Member-only story
I’m Asset-Rich On Paper But Cash-Anxious In Practice
Is That Why The Future Bothers Me So Much?
I have a pension, a business, and a mortgage (for which I can’t afford to stop working). I’m not alone, but we never talk about people like me.
Last month was a quiet month. I know what that means in our house. It means a particular kind of evening, the kind where my wife and I sit down after dinner and go through the numbers again, without drama, the way you do when you’ve been doing it long enough that panic has worn itself down into something more like dread.
I am in my mid-sixties. I have a teacher's pension I worked decades to earn. I am about to receive my state pension. I run my own small business. And I still have a mortgage.
On paper, I probably look fine. In practice, I am doing something I suspect many people my age are also doing, though we rarely admit it:
I am racing against time.
I’m not broke. But I am not free either. And that gap, between not poor and genuinely secure, is where a surprising number of people my age actually live.
The plan is to make lump-sum overpayments on the mortgage and reduce it significantly before I turn seventy. Before the self-employment income, which is already unpredictable, starts to thin…
