Everyone has a story.

Sometimes we tell a little piece of our story, even if it’s only a few lines.

I just had a conversation with a man in the waiting room of a doctor’s office who must have been wanting for someone to talk to.

He told me his wife died “a while back” and he still didn’t get over their mistake.

Their mistake, he said, was not living well and not going places while they still had the chance.

Instead, they hoarded their money because they were saving for retirement.

He told me his wife wanted to travel across county to see their only child but he kept telling her that would be too expensive and they couldn’t afford it.

“I kept saying we had to save for retirement,” he said.

After listening to him for a while it became clear that he and his wife lived for “someday.”

Someday they would retire.

Someday they would travel.

Someday they would do all the things they didn’t do so they could retire.

I could sense the end of his story before he told me.

“Her heart gave out,” he said.

He postponed his retirement because he says now it’s just more time he would be alone.

“I don’t know why we didn’t do more together when we had the chance,” he lamented.

It’s strange the way two strangers can about what’s important to them.

I never saw him again after our talk in the doctor’s office. But I remembered his story.

It’s a story that reminds me somewhat of an older couple who became good friends with me.

To tell their story, I’ll change their names because some local people might recognize the story of a couple I’ll call Mary and Harry.

She, too, begged her husband do things with her and their children. But he was squirreling everything away for their eventual retirement, he said.

Harry never did get the chance to retire. He was housebound after a stroke and Mary took good care of him until he got too ill and had to go in a nursing home.

When they ran out of money they had saved Mary claims she went to a lawyer about selling their home. I can’t believe the lawyer didn’t tell her not to sell her home because the nursing home will never kick a spouse out of their home.

Mary made the mistake of selling the home to pay for her husband’s nursing care. The nursing home was then entitled to the money from the sale.

It created a serious problem for her because all their savings were gobbled up and she had no place to live.

I’m going to tell you the sad story the way it happened.

Her son in California agreed to take her in. She was pleased to again be with her son and have a place to live.

Her pleasure didn’t last more than a week. The way I understand it, her son’s wife laid down the law. The mother-in-law had to go.

The son is a good person who wanted to do that right thing for everyone. It wasn’t possible. To keep his marriage he was forced to tell his mother she had to leave. Since she had no money he had to arrange some sort of low income nursing home accommodations.

I only heard from Mary once after that. She told me how unhappy she was in the nursing home but it was her only option.

Life certainly didn’t work out the way she and her husband anticipated. All their financial sacrifices and all their savings for retirement ended up paying for nursing care.

It’s a sad story about waiting for “later.”

Later will always come, one way or the other, but often it’s not the way we planned.

My take away from all that is to live sensibly for today. Take time for some enjoyment now because you might not be in control of “later.”

Mary’s husband certainly didn’t get the “later he had planned for. He first developed Alzheimer’s then died in our local nursing home. I think his ending was slightly better than that of his wife because he was in a decent nursing center in his home area. But neither got the dream they planned on and worked for.

As we all know, this “save for tomorrow” is tricky. If we don’t safe enough we have all sorts of problems.

On the other hand, if we focus only on saving money at the exclusion of all else we might run into a situation like Mary and Harry who never took a vacation and didn’t travel to see family.

I’m sure you’re thinking hey, there has to be a middle ground.

I’m guessing more people fall into the “not saving enough” trap. I know it depends on your goals and how dedicated you are to saving.

Another big mistake is waiting too long to visit family or at least be in touch.

When my mother-in-law’s sister died at 80 she was heartbroken that she never called her sister. She always meant to but kept putting it off for “later.”

Later proved to be too late.

If you’ve been putting off calling loved ones, promising yourself you’ll do it later, remember there is no date on the calendar called “later.”

Email Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.com.