Abby1930, In some pension systems, your contribution toward your pension is a percentage of your annual income and your pension at retirement relates to the amount that all of those years' contributions totalled out to, plus the amount of growth that all of those invested dollars produced throughout the period. I hope that you can find some source of income which will be such that you can continue to enjoy your new home. Lay-offs have become an increasingly common problem in the economy these days, where many companies feel that employees are as disposable as the machines that they use. Should we call such an approach "Kleenex staffing"? They like loyalty on the part of staff - but if it isn't a two-way street, that rather traditional loyalty situation will be eroded. In fact - it is, these days. Few employees feel as loyal to their employer as was true a generation ago. Telecoms have certainly been volatile in recent years - and increasingly so? While talking to my recently laid-off daughter (who had for several years been a counsellor to people being laid-off), she said that she'd like to have two or even three streams of income - so that she wouldn't be up the creek without a paddle if she suffered lay-off, having depended totally on one income. She's a rather independent-minded person. Who was able to carry on her recent work wherever she happened to be - all that she needed was a higher-grade connection to the internet. She used so much bandwidth that one couldn't call her and have the call go through while she was using the line for corporate-related internet work, as one can do with most internet users using high speed connection. Good wishes to you as you work through your situation in the days ahead. joyful guy P.S. to others: If you should find yourself in this situation (say, next week?) - wouldn't it ease your concerns a great deal if you knew that you had enough assets rather easily available to enable you to survive without too much upset should you, having suffered the trauma of lay-off, find yourself unable to find other work for half of or even a whole year? Personal financial advisors for many years have been recommending 3 - 6 mos. emergency fund to enable minimum survival. Such a plan is much more necessary in the employment climate, these days. Don't you think? I remember a song that was popular when I was young, ... "Wishing, will make it so, just keep on wishing, and care will go." "Dreamers tell us dreams come true, it's no mistake and wishes are the dreams we dream while we're awake". Baloney. Visioning has its place. So do dreams - and wishes. The problem is that quite a number of us allow the dreams and wishes to take the place of reality, rather than encouraging and impelling us to implement them - to change them from a figment of our imagination into a real part of our lives. Dream the dream - then make it work. ...

I'm sorry to hear about your husband's unexpected and involuntary change of plans re employment vs retirement. I have no personal experience in the situation you describe, but I had a long career in business. I'm really not sure what you're expected to hear for responses. You don't explain why you husband has delayed signing the severance agreement. They're typically not negotiable or subject to change. What is typical is that the terminated employee, especially one nearing retirement age, is asked to waive any right to sue, seek damages or compensation, etc., in return for the package that's offered. If you have questions about how any items of payment were calculated, ask the company for detail. Not for a rationale, but for a calculation. After 37 years with the union, I'll guess your husband has some union benefit entitlements too, and you should ask the union directly about those. You should understand that companies take actions like this all the time. Such decisions are usually blindly organizational matters and are only rarely personal. They don't always turn out to be good decisions but they're rarely changed. Once you get whatever information can be supplied, you'll have two choices - decline the offer, hire an attorney and sue them (this is a really bad idea most of the time) or sign and accept what was offered (this seems like the best choice from what you've explained). I recommend you not concern yourself with details about what the company has or hasn't done after moving forward with their decision to terminate your husband. What's done is done. Congratulations to you both on his long and successful career. It's time to move forward and make decisions for the next stage of your lives.

Hi, old navy dawg with the salty tongue, How nice that you're both at home, following the good wife's retirement. You'll find that the house isn't as much "yours" as you thought it was, when she left to go to work every day. When you consider going to battle ... you'll be using "missives" instead of "missiles", no doubt. I hope that you have many interesting and happy years to enjoy that retirement .... with the greyhounds. __________________________________ I have referred several times here to the guy who wrote the book, "Stop Working: Here's how you can; I retired at 34" just over 10 years ago, and others, one being "The Idiot Millionaire" or something like that and including one on training kids how to use money well. Some have been on the Canadian best-seller lists. I'd suggested that if people went to the www.canadianmoneysaver.ca magazine website, they might be able to read some of his articles, but doubt that to be possible, as I must use my subscriber codes to enter most of the site, including archives. If some of you are interested, I could ask the magazine and him about copying one or some of his dozen or so articles, that go back to when he retired, something over 10 years ago, to send to you. I've spoken approvingly of the magazine here on a number of occasions, so that might help me plead my case. Or, I could send his contact address, and he'd likely share at least some of his ideas, likely could follow his blog. Good wishes as you work toward more skillful use of money: learning how money works is an interesting hobby ... and it pays well! Taxes, too! ole joyfuelled ... operating with more joy due to having no debt

Over the course of the summer I have dug a couple to check. The last one was about a week ago and it was about a quarter in diameter. This set were the surviving cloves from a set of hardneck bulbs that had mostly dried out in warm storage. They had not been subject to any cooling period since they were dug in August of 2014, and all sprouted quickly when planted in June of 2015. Not one of them sent up a scape either this year, but all stand up to about 12" to 15" tall with almost no drying leaves nor has that situation changed at all for a long time. They haven't been watered either after they showed good initial growth. The real question in my mind was whether I could get large single rounds out of the small cloves. I think I can at this point but I do not know if I can get them to cure. I may have to use them green. The second question is whether they will winter from an early summer planting, which I think is likely, and then hopefully produce an increased size bulb next summer. edit: garlic almost certainly needs a rest period before it can sprout, but I do not think it needs cooling for that. What it needs cooling for is to start the blooming scape (sorta sounds like tulips doesn't it - same sort of thing IMO). I do not store my garlic cold, but rather at room temperature in a corner of the kitchen. The variety in the summer bed sends up scapes real easily when fall planted and wintered over in the ground. Even bulbils often do. But this summer bed never showed a single bolt. I intend to do this again perhaps on a larger scale depending on what this set of two dozen cloves ends up producing. So far whatever they end up doing they are all behaving very much alike, really uniform to this point.