all rolling hills and our property has a double slope, making gardening a real work-out! We have no sentimental attachment to a structure of wood, stucco and glass. It is a roof over our heads, it has served us well, it is extremely comfortable having been extensively remodeled. When the time comes that it's too much trouble to take care of, which I foresee coming in the next 5-10 yrs, we will gladly pack up and leave. We would like to live in a specific CCRC we've visited, but time will tell if it will work out financially. If not, we have sufficient assets to have other options for the next phases of our lives, whether together or singly. 3) What kind of investments or income sources will you have? DH has a defined benefit pension with 2% annual COLA and full medical at low cost (no vision or dental, though). His mid-range six-figure retirement account is our backup, we don't need to take distributions. We live a very comfortable lifestyle in an extremely expensive area, entirely on his pension. The last two years DH worked were a 'trial run' for budget purposes. He was contributing extra to his retirement account so we were living on the equivalent of what his estimated pension would be. So when he did retire, there were no surprises or shortfalls. I have three small pension/annuities from former employers that will start at age 65. I'm eligible for full SocSec at 66. These income sources will mitigate any inflationary pressures in future years. Because I have almost no retirement savings, I carry term life in the amount of $750K to ensure DH would have additional financial assets through my age 70, at which point the policy expires and we won't worry about how much more $$$ he needs should I predecease him. BTW, this is what I mean about properly assessing your own morbidity and mortality risks. DH suffered a stroke at age 50 and if he lives past 75 it will be a wonderful gift. But genetics are totally against him, so his odds are at best 50-50 to reach age 85 or order. My odds are about the same or slightly better. Both of us have family histories of diabetes and heart trouble. These are no longer the killers they were, but they are disablers. We have no children and relatively few family, even locally. Therefore, we each carry very good unlimited benefit LTC policies to cover facility care and home healthcare as we age. We have had these policies since our late 40's, and buying them was the smartest thing we ever did. Once DH had his stroke, he would never have qualified for anything affordable, even if I'd been able to find a carrier, for the next five years afterward. The total premiums we've paid for both policies over ten years, don't even equal six months in a good facility for only one of us. 4) Do you plan to work part time, or what kind of activities will you do? Retirement has been great. We sleep when we want, we eat when we're hungry, we don't have to dance to anyone else's tune, and we get to do errands mid-week/mid-day, when the check-out lines are shorter and sales clerks more relaxed. I garden and like to read (Amazon knows me SO WELL). I spend a lot of time on the PC as it's my lifeline: I shop, read, research, and communicate almost totally by computer. Every day I read three newspapers on-line: the local, the NY Times, and the WSJournal. Recently we went on a 5-week driving trip through the Pacific NW and I spent hundreds of hours on the PC researching every travel segment, hotel, restaurants, and attractions. Exhausting, but the trip was a huge success and it was worth the work. I set up a restaurant review blogsite last year. We dine out regularly and my reviews are fairly long, so this helps me keep them organized. This year I've set up a travel blogsite after our five 2010 trips. I'm not in love with blogging, but did this after being asked by friends to set up something on the web so they could access everything more easily. For 2011 I plan to revamp our garden website and that will be a huge undertaking. I have thousands of photos to winnow down and organize. DH is a media junkie. It isn't uncommon for him to have two TVs on and his three computers running simultaneously. All this while he does his hobby stuff (wargaming). Talk about multi-tasking, LOL! He's a sweetie, he'll do anything I want to do. A good partnership: I like to organize and he'll accompany me anywhere. We also like to walk, but he can walk further than I can so he sometimes takes himself off to hike alone in state parks. I'm an urban walker, I like to know there's people around if I need help. We both do yoga, but different types. His former boss occasionally gives him contract work, which is easy money but doesn't happen often.