Hearts in Hawai'i
Six Months Post-Retirement
9/27/2020
When asked about retirement a few months after he joined the ranks of the happily not-working, my friend's response was simple; "I highly recommend it to anyone".
He was right, but getting to that point wasn't particularly easy for me. I'll explain later.
Until I was about five or six years from retirement, this was a far-fetched idea. I knew the day would come but it was so far off that I didn't think much about it. As to when I was planning to retire, I had no set idea. Being a public employee and having started my "career" in the early 80's, I was eligible for what is called the "Rule of 90". Simply stated, you add your age to the number of years you have been paying into the PERA (Public Employees Retirement Association) fund. Once that sum hit 90, you could retire with a regular monthly pension. In the 80's and 90's, I had always assumed that once I hit the Rule of 90, I would retire. For me, that would be at age 57. However, my economic reality eventually meant that this was a far-fetched notion. It may have been possible before buying our townhouse, but having done that, the math simply didn't work.
With that in mind, I later concluded that I might be able to retire in semi-comfort once I was eligible to receive Social Security, be that at age 62 (or later). I understood how the Social Security math worked, also; that my benefits would increase by a certain percentage for each year I worked beyond 62. The idea of working until full retirement (for me, just prior to age 67) was somewhat attractive. The math also told me that, by delaying my retirement, I was also delaying receiving benefits. I would be giving up a sizable sum of monthly in exchange for knowing that I would, at some point, break even because of my higher monthly benefit. What point was that? I ran the numbers and saw that I wouldn't be breaking even until I was age 83.
Having suffered a heart attack at age 53 knocked the assumption I would live to 83 right out of the water. Another factor in my decision on when to retire was that, eventually, I would be making more by retiring than by continuing to work. I found myself going to work each day with this idea that I was really working only for the cheap health care afforded to me by my employer. While that was enough reason to keep working--for a while--it would eventually not be reason enough.
By the time I had hit 59 years old, I had a proposed retirement date, and this would stay surprisingly close to how it worked out in the end. During the past three years, that date changed only three times. It moved back one week once I learned that a second payroll period of March would end a week after my birthday. For some odd reason, I felt it necessary to work until the end of a pay period. It moved two months back after attending a pre-retirement training seminar, when I thought I understood how PERA calculated a person's "High Five", on which the monthly pension is based.
I didn't understand it, but this didn't become clear to me until Patty and I went to my first pre-retirement meeting with a PERA employee. She told me that, by delaying my retirement by two months, I was only increasing my monthly pension by $12! (I had erroneously calculated a $55 increase). $55 was, in my eyes, significant. $12, not so much. I was going through a period of being fairly fed up with how certain things were playing out in my office and the agency I worked for. Patty looked at me and simply said "Go early". She didn't have to twist my arm at that point! And so I was back to a planned date of March 27.
So now it's been six months since I dropped off my employee badge with my supervisor and walked out the door for the final time. How has the adjustment been?
The month I retired coincided with an explosion in COVID-19 cases nation-wide. At the start of my final week of work, it was determined that we would be given the option of working from home, only coming into the office as necessitated. At the end of that day, my office emptied out. Where there would normally be roughly 26 people, there were suddenly less than a dozen, and a half-dozen on certain days. I had sent an email to my office co-workers at the end of the previous week telling them that I was retiring and didn't want to make a big deal out of it. I didn't want a party, I basically wanted to leave quietly. If people wanted to stop by my cubicle and wish me well, tell me to get the hell out, whatever, they could. If anyone was interested in my job, I said I'd share with them what I could about what it was I did in that position. Few came by, and the reason was simple--suddenly nearly everyone was working from home! I came into the office twice during my final four days to do a couple last minute things, add a few items to what had become a very extensive job description, and turn in my final payroll sheet. And then, I was gone. But I wouldn't feel retired for quite some time.
After the weekend spent with Patty, she went back to work and I was left to ask myself, what the hell do I do now? I had some computer projects to work on which had been piling up over the past years, but COVID-19 had shut down every place where A.A. meetings were held. No churches, no clubs. Virtual meetings would start up via Zoom but I didn't like the idea at first. I liked my face-to-face meetings. To look at a bunch of people on a computer screen didn't seem like much of an attractive alternative. Yet the alternative of attending no meetings of any kind was even less attractive and I started to feel the effects of not attending any meetings after a few weeks. COVID-19 also severely limited my social opportunities and left me basically alone with my thoughts. This is never a good idea for a recovering alcoholic!
Zoom eventually won me over and I found great joy in seeing not only familiar faces in Duluth, Cloquet and Superior but in exploring meetings all over the country. By now, the weather was turning nicer and I was able to get outside with my trusty Nikon camera, and this was an immense help. I also re-dedicated myself to using my Kinetic trainer, and started to shed the excess pounds which had piled on over the past five years following my Acute Pancreatitis episode in December 2014.
So that was what it was like and what happened. What is it like now?
One thing I looked forward to in retirement was the idea of losing my alarm clock, and that has been a true delight. For the first time in perhaps forever, I'm getting the sleep I need. My stress level has been greatly reduced, the upcoming presidential election notwithstanding. While a recurrence of my pancreatitis in July was a bump in the road, it was also a blessing in disguise as I started tracking my caloric intake and fat grams ingested very closely, and I'm not nearly halfway to my weight loss goal of 50 pounds. A brief period of knee pain which I think was due to an overuse injury is slowly resolving itself.
I don't know if Patty is jealous of my new-found freedom. She says she isn't and I need to trust that, and I'm trying to be careful not to show too much joy in this freedom, but she knows how content retirement has made me. How could she not want the same for herself? And she'll get there, at some point.
What's next? The answer to that is simple--more of the same. More relaxation, hiking and biking next spring, more photography. I have thousands of photos I want to post-process in Lightroom over the coming months. Patty and I will continue to enjoy the culinary simplicity of my meals. She might be slightly envious of my retiring but she also enjoys not having to cook much these days! We are still planning trips to South Dakota and Maui.
As my friend said, I highly recommend retirement. Find that sweet spot between leaving too early and leaving too late, and do it.
Previous: 3/27/2020--The Final Goodbye
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last updated november 22, 2021
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