![\"lawn](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/how-ruin-perfectly-good-retirement.png\" "\\"how")
aimful \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\nTed and Joan sit on their immaculately maintained backyard deck, wearing their designer shades and sun hats and sipping iced tea from tall frosted glasses. Lounging on the kind of posh outdoor furniture featured in home and garden magazines, they watch as a team of landscapers re-mulches their flowerbeds, prunes their trees, manicures their lush hunter-green grass, and edges their lawn to perfection.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, next door in my own backyard, I\u2019m on my hands and knees pulling up the many prickly weeds that pop up seemingly overnight in the flowerbeds I dug and planted myself.<\/p>\n
In their mid-70s, Ted and Joan have been retired for a while and are in fantastic financial shape.<\/p>\n
They moved to our town to be near their grandchildren and built their retirement home to their exacting specifications. Their house is the showplace of the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Peeking over the fence that separates our properties, I admire their stunning backyard. Green, green, green.<\/p>\n
aimful \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Perhaps it\u2019s their underground sprinkler system that gives their grass the edge over mine, which is a decidedly yellower shade of green than theirs. Or perhaps it\u2019s the lawn care company that mows and sprays for them regularly, while I trudge back and forth with my electric mower, doing my best to keep my yard looking respectable.<\/p>\n
Ted and Joan both had long careers, and I\u2019d guess they managed their finances wisely<\/a>. As Joan confided to me one day over the fence while I admired her rose bushes, \u201cWe have more money than we know what to do with.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, like many others my age, I navigate retirement on a shoestring.\u00a0<\/p>\n A late start to a career, a divorce<\/a>, and a few of life\u2019s unexpected events have placed me considerably lower on the income scale than my next-door neighbors. We are here together on the same street, but financially, we seem to be worlds apart.<\/p>\n