I began thinking about the idea of retirement even before I turned 30. I was starting my first job, and I didn't know anything at all about personal finance, so I read all sorts of books. One of the books that reached out, grabbed me, and wrestled me to the ground was Your Money or Your Life. I wasn't particularly swayed by the first part of the book – about how much our jobs suck, and how much they suck out of us – I happened to love the place I was working (really, I totally loved my job) and the people I work with – but the middle parts of the book did a total philosophical/financial makeover in my head. I glommed onto the parts about how money is what we trade our life energy for; I love the "fulfillment curve" graphs with the peak at "enough" (love it so much that I named this blog for the high point of that curve), and I was blown away by the idea of the "crossover point", which is the point at which the interest (or dividends or such) from your savings are higher than your spending, at which point you become Financially Independent.
So, even before I turned 30, I had decided I'd point my head and giddyap my horses toward that crossover point. When I turned 30, I married a guy who came with rather massive (to me) financial obligations, but fortunately we are a really good team at loving each other where we are. I read Your Money or Your Life aloud to him (we read lots of books to each other, so this wasn't like a preachy thing), which had minor effects in altering his ways of spending and was hugely helpful in giving us a common vocabulary for money-related topics. Meanwhile, I continued loving my job . . . whereas my husband had many ups and downs with his, so I decided the goal would be to have HIM retire early. That way, I could do the whole crossover point thing, which had been a life goal (like running a marathon or visiting all the continents is for other people), but I could do the crossover point thing for someone who never thought he could retire early and whose job actually did kind of suck him dry at times.
My original hope was to have him retire the year our youngest daughters graduated from high school. That didn't quite work out, partly because he took a detour, reenlisting in the military and was serving in Iraq that year, having a blast flying around in helicopters and writing articles. Actually maybe writing "having a blast" is the wrong expression, because fortunately he was far away from almost all of the fighting. He came back from his tour overseas, became a civilian again, and we (I) started working on his early retirement plans yet again.
I still remember a long walk that he and I had where he fretted about the idea of retiring. What would this mean to him? What would it mean about his identity; what would it mean about his friendship circles? There were things that were really hard about his job, but of course there were also things he really loved about it – especially the people he got to hang out with and gossip with. Nonetheless, about eight years ago, we pulled the plug, and he retired, and he has been so happy – so, so happy – ever since. He's managed to retain all of his friendships, even to the point of his old job contacts inviting him all over the world to help with trade shows. He gets to go hang out and gossip with people he likes, but he doesn't have to wake up before six, and he doesn't have deadlines, and he gets to spend so much more time with me and the kids. It's beautiful; it's everything I hoped it would be, and for him, it's like a magic trick that he never would've believed could be possible. I love being part of this magic act!
So what about me?
For some reason, I got it into my head that I was going to retire at age 52. I *think* that's because at that point, I would have worked at my current place of employment half my life. It might have also had something to do with our college's annual celebrations of people who are either retiring or who have worked here 25 years, so those things got closely connected in my mind (and 26 is close to 25). I was fixated enough on this that some of my financial user I.D.s have the number "52" in them (not the passwords, though, so I'm not giving away super secrets here).
When my college decided that it needed to revise how it supports medical insurance benefits for retirees, I spent a half a day leafing through brochures and websites trying to figure out what that would mean for the eventually 52-year-old me, and I kept metaphorically running into blank walls and dead-end streets, so I broke down and had an actual conversation with our head of HR:
Me: I can't figure out the medical insurance benefits for retirees before they turn 55. I can see the [minimal] benefits for people 55 to 65, and also [more substantial] benefits for people 65+, but nothing for younger people.
HR: You can't retire before age 55.
Me: What? Wait, I don't understand, What if someone wants to retire then?
HR: You can resign before 55, but you have to be 55 to retire.
Me: Those sound kind of the same: what's the difference?
HR: [Lists a bunch of financial things that don't matter to me, like tuition benefits or life insurance, which don't mean as much to someone whose kids are grown and who has enough money to live off comfortably without extra help.]. . .
Me: . . . okay . . .
HR: Oh, and email/library/facilities access. And institutional affiliation.
That last line was the difference. I don't want to cut myself off from the community that comes with my college; I want to keep coming to holiday events, to bump into friends in the library, and to use my college affiliation as I publish papers or apply for grants. I had the money to retire (probably) by 52, but I wanted to make sure I had the people as well. So then and there, I revised my retirement date to 55.
Just so you know how completely I planned this all out, when I was 45 years old, I drew up a 10-year plan. It had cool stuff about my kids' ages and grades. It described when we'd look for and buy a new home, when I'd finish writing my book, when I'd apply for my next NSF grant. And just about every single one of those items on that 10-year plan dropped into place, clink-clink-clink, right on schedule, just like I'd mapped it out. Heck, the book was finished almost before I'd said it would be. At the end of that 10-year plan was the three-way-stop sign: "retire/sabbatical/become a dean", and I arrived there having to make a choice: which of those three would it be?
I applied for the associate dean job with minor trepidation. Becoming a dean was another thing I'd eyeballed since grad school for the very superficial reason that the grad school dean had a huge desk and I was kind of jealous/impressed. My trepidation was mostly about my boss, who I had concerns about, but I figured that I'd bring such good stuff to the position that it might work out well in spite those concerns. I applied for the position and got it, and I got a contract stating that --- because I was postponing my sabbatical to take this job on --- after my next sabbatical, the college would waive the usual rule that I come back to teach for a year after that. So the new plan became: be an associate dean for three years, take a year-long sabbatical, and retire at age 59.
But then, it turns out that the whole boss/me thing really really didn't work out well. I won't say more about that, except to say that I resigned from the position after one year, and then two weeks after I resigned, my boss's boss let the campus know that my boss was leaving the college to spend time with family. So my resignation had the effect I wanted, but I am still sad that it worked out that way, because I actually liked doing the administration thing. I thought I was good at it, too, although I'm well aware that people can delude themselves, so, who knows about that? At any rate, the new plan became that I return to the faculty for one year (which is what I'm doing right now), and then go on sabbatical, and then retire at age 58.
Except this* week, we just got an email about a new admin position opening up, which would be a two-year position, and I am glancing at that thinking, "ooooh, fun" and also that I'd be good at it, and it would have a lot of the community-building aspects associated with it that I'd like. So I'm trying to decide whether to throw my hat in that particular ring, which -- if it worked out -- would mean two more years of work, followed by a sabbatical, followed by retirement at age 60. I dunno if that's what I want to do (and of course I don't know if I'd get chosen for this job, even if I did want to do it), but that's the big question rattling around in my head right now.
* "This week" = a few weeks ago. I've since talked with a couple of people at my college, and I get the sense that another very awesome person might be applying for this position. So for that reason, and a few others, my hat is not in the admin-position-ring, and I'm back on Plan B or Plan D or whichever one has me heading into retirement in 18 months. For now.
No comments:
Post a Comment