To provide the inflation-adjusted retirement income you desire, you will need to save 26.9% of your yearly income (less any employer match, if applicable). This year, for example, the amount would be $18,796 or $1,566 a month.
If you wait just one year to start saving for retirement you will need to save 29.7% of your annual income, which amounts to $20,775 in the first year. Save Now and Save Less!!!
(From www.financialcalculators.com. Too bad I can't copy the chart here - it's really impressive, like a huge blue wave of money that needs earning and saving!)
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
A Poem
Content
This morning
The curl of your hand
Around my finger
Is the only thing
That matters
A small gesture that
Says everything
And I
Am Happy
Again
Feb. 20, 2010
Reincarnation
Written by Kristen Kochel, Sumner, Washington at the age of 16.
I believe this appeared in Words on the Page, the World in Your Hands, a book of easy-level readings to develop adult literacy. I found it while clearing out my files a few months ago. I used to use it as a lesson example in my teaching, perhaps for description, perhaps for journaling, perhaps to spark a lesson of creative writing. It's been so long now, I don't quite remember. I didn't use it every year, as I did Cisnero's House on Mango Street or Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, only for a few years in the center of my career.
Reincarnation
"Perhaps reincarnation is not a myth, but merely a time from where we get our instincts. I remember a place far different from where I've grown up, rolling plains and long wavy grasses blowing in hot summer breezes. Winters with snow driving fiercely into my face and the hushed silence after a blizzard. I see these places when I dream, images my subconscious remembers and recreates to tempt me into fully believing I am there again.
I dream of a man, as most hormone-driven teenagers do, but the things I feel are not wholly lust. I never seem to be able to see his face clearly, but I know his eyes are a deep, chocolate brown that I drown in every time I am captured by his gaze. His hair is the satiny black color of a raven's wing; it shimmers in the light, daring me to tangle my fingers in its beautiful length. It reaches his shoulder blades and will soon rival the length of my own. He has strong, capable hands with a beautiful texture put there by years of work and play. Thier strength is hidden beneath a gentleness like silk-swathed steel, a steel that protects and cares for those less capable.
He has a rigid sense of honor which irritates me to no end at times; I remain virtuous by his incredible control. I could perhaps convince him otherwise in today's world, but alas, this is a dream. Once I am committed, I will not be able to back off. What he takes, when it's freely given, he keeps forever.
I believe he was a plainsman, Lakota or Cheyenne, before the Civil War. He was a warrior and was considered a member of high society, giving freely to those who didn't have enough, as is the way among the tribe, whether an adopted member or born of the people.
I do not know his name; I search for it each time I dream of him. The only thing I find is the vision of a hawk, flying on a sky of red, screaming defiance at the wind and at those who cannot fly. I come back from the vision and fall prey to his heart-stopping smile.
If true love exists, could this be it? I haven't met the actual person; perhaps I never will. Is he out there dreaming of me? I can only hope he is. So many questions floating through my head and no answers to be found. My heart aches for someone, perhaps the someone of my dreams."
I believe this appeared in Words on the Page, the World in Your Hands, a book of easy-level readings to develop adult literacy. I found it while clearing out my files a few months ago. I used to use it as a lesson example in my teaching, perhaps for description, perhaps for journaling, perhaps to spark a lesson of creative writing. It's been so long now, I don't quite remember. I didn't use it every year, as I did Cisnero's House on Mango Street or Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, only for a few years in the center of my career.
Reincarnation
"Perhaps reincarnation is not a myth, but merely a time from where we get our instincts. I remember a place far different from where I've grown up, rolling plains and long wavy grasses blowing in hot summer breezes. Winters with snow driving fiercely into my face and the hushed silence after a blizzard. I see these places when I dream, images my subconscious remembers and recreates to tempt me into fully believing I am there again.
I dream of a man, as most hormone-driven teenagers do, but the things I feel are not wholly lust. I never seem to be able to see his face clearly, but I know his eyes are a deep, chocolate brown that I drown in every time I am captured by his gaze. His hair is the satiny black color of a raven's wing; it shimmers in the light, daring me to tangle my fingers in its beautiful length. It reaches his shoulder blades and will soon rival the length of my own. He has strong, capable hands with a beautiful texture put there by years of work and play. Thier strength is hidden beneath a gentleness like silk-swathed steel, a steel that protects and cares for those less capable.
He has a rigid sense of honor which irritates me to no end at times; I remain virtuous by his incredible control. I could perhaps convince him otherwise in today's world, but alas, this is a dream. Once I am committed, I will not be able to back off. What he takes, when it's freely given, he keeps forever.
I believe he was a plainsman, Lakota or Cheyenne, before the Civil War. He was a warrior and was considered a member of high society, giving freely to those who didn't have enough, as is the way among the tribe, whether an adopted member or born of the people.
I do not know his name; I search for it each time I dream of him. The only thing I find is the vision of a hawk, flying on a sky of red, screaming defiance at the wind and at those who cannot fly. I come back from the vision and fall prey to his heart-stopping smile.
If true love exists, could this be it? I haven't met the actual person; perhaps I never will. Is he out there dreaming of me? I can only hope he is. So many questions floating through my head and no answers to be found. My heart aches for someone, perhaps the someone of my dreams."
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Committed - An Excerpt
Having greatly enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, I couldn't wait to read her new work Committed. Part memoir, part reflection on the state of marriage, Committed is not the book I would ever have written about marriage, but I'm finding it intriguing nonetheless.
"And now that memory - that sound - swam through me, too. I even felt as though I could remember it, despite having never met Felipe's father, who died years ago. In fact, there are probably only about four people alive in the whole world who remember Felipe's father at all anymore, and only one of them - until the moment Felipe shared this story with me - recalled exactly how that man had looked and sounded when he used to swim across wide Brazilian rivers in the middle years of the last century. But now I felt that I could remember it, too, in a strange and personal way.
This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark.
This act, the act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship. Because when Felipe described his father's swimming stroke, I took that watery image and I stitched it carefully into the hem of my own life, and now I will carry that around with me forever. As long as I live, and even long after Felipe has gone, his childhood memory, his father, his river, his Brazil - all of this, too, has somehow become me." p239
"And now that memory - that sound - swam through me, too. I even felt as though I could remember it, despite having never met Felipe's father, who died years ago. In fact, there are probably only about four people alive in the whole world who remember Felipe's father at all anymore, and only one of them - until the moment Felipe shared this story with me - recalled exactly how that man had looked and sounded when he used to swim across wide Brazilian rivers in the middle years of the last century. But now I felt that I could remember it, too, in a strange and personal way.
This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark.
This act, the act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship. Because when Felipe described his father's swimming stroke, I took that watery image and I stitched it carefully into the hem of my own life, and now I will carry that around with me forever. As long as I live, and even long after Felipe has gone, his childhood memory, his father, his river, his Brazil - all of this, too, has somehow become me." p239
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
A Poem: Luminous
I had to dig this one out of the bottom of my purse to post it here.
Transcribing from its original scribbled form on a crumpled,
daffodil bright, yoga schedule as the words unfolded in the bright morning light...
The luminous limning of
my tongue at your ear
is the pen on this page
the moonlight shooting across
the salted waves, the drift
of cloud at noon
the expression of the
self
you wish to be
that indeed
you already are
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Poem: Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson
My husband's taking a Comparative Mythology class and preparing a project on Indian Mythology. Discussion of the various gods popped this poem back into my head. I chose it to memorize and recite to my American Literature Class when I was 16. Even then, I had an interest in spiritual search.
Now it reminds me of the chants we learned in yoga teacher training, and also of walking below towering redwoods in our favorite stand of trees, where the nature center has posted an Emerson quote. (Well, actually it reminds me of everything, based on its message!)
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
1856 [1857]
Photo credit to blog.discovermagazine.com
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