For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.

Taking It With You?

As we approach retirement, we spend time looking at calculators, checking our portfolios and wondering if we will have enough money to make it through our lives and to leave something to our children because, as the old saying goes (notwithstanding the picture above) "Have you ever seen a hearse pulling a UHaul?"  We can't take it with us, and I've noticed a real temptation in my life to see retirement as a time for ME to do WHAT I WANT TO DO, particularly as I will have very happily spent twenty eight years as the mother of minor children.  For me, vague retirement plans include lots of travel, time to read and hopefully, time with grandchildren. We are saving money now to make those dreams a possibility in the future.   However, as Matthew tells us "For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be".  This periodic feature (I'm aiming for a few Sundays per month) will look at retirement and planning for it from the viewpoint of my Catholic spiritual values.

The main problem I'm having with this post is trying to figure out how to prepare, spiritually speaking, for retirement.  I have plans of what I'd like to do, spiritually, in retirement and those plans include time for daily Mass and perhaps volunteering a church.  Other than that, I guess I see retirement as a chance to prepare spiritually for the next step, which of course, is death.