{"id":159,"date":"2010-09-10T16:10:24","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T22:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=159"},"modified":"2010-09-19T09:25:44","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T15:25:44","slug":"asset-retirement-vs-depreciation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/asset-retirement-vs-depreciation\/","title":{"rendered":"Asset Retirement vs. Depreciation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s an age thing, but recently I’ve noticed that a lot of my fellow workers (or at least the full-time employees) are starting to talk about how long they’ve got until retirement. Like seriously<\/em> talking about it, even though it’s 11 years away or something. They’ve probably got countdown apps on their iPhones that wake them up every morning: “You have 4,000 days left to retirement”. I guess that’s what comes of having a decent, company-subsidized pension scheme and a retirement plan. My retirement plan is simple: Work until I’m no longer employable and then kill myself.<\/p>\n

I tell people this and they think I’m mad. Not ‘wacky’ mad (which would at least be a change from my carefully-cultivated ‘dull as dishwater’ reputation), just certifiable mad. But really, why not? Firstly, I’m 44 and my youngest is 5. If he goes to college I’ll be, what, 62 by the time he graduates. So I guess that’s the absolute earliest I can think about retiring. And god forbid he wants to be a doctor or lawyer and adds another 5 years to that. Here’s hoping he flunks out of high school, eh? But say 62. With the history of heart disease on the male side of my family I’ll be lucky to make that (a grandfather and two uncles on my paternal side all didn’t make it that far), and even if I dodge that particular genetic bullet (as my father\u00c2\u00a0did – 68 and still going strong) my constant stressed-outness (it’s a word!) still has the cards stacked against me.<\/p>\n

What would I do with retirement, anyway? Travel the country in a Winnebago, having to stop every 50 miles to find a restroom, and\u00c2\u00a0planning my route around the availability of pharmacies I can get my heart medicine prescription fulfilled at? Tempting, but no thanks.\u00c2\u00a0And I’m sure as shit not staying at home so the wife can keep me busy with the honey-do list she’ll have\u00c2\u00a0been working on for 40 years. My father-in-law tried that. Worked hard all his life, retired, and had barely wheeled out his golf clubs on that first day of retirement before my mother-in-law had him down B&Q picking out new tiles so he could remodel the bathroom. Well not me, missy. If I’m not getting around to it while I’m young(-ish) and able-bodied, you can pretty much scratch it off the list of things I’m likely to get round to doing when I’m busy trying to count the\u00c2\u00a0liver-spots on the backs of my hands.<\/p>\n

The big problem I have with retirement is that I actually enjoy<\/em> my job. For all of the bitching and moaning I do about the people and equipment I have to work with, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. Sad, but true. And after 20 years of consulting I find that I can’t switch off any more. I pretty much work a 12-hour day even if there’s nothing pressing going on, and then in the evening I’m usually working on my second job, sat on the sofa in front of the TV with one of my laptops on my knee. I don’t think I could stop working if I tried, and if I couldn’t do what I enjoy any more, I don’t think there would be much point in carrying on.<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to working until I’m no longer employable and then killing myself. As I’ve mentioned before<\/a>, if I get to kill myself then that’s a result – I’ve at least run the course I wanted to. Trouble is, I don’t think I’ve got the nerve. I’m too scared of jumping, and poison makes me sick (Zappa reference – Suicide Chump<\/em>). The only other option is death by unnatural causes. But I’m not mixing in the right social circles to stand a decent chance of getting shot in a drive-by or stabbed in a street-brawl. So fingers crossed the Big C gets me. As long as it’s one of the good kinds – one that gets you the kind of sympathy you can milk during your final months. No point in getting bowel cancer – no-one wants to talk about that, or ask you how you’re getting on (plus, where do they poke the big chemo machine??). Bone cancer doesn’t sound like much fun, and although breast cancer certainly gets women the sympathy vote, I’m guessing that I’d get a few odd looks if I announced I had that as a man. So I’m hoping for maybe prostate cancer (now there’s<\/em> a man’s disease – if it’s good enough for FZ it’s good enough for me), or – better yet – brain cancer – that way you get to act all weird(er) with people and blame it on the watermelon-sized tumor putting pressure on your frontal lobe.<\/p>\n

Hey, maybe I’ll get lucky and it will all come together quite nicely – maybe the heat from the battery in my laptop will radiate through into my thighs from all those nights sat on the sofa, and finish me off that way. Then I get to check out while I’m still working, and the compensation payments from the lawsuits my widow will undoubtedly file will cover any outstanding kids’ college bills. All your years of paying into a company pension scheme won’t look like such a good deal then, will it??<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

With apologies to anyone who’s lost a loved one through cancer (as have I). I’ll make a donation to SGK.<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s an age thing, but recently I’ve noticed that a lot of my fellow workers (or at least the full-time employees) are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[20,22,21],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-work","tag-death","tag-medical","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}