My wife and I have being carrying out another one of our regular economy drives. We do this periodically given our somewhat straightened circumstances resulting from a number of factors.  Among these are the Global Financial Crises which hacked large chunks out of our already meager savings, our penchant for expensive overseas travel which has excised further dollops from our available readies and our kids with their periodic needs for housing subsidies and various other support supplements designed to bleed us white. All this has been compounded by my own absolute refusal to engage in any form of activity which would involve my giving up a single second of my own time in return for money. I managed to break that particularly pernicious habit some twenty years or so ago and have so far stubbornly refused to contemplate a return to it.

This last item is a bit of a bone of contention with my spousal companion; my homicidal partner; my wife. She claims that there is a direct connection between my bone idleness our exit from our waterfront lodgings, our inexorable rearward movement along the fuselage of international long haul jet aircraft, our consumption of sparkling wines made in the style of Champagne instead of the real thing and a number of other little pointers to a life which whilst not completely penurious has certainly been on a reasonably long gliding descent to lower altitudes for some time now. I do think she is being a touch unkind. She claims for example that I chose to retire at 51. “Most men keep working until 65” she said, “but oh no not you” She said shaking her head in time to the words: “BUT---OH---NO---NOT---YOU”

It’s the curling of the lip which gets me most.  And in any case this is a willful distortion of any objective analysis of the facts. I didn’t actually retire. I was sort of ejaculated by the business after selling it in panic stricken haste to avoid certain ruin. The new owners bounced me out of the door literally before the ink was dry on the contract. Not quickly enough I might add to prevent me from nicking a lifetime’s supply of biros and post it notes from the stationary store but definitely within twelve hours.

I must say I was astonished at how many people said to me sagely and with all knowing little smiles, “Someone like you will not be able to stay unoccupied for long. You are bound to start something new and exciting. You’ll get involved in new ventures. YOU could never remain idle.”

Wrong! How little did they know me. It’s true that I had vaguely envisioned some other form of gainful activity at an ill defined time in the future. I did actually start to prepare a resume at one stage but gave up when I found that I didn’t have any readily quantifiable skills that would be of the slightest use to anyone.

Interestingly, one well meaning friend treated me to a full Birkman Career/Psychological analysis with a major management consulting company. These things are designed to tease out the strengths, weaknesses and aptitudes of the subject and to help them determine their most suitable career options. It was presented to me as a birthday treat. It cost him several hundreds of dollars and took up most of a day for me. I think the underlying motive for this generous gift was to somehow motivate, goad, encourage me to reinvent myself using the undiscovered talent which would be unearthed by my Birkman report.

It was a fun day and one which was full of uplifting badinage with the delicious Liz, the psychologist moderator in charge of my assessment.

Her heady perfume and great cleavage did, regrettably, cause me to make a few clumsy exploratory forays in the direction of some extra curricular rough and tumble, but these I have to report were unsuccessful and possibly unnoticed. I may not have been the first sad pre senior she had encountered.

It would embarrass me to reveal all that was brought to light in the final report but I can say that according to the Birkman protocols, I have the administrative skills of a Turnip and interpersonal abilities best not deployed too widely.

All this simply confirmed my own analysis but had the great advantage of providing a rolled gold, in writing, rationale for a future filled with glorious inaction.

But this is digressing a little. The task at hand, the activity that I and my wife, friend, lover and chief tormenter were sat down to contemplate was to seek out some further economies; some swingeing cuts to the Phillips budgetary arrangements which might slow the financial hemorrhaging. At least a little.

Naturally such negotiations are always matters which require the treading of an extremely delicate path through the intricacies of the web like power structures of a long term marriage.

Our marriage has been built on what are known as the Kissinger Principles. Henry that is. The first is Glasnost – it worked well in the Soviet Union for a while. The next is Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD. I think that one is self explanatory. And the last is, No Exit Strategy.

If these principles are deployed diligently it is possible to get the balance of terror about right and guarantee the longevity of any marriage.

The problem with this type of discussion is that once you have covered the large, shared, expenditure line items such as ski holidays, summer excursions to Europe and the like; items about which there is a mutual desire not to cut or compromise on, you quickly get onto discussions about individual, discretionary expenditure such as the cost and frequency of leg waxes, hairdressing, pedicures, iridologists, phrenologists, naturopaths, homeopaths, psychopaths, plus a laundry list of other paths and ists. All of which are apparently inviolate, untouchable; not for discussion so off the agenda.

Returning fire, there is discussion about how many bicycles I need, three, how many surf skis I have bought and sold, You find out! Why do I need three wetsuits, six pairs of goggles, three pairs of snow skis, eight different kind of backpacks – I argue that it is only seven because one is technically not a back pack but a torso pack… bad argument, make mental note not to run that one again.

“How much do you spend each week at the Sand Bar Cafe?” I am asked. A quick mental calculation. $98 “$98! That’s, let me see, that’s around $6000 a year!” she says. My arithmetic is better than hers so I attempt to gain a debating foothold by saying, “No it isn’t, it’s a bit less than $5000 actually. But I’ve been ambushed once again. “$5000 a year! So you admit that you spend $5000 a year down there do you? You could easily cut that down if you only went there say once or twice a week and had your breakfast at home on the other days.

“But it’ the only human contact I get each day.” I counter.

At this point a short break in the fiscal rectitude discussions is taken while we enter into a brief but spirited spell of domestic aggression.  After this we have a nice cup of tea complete with a dunkable Ginger Nut biscuit each.

Discussion then moves on to contemplating whether we can find ways to reduce our large quarterly electricity bill.  A stalemate ensues here. Our 7000 megawatt, three phase, reverse cycle, heating and air conditioning plant (the street lights go dim when it cuts in) briefly becomes the focus of attention but is quickly dumped as a source of savings because one of us likes to use a lot of air conditioning in the summer and the other a lot of heating in the winter. So instead we skirmish about who leaves the bathroom lights on the most.

Health care is the closest we get to a real breakthrough and some real savings possibilities. It turns out we are spending around $4000 a year on health cover, private health insurance, ridgy didge top of the line all singing and dancing top cover. I explain that if we cancelled this cover we could move over to the new Mary Cover system of health care. It’s the brand new universal system just introduced in a joint venture between the Sydney Archdiocese and the Vatican following the canonisation of Mary McKillop. This miracle new, prayer-based system at present works best for major medical emergencies such as cancers and other life threatening diseases but I have heard that the product offering will soon be capable of looking after even the more trivial of health issues.

We decide against making this move after my wife points out that she’s heard that Mary Cover won’t cover her gym membership, running shoes or dental cover.

Bugger.

The solution to our financial problems was of course staring us right in the face all the time. We had just been looking at it the wrong way. If you will bear with me for a moment I’ll take you through the actuarial underpinnings to the solution.

You see what most of us do, people of a certain age I mean, is look at the life expectancy tables work out how many years they have on this mortal coil, make allowances for the fact that the female will live at least 5 years longer than the poor male because she has worked him into an early grave trying to pay for her hairdressing appointments, and out of this we get what we call a weighted partnered number of consumption years left for the spousal couple. We take this number and divide it into the amount of savings available for consumption over that period. The savings amount can be increased if necessary by factoring in a major accommodation downsize and a move to Rooty Hill.

Now every time I attempt this calculation, the annual available burn rate simply refuses to be large enough to cover our needs.

So what is needed is a new way of doing the calculations. Obviously the available cash can’t increase without colliding with my “no gainful employment principle.” So let’s look at the calculations again. Let’s write down the amount we need to spend each year and divide that number into the savings amount. From this you can arrive at the number of years at which you can spend at this rate.

Now you’re talking! This new methodology brings certainty to the system and I’m sure in time, and once the new death with dignity laws come into play, there will be a revolution in the way retirement planning is done.

So I did the calculations and it all looks pretty good so far but don’t expect to see me at any Story Tellers meetings after the end of next year.