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As a retiree I'm used to not structuring my day around work; as a social person, I had found many IRL activities to replace going to work and they are now unavailable. The mixed blessing is the seasonal cold weather-gloves, scarves, and lack of people around make it easy for social distancing🙂I thought I would share how I'm staying positive.
A big part of it is being in Canada where even with an austerity provincial government - the Feds can (and has) provided a framework to help citizens.
Some of it is age. As we approached retirement I found time "really" slips away.
Another element is practice, in the form of being fired. I was out of work for 6 weeks and a lot of that time was spent worrying even though we were fairly financially secure. When I looked back I realized I could be much calmer by living a little more day by day. It has really helped me to look at the course of illness in China; they're slowly ramping back up after 4 months. The first 4 months of retirement were very busy as we cleaned and culled as well as arranging for "things". We're past that point but I can still fill days for 4 months - as long as we can go outside.
Financially, assistance is falling into place with banks providing mortgage relief, along with rent and loan help in the Federal package. This is initially set for 6 months which is great.
Some Resources
One-stop for CANADA
Health
Financial
- Alberta Financial Relief
- Canada's Plan - some needs to pass through Parliament but the no waiting time has been waived effective March 15th.
We are super fortunate - in the short term we won't need (or be eligible for) the buffers the Feds and Alberta are putting into place. Unlike many - we are not bitter about being unable to access those funds (hey, we're lucky to have been able to save!) In the longer term, we will not be affected by Alberta Government policies that sell-off crown land, dump retirement funds into a dying industry, break contracts and create budgeting gaps for fixed income or disabled Alberta residents. That the Federal Government focusing on individuals and small businesses, rather than corporate help with "trickle-down", allows me to be positive about Canada (and Canadians) being able to bounce back from this global event.
I also think this would be a great time for the Federal government to divest itself of the 20% of oil royalties it's entitled to in exchange for business taxes and programs supporting only O&G initiatives such as transitioning to hydrogen production by renewable energy-driven hydrolysis. They could also commit to selling the trans-mountain pipeline to the Alberta government for 5 billion (yes a loss) as soon as all parties agree to the pipeline being built. Albertans didn't want oil nationalized back in the day - which would have provided guaranteed prices and markets - but are welcome to support oil companies now.
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