“By 30, you should have a decent chunk of change saved for your future self, experts say — in fact, ideally your account would look like a year’s worth of salary, according to Boston-based investment firm Fidelity Investments, so if you make $50,000 a year, you’d have $50,000 saved already. By 35, you should have twice your salary, the firm said. The median retirement savings for a worker in their 30s was $45,000, according to Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies…” — Alessandra Malito, MarketWatch
Now that the best of years have come and gone, and you are finally entering the twilight of your life at the ripe old age of 35, it is time to consider your assets and what you should have saved for retirement. After all, the end is near, and now that you are old and grey, you should live out your remaining years in comfort and doing what you enjoy — like trying to stay warm, evading bear attacks, and not dying from dysentery.
Here is what you should have accumulated through your lifetime of hard work:
Eight to twenty children
The more the merrier here, folks. Not to be bleak, but if 70% of your kids survive to be old enough to start manning a plow and taking up household chores, you are pulling a pretty good ratio. Children are a great investment in your future because once your old crone hands get too arthritic and deformed to maintain the household, you will now have up to forty tiny hands doing the hard work for you. Plus, their little fingers are ideal for scrubbing the five forks and spoons you all share as a family.
Land
This is a big one. Any kind of land will do, but preferably the kind that can be cultivated and can sustain your small collection of farm animals that you take better care of than your actual kids. Even if you are a sad, broken sack of shit, if you own land in America, you’ve made it!
A giant water basin to wash everything from your clothes,
to your food, to your children in
In your retirement, you are going to want a large water basin to take your monthly bath in. This large tub can also be seen as a great investment for its multifunctionality, meaning you can wash your clothes, food, and kids in it, then boil the grey water for tea. Yummy!
A “church dress”
Everyone deserves to feel beautiful once in a while, and what is more luxurious than an oatmeal-colored, shapeless frock that you reserve for Sundays only? This dress can be passed down from you to your daughters until it eventually becomes a rag. Then, tada! You have a nice new rag! Talk about function. Again, this is a total investment piece that will probably outlive you and will be passed down until it essentially disintegrates while being used to mop up mud or dirt or blood or whatever. You know the old saying: “Every church dress will become a rag, and every rag was once a church dress.”
A baby doll made out of a cob of corn
Sure, a baby doll made out of a dried out husk of corn is not exactly a must-have item for most, but let’s talk about resale value here. A quality “husk baby,” as some have grown to call them, can be traded for many valuable things you might find you would like during your retirement: a few unbruised apples. A half a spool of embroidery thread. Two pennies. And in the meanwhile, if you do decide to hold on to the husk baby, the doll would provide hours of entertainment for your children (once they are done with their sixteen hours of chores, of course).
Coins
Now, this is the most important thing of all. You are going to want to put away money for the future, and by “put away,” I, of course, mean literally stash your money under the floorboards of your modest log cabin. By age 35, ideally your savings will look like a year’s worth of salary, so about $11. I know that seems like a lot of money now, but with a little scrimping and saving, that money can provide you and your family with a cushion that can be used for investing in your futures… as long as typhoid doesn’t hit first.