1914 ReTired

I heard someone talking recently about the act of preparing for retirement. And she said, "...You know, getting ready to enjoy life."
I thought, how sad. Really? You can't enjoy life when you're working? How bad that you have to keep a job that you don't like and spend all your days dreaming of the time you can stop.
Probably never happen to me. For some reason I hate the idea of being retired. Maybe because I'm such a tightwad, I enjoy anything that'll lead to making a little extra coin I can squeeze. I believe I know just about each and every synonym of “tightwad” too. And by the way, I have no idea what compressing a ball of Kleenex has to do with legitimate savings.
Anyhow, there's words like miser and skinflint. Us thrifty folk apparently also have the ability to slough off insults too. Our skin, hard as flint, must be that way because it's thick.
We're also sometimes called savers, but more often squirrels or magpies. Two very noble frugal folk from the animal kingdom.
We're also economical, cautious, prudent, skimping and--- my favorite---parsimonious. I believe parsimonious is a Latin word that means penny-pinching. I can pinch mine till Lincoln screams.
I come by it honestly. Our childhood shapes us. One of our favorite fun family outings was going to the drive-in theatre. That meant one thing. To save on admission costs, one of us kids got to ride in the trunk.
That child was usually me. It was also the time I learned to develop that thick skin of us skinflinters. Because I also learned I wasn't the favorite child.
Sometimes, they didn't let me out.
I'd fall asleep on the spare, and my brother would joke that I was re-tired for the evening...
America, ya gotta love it.