Optimism reigns

I read somewhere that when young people are optimistic, they tend to have babies, which accounted for the boom in births that I was part of after World War II.

I now think it's also true that when old people are optimistic, they plan trips.

At least, that's what we (read: Emily) have been doing for the last couple of weeks. We're going to Lake Placid this weekend, an Alaska cruise in June and the Finger Lakes in August.

We did get trip insurance for the Alaska trip, mostly in case I can't make it, after we got a bit of a runaround over what constitutes a "pre-existing condition.'' What it apparently means is if you're healthy enough to travel on the day you book the trip, you're covered even if you're not well enough when the day actually comes. So I qualify.

Part of this flurry of travel is built around the "can't-take-it-with-you'' school of retirement finance. But another motivation is we all had so much fun on our Caribbean cruise and I got such a boost from it that we figure it's worth trying again. Although this time the whole family is not coming along - we could burn through a Wall Street trader's annual bonus pretty quickly continuing that trend.

Emily at the same time has been planning a hiking trip she intends to take without me in September with some friends in the White Mountains. I wouldn't have wanted to do that in any case - I prefer hot showers and a private bedroom to the New Hampshire huts. But I guess the far extreme of our optimism would be that I could do such a trip by then.