Jon Myhre didn’t intend to be retired on a shoestring budget. That’s how life turned out, though -- and it’s OK by him.
Myhre, 78, lives mostly on his Social Security income of about $20,000 a year, which doesn’t go far in pricey Southern California. But his days are filled with activities and friends. He says he doesn’t miss the luxuries he’s had to give up, including international travel and the big house with the pool.
For most of his career, Myhre was a landscape architect with his own business based in Pasadena, Calif. He designed parks, a college campus and even part of La Casa Pacifica, the San Clemente compound used by then-President Richard Nixon as his Western White House.
Business took a nosedive starting in the early 1990s, when Southern California suffered a traumatic real-estate recession. Many of his competitors closed their doors. Myhre moved his office into his home in the affluent Los Angeles suburb of La Canada Flintridge to save money and to better care for his wife, who was dying of breast cancer.
Then Myhre did something he regrets: He tried to replace some of the income he’d lost by day trading. Soon, the $50,000 he had saved in a Simplified Employee Pension, or SEP, was gone.
Myhre’s wife died in 1995. He was ready for a new life.
In the next few years, Myhre sold their house “with the pool and the spa and the nice landscaping,” applied for Social Security and moved to Ojai, a small town about 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles that’s known as a center for artists, music and spiritual retreats.
After reading Duane Elgin’s “Voluntary Simplicity” in the 1980s, Myhre was intrigued by the idea. He began exploring the voluntary simplicity movement, which suggests that people are more than just consumers. Instead of working too hard to buy too much stuff, advocates of voluntary simplicity look for ways to declutter their lives, make more conscious spending choices and live according to their most important values.
A core tenet of voluntary simplicity is to reduce monthly expenses to such a low amount that a practitioner can opt not to work for money, if he or she so chooses.
That led Myhre to live somewhere he never expected: a trailer park. A friend, artist James Menzel-Joseph, lived in a mobile home development dotted with oaks and let Myhre know when the unit next to his was for sale. Myhre used $60,000 of his home sale proceeds to buy the somewhat dilapidated place and spent an additional $20,000 fixing it up.
His simply furnished living room and small kitchen are painted a bright, happy yellow. A portrait Menzel-Joseph painted of Myhre, depicting him like an Old Testament prophet with robes and a wooden staff, hangs on the wall. Outside, Myhre built a small deck covered with a canopy, where he can sit with friends and enjoy a small rock garden.
“I didn’t have a view, so I created one,” Myhre said with a smile.
Another change: no car payments. He proudly indicates the 1997 Acura Integra that occupies the attached carport. He bought the car for $12,000 after a six-year lease, and has no plans to replace it.
More on retirement:
- How to retire on $1,200 a month
- Planning to retire even if you’re broke
- How to avoid retirement depression
That’s just one of the activities that occupies his days. Most mornings find him in the mobile-home park’s clubhouse, working out in a free, 90-minute exercise class that emphasizes improving balance, strength and flexibility.
“It’s changed my physiology,” said Myhre. “It really helps me live in a way that’s not just downhill.”
Good health is important to a good retirement, he believes, and he sees a chiropractor, a nutritionist and an allopathic healer in addition to traditional doctors.
“They’re my team, but I’m the captain,” he said, adding that too many people his age defer to so-called authorities when it comes to their health, rather than taking charge of it themselves.
Myhre also draws in the weekly art class where he met Menzel-Joseph. He participates in a writing workshop that started at a local bookstore and that he’s attended for more than a decade. He’s had a few short stories published and is working on a novel.
He makes clear these pursuits are passions, not pastimes.
“I can’t imagine sitting around watching television and maybe having a hobby,” Myhre said. “That doesn’t work.”
Recently, Myhre counted his circle of friends from his various activities. He marveled at the total: 41 people. In his working days, he said, his social circle was “minuscule.” He also has good relationships with his two daughters, one of whom lives in nearby Ventura, and his two grandkids.
Although many retirement experts talk about the importance of having good family relationships, Myhre said he didn’t have to make much of an effort to keep those ties strong.
“They’re just great people,” he said.
He’s had to give up a few things as he’s gotten older. For years he served on the board of a voluntary simplicity organization called Seeds of Simplicity, but the long drive back from Los Angeles late at night took its toll.
Earlier in his retirement Myhre also traveled more, including a canal boat trip in England and hiking in Wales and Shropshire, England.
“I love travel,” he said, then amended his thought. “I love to be in a place, but I don’t like to get there.”
Airline flights make him claustrophobic, and the cost feels prohibitive to him now. Myhre is shepherding the last of his savings, about $140,000 invested in a variable annuity that hasn’t grown much in recent years. He doesn’t like dipping into its principal, but he may do so in the future if necessary. “A couple hundred bucks more a month would be nice,” he mused.
One thing he’s not interested in doing, he says, is writing a memoir.
“I’m not interested in what’s happened,” he said. “I’m interested in what’s next.”
Are you having a rich retirement on not very much money? If you’re interested in being interviewed, please contact me using the contact form on my site, AskLizWeston.com. You also can share your story on my Facebook fan page at https://www.facebook.com/asklizweston.
Liz Weston is the Web's most-read personal-finance writer. She is the author of several books, most recently "The 10 Commandments of Money: Survive and Thrive in the New Economy" (find it on Bing). Weston's award-winning columns appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. Join the conversation and send in your financial questions on Liz Weston's Facebook fan page.
More on retirement:
