Anchor Babies are Limiting my Retirement options and have thrown years of plans off the table. It wasn’t something I saw coming until it was too late. Everything was going great and then the Anchor Baby reality was revealed. We aren’t moving anywhere away from the grand-kids. Yes, my wife of decades sprung her secret new vision of retirement on me. I don’t know if she only agreed with her fingers crossed to move to the desert . To a place where we could easily visit our extended family. That and travel year round a short distance to the west coast. Maybe she just changed her mind once the grand-kids started to appear and kept quiet until early retirement was finally achieved. Maybe it was an accumulative thing as each grand-child entered the picture.

I resisted this sudden change of retirement vision. I stated all the reasons we agreed it best for us to move from the high altitude and snowy winters. It imprisons us from hitting the roads half the year.

I wrote down a list of the reasons we were in agreement for a desert retirement only a few years before:

• Close to her mother to help her in her old age.
• Easily travel to visit our extended family within 4.5 hours instead of the 8 hours we have now.
• Easily travel to the west coast within 6 hours instead of the 16 hours we have now to get our ocean and beach fix.
• NO SNOW!
• Way less population nearby like we have now with Denver only 30 miles away making any highway jaunt a traffic planned endeavor.
• Lower cost of living. We could save 15% to 20% off of our retirement lifestyle cost.
• We can still make the 10 hour drive to visit the kids and now grand-kids quarterly crossing the Rocky Mountains as weather permits.

I presented my list. But guess what? She didn’t flinch. She then hit me with her verbal list of reasons:

• She wants us to be here for all the grand-kid’s birthdays
• She wants us to be here for all the grand-kid’s Holidays
• She wants to babysit to help out our daughters and be part of the grand-kid’s lives.
• She wants us to attend the grand-kid’s school musicals and plays and everything else that young children do.
• She wants us to watch the grand-kid’s grow-up and be a part of their lives, not just those grandparents that stop by a few times a year for a day or two.
• She wants us to have happy memories taking the grand-kid’s to the Zoo, Aquarium, etc. and for them to have happy memories of us too.
• She wants us to visit and help her mother often and give her brother who lives nearby a break. She wants to be there as much as needed but our home is here near the kids and grand-kids.

Our Anchor Babies are Limiting my Retirement plans, but for good reasons.

There is an old saying that I have come to know as truth over the decades of our marriage, “If Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy”. So I had to give in and set my desert lifestyle retirement plans aside based on that truth. But only initially because reason prevails and she is absolutely right. I can see that this is the better plan and making our kids and their families the focus of our early retirement has been a blessing. We have been there from their birth, their crawling, walking and starting school for some. With 5 grand-kids age 7 months to 10 years old we have seen a lot of their lives we would have missed had we stuck to the first plan.

It doesn’t hurt that I actually love the town I live in and can tolerate the snow if I have to.

Importance of Communication and Openness to Retirement Plan Changes.

It is very important when you are part of a couple to communicate your retirement lifestyle vision. In the end everyone will have to be on the same page.

The journey to financial independence and early retirement takes some time to achieve and is full of saving and planning. However we must be able to make changes to those plans as lifestyles, health, family priorities, finances, etc. change during the journey.

Communication needs to be constant and thoughts of changes should be talked about as early as possible. Especially if it changes other aspects of your plans like finances, retirement date, location, etc.

To Conclude

Yes, my grand-kids are what I call my Anchor Babies. I am happy that my wife talked some sense into me a few years ago when early retirement began. I understand that many have hi-jacked the two words anchor and baby used together to only mean something associated to immigration. I don’t and have used the two words like this for years. I call these beautiful grand-children my anchor babies because we won’t move away from them. They have us anchored to stay a citizen of the U.S. State of Colorado. Since I won’t be trapped by the traditional definition of “retirement” why stop there?

I only jest today when I say that they are limiting my Retirement plans. They are certainly not limiting my retirement at all but making it much fuller than I could have envisioned. Who knows, as kids grow up they seem to want to distance themselves from the old folks. Perhaps I will live Snow-Free after all. It will just have to be later in life. It makes me feel quite gay to think about it. I mean feel quite happy to think about it. People get so hung up on words and new definitions based on special interest and cultural shifts. That’s fine but some of us like the old definitions too.

Have you had a lifestyle, health, family, finances, job, or other change that has caused you to re-envision your retirement? Did you have to start that conversation of plan changes with your spouse?