Money, money, money

I shall be in Paris in October this year. I was only at Charles de Gaulle airport in March this year on my way to and from Sicily. I shall be returning to Sicily in October to finish seeing the rest of the island and to finish my book on Sicily. It is very exciting. I have a lot of work to do till then. I have to save up, not just for the trip, but there are major bills coming due around that time - homeowners' policy and property tax! I have applied for retirement benefits from the union that I was a member of for 20 years. That will help, I figure the money will do more good now than 10 years down the road. I could use it for repairs to the house, re tile my bathroom and to invest it. It's about $953 a month for the rest of my life. It's not much because I've always had a love/hate relationship with my job. I've left this job a few times only to return again to it. It's a weird relationship. I did read somewhere that we don't have to squeeze all our work life into the middle of our life, we can take sabbaticals for an extended period and tag work to the end of it. I'd like to do that. Well, I'm kind of doing it, taking off 5 weeks each year when I only have 2 weeks vacation time. One thing I know, I'm not waiting till I stop work altogether, collect social security before I travel and see the world. I'm traveling now and a lot. I have talked to a lot of retirees who regrets not having traveled more or at all when they were still working. I don't want to have that kind of regrets. I'll travel now and work till I'm 80 if I have to.
I shall be taking my 2 nieces on some of my trips. I'm not waiting for them to be in college or even finish college. Life is for living now. So next spring we'll be in Tuscany.
Just do it, do it now.
P/S: I received my first retirement check yesterday.