I can’t think why I needed reminding to write a retirement blog on downsizing. I mean it’s such an obvious topic for the retired person isn’t it? So many good reasons why we should do it. The obvious one I suppose is freeing up some cash to supplement our pensions. Can’t argue with that rationale. Or we may simply welcome the opportunity to lead a ‘lighter’ lifestyle, with lessened clutter, fewer responsibilities and an altogether simpler version of the time we have left.
Put like that a person might say, well, what’s not to like, why wouldn’t I do this thing? I did once write a blog about de-cluttering prompted as I recall by an article in one of the weekend papers. This one was ‘inspired’ by an article in my free The Oldie. Written as I said in my last blog by the author Hunter Davies.
I’ve always liked and admired Hunter. He used to write about topics I enjoyed – The Beatles, football (Spurs as I recall but you can’t have everything – as above) and he wrote about them in an accessible yet clever and witty style. I haven’t heard from him for quite a while so it was nice that he popped up in the ‘growing old disgracefully’ section of the current Oldie magazine.
The title of his article was simply entitled, Bigger is Better : Hunter Davies loves living alone in his huge empty nest and the topic was, why I won’t downsize. His main reason and one that really struck a chord with me, was because he wanted to keep his collections together. He, like me, had collected things. Him, cigarette cards, football programmes; me – guitars, chairs, books of all kinds, old magazines and comics including those I’ve kept since I was a kid – Beano, Eagle, Meccano magazine and so on.
The purely practical thought of reducing the collections, unpacking or removing, transporting those I’d kept, storing, rehousing etc. etc., makes me weak at the knees and they’re weak enough already. Then there’s the emotional side of the process – selecting what to keep and what to dispose of. Saying good bye to old friends. Items that have been part of my life for 60 odd years in some cases.
No, as long as the money holds out, I’m more than happy (not a word I use lightly) to continue paying the various bills to keep our house (houses in fact but who’s counting?) as a place to base my collections. Yes, it’s true I do quite admire people who have taken the step of lightening their load. In some cases, like another article in this issue of the magazine, they have sold all properties and spent their lives on a perpetual, even eternal (although not literally), cruise ship/s.
Yes hats off but it’s not for me. Nor for Hunter Davies. He reckons he has about 20 different collections which include football books, postcards, first editions of newspapers, London Underground maps, the autographs of every prime minister since Walpole and thousands of Beatles items. He is photographed with a pair of Paul McCartney’s swimming trunks. Phew I can’t compete with that.
What I might ‘compete’ with is his view that downsizing, as carried out by however many friends he has left, is a way of giving money to their children to enable them to get on the property ladder. He doesn’t approve and neither do I. For me, one child and partner already have their own house and the other is far enough away for me not to have to worry.
As well as the charitable aspect of this donation Hunter sees it as a way of avoiding or reducing inheritance tax if they live for another 7 years. A lovely, three-storey house (his description) in a nice part of London might generate a lot of tax to avoid paying but I don’t think the same could be said for a house in Headingley, Leeds even with the other two properties thrown in. We have left a will so the children will get some money but not enough, we believe, to pay inheritance tax. I might be wrong of course but we may never know.
His wife died four years ago so predictably he feels guilty about all the space. One response to the guilt is to take in a lodger. A young woman he says, shortly before he describe himself as fit and still chasing women’. Made me pause for thought but probably I do him a disservice. There’s a lot of ‘it’ about.
I have no intention of letting my wife die first so any guilt about having too much space on an already over-crowded planet will be hers, not mine. At least that’s the plan. I certainly don’t mind going first just not yet for a while (a long while if poss).
He’s also rearranging his house so he can in the future do all his living downstairs. As steps are a ‘bugger’. Clearly no thought of a Stannah stair lift. This I applaud and I say that even though they have offered to pay me money to place adverts on my blog. At this point he is talking about the upper storeys housing his ‘carers’. I have to admit this man has it all sorted. Of course plans don’t always work out. He probably didn’t plan for his wife to die before him, so who knows what the future holds.
But just a minute this is meant to be a blog about downsizing or more accurately not downsizing as portrayed by Hunter Davies. The book at the beginning of this retirement blog was written by Hunter in 1972. It was the first time I realised that somebody could write intelligently and engagingly about football. And I read somewhere that as quite a rare book it had gone up in value. Now that’s my kind of book. Had I been prone to throwing out my books (for example) I wouldn’t have this and wouldn’t be able to illustrate this blog with the front cover. Need I say more?