Sunday Mailbag- Retirement?

Q: What’s your personal plan for retirement? Do you plan on drawing till you can no longer pick up a pencil or maybe just slow it down in stages and semi retire? Not that retirement is anytime soon. I always enjoy your posts so of course I hope you never retire.

A: As far as working goes I’ll keep on freelancing/doing art as long as I am physically capable of it and as long as there are clients out there wanting to hire me. I’m not digging ditches, so while I have control of my mind and my hand I would not want to stop creating. Eventually one of those two things will go away, and I’ll be forced to stop. That might be when I’m 75 or 80 or 90 or 110… Who knows? The mind and body eventually fail you.

As far as finances go as a freelancer I need to plan for the day when I can’t earn a living with my pencil anymore. Since I don’t work for a company with any pension plan that involves a lot of boring 401ks and IRAs and savings and what little social security will get me. Retirement is another of the facets of a working life that freelancers have to deal with on their own.

Thanks to Sam Sutton for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!