My wife Cindy and I were driving back to our home in Murrieta recently after spending the weekend at my mom’s home in La Quinta.
As we left, I noticed we had about a quarter tank of gas and needed to fill up, but as I drove by Costco and saw the long line of cars waiting, I told Cindy:
“No problem – we’ll just fill up at Morongo on the way”.
Wrong.
If you’ve ever been on the I-10 westbound from that area on a Sunday following a three-day weekend “in-season”, you know what happened next.
At first we were doing great, cruising along on I-10 westbound, enjoying the desert weather and scenery…
Until the freeway suddenly became a parking lot of cars all heading west from Palm Springs.
We didn’t go above 5 mph for the next seventeen miles.
We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and I found out the hard way there weren’t any gas stations between Palm Springs and Morongo.
It wasn’t too long before I started to get a little tense and serious.
I turned off the radio and air conditioning as my dashboard started counting down how many miles we had left to empty.
Cindy asked what was wrong and I had to tell her there was a distinct possibility we might run out of gas before reaching the Morongo exit.
The mood had suddenly and distinctly changed as we anxiously fixated on the blinking number showing the miles of gas we had left.
15…14…13…
The nice weather and scenery no longer mattered as I moved my car to the farthest right lane and I contemplated my next move if we ran out of gas in the middle of the desert.
Fortunately, with twelve miles of gas left I saw the first Morongo exit was less than a mile away and we made it to the gas station!
The only good thing I can say about that experience is I will never put myself or my family in that position again.
That experience, to me, is a great metaphor for how some people live through retirement.
They spend their retired years worrying, anxious, arguing, and rarely having fun because their eyes are fixated on the “gas gauge” (retirement savings) as it goes down, down, down.
They know they very well might run out of money if the unexpected happens, they just don’t know when!
They are living a “just in case” retirement.
Thing is, to avoid breaking down in the desert, you need to have guaranteed sources of fuel for the car.
When you have guaranteed lifetime income in place for retirement, it’s just like having a guaranteed quarter tank of gas for the whole drive.
If you’re ready to ready to fill your retirement tank, cruise on over here: chatwithcraig