Being retired has its perks. One of the main ones is being able to just pick up and go. This winter hasn’t been terribly cold or terribly snowy but it’s still winter, and that means dreary days and bleak vistas. With winter offering at least two more months of the same, I decided it was time to pick up and go.

We are somewhere over Kansas on our way to California. We used a highly sophisticated process to come up with our destination. It consisted of researching the answers to three key questions. One, where do planes fly to? Turns out everywhere. Two, where is the temperature going to be higher than 60 degrees? Almost anywhere else. And three, where did the dart we threw at the map, land? San Diego. Do planes fly there? Yes. Is it warmer than 60 degrees? Yes. And so, we will have left a forecast calling for three inches of snow and seven below degrees air temperature, not to mention the wind chill, and in five mere hours will trade it for sunshine, ocean views and 65-degree weather.

It is amazing when you think about it, how small and accessible the world has become. Granted, we are not flying across the ocean to some far-off continent, though the passenger behind me will be in New Zealand sometime tomorrow, but we are crossing the U.S. in the span of a couple feature films plus commercials. Pretty cool!

This is why we work. We make a living so that we can enjoy living. Retirement, except for the age thing, is a pretty sweet gig. But having just said that, it begs also to be mentioned that it doesn’t have to wait until retirement. I mean living should happen somehow every day. We can’t take off across the country any old time, but we also don’t have to wait until we’re too old to enjoy it, to do it. Try to live a little every day and then every once and a while, fit in a chance to get away, to explore and to experience life somewhere beyond your own back yard or even better, beyond your office.

This is a bold, almost cavalier statement coming from a former financial planner, but life is like a buffet, a little of this and a little of that, but save room for dessert. We work a little, we save a little and we take some dessert now and then. Be responsible, you do need to save for a retirement at some point but live a little along the way. Maintaining balance is the key.

San Diego is going to be a lot nicer than Madison this week and I checked the weather, no snow!