Category: On Retiring

Today was supposed to be my last day at work before I started telling clients about my decision to retire, and handing off my responsibilities to my replacements. The market had other ideas. Fears of the COVID-19 outbreaks sent the Dow tumbling more than 10% and of course my clients are in a panic. The news is not helping the situation. They report the down market in terms of points and compare it to 2008, while neglecting to state that the Dow is more than twice as high. The percentage drop was much lower, but the number of points SOUNDS much scarier. Thanks, CNN.

I spent the day reassuring clients that this was a normal correction, and that this coronavirus, while very serious, is neither the zombie apocalypse or the bubonic plague. I used to love this stuff. I am now tired to death of it. But I’m going in tomorrow- on my last weekday off for quite some time. Why? Because my clients need me to, and until they have someone else to be there, I’m going to do it.

On a cheerier note, my 12 year old did the sweetest thing ever. He baked this gorgeous pie all by himself to celebrate my last day of work, that turned out not to be. I’m going to eat pie tonight anyway.

I am in my last month of work before transitioning my business to my replacement. The terms of my retirement package required that I find a successor and train him or her, and then introduce him/her to my clients. In exchange for all this, I will receive a severance check for a few years, plus some benefits.

I decided to do the retirement plan, even though I had enough money a couple of years ago to simply quit. I didn’t want to just leave my clients, which is what I would have had to do if I’d just given notice. The successor I hired will do a great job and will take good care of my clients. I must admit though, that I had NO IDEA how stressful this process was going to be.

I ended up having more than one successor, and my assistant and I spent MONTHS trying to figure out which clients would work best with which of my replacements. I have made lists of clients to call and in what order. I have bios of each of my successors, so I can tell my clients something about them when I call. My office has been cleaned in preparation for me moving to a smaller office and giving my successor mine. And then my successors and I will meet with every single client (hopefully) ensuring that each one is comfortable with the person who will be handling their account.

Being the efficient, hard-working girl that I am, I have completed every single item on my list that can be done ahead of time. I am now in a hellish sort of limbo where I have to be at the office, but I have nothing to do. I am not allowed to notify clients until March 1. I don’t want to start any new business until then, but I have to BE there to help train my replacement. The replacement is doing great, so that doesn’t take much time out of the day. I have spent a ridiculous amount of time doing… nothing.

I am rarely bored, and there’s only so much internet shopping and surfing I can do. Having nothing to do leaves me WORRYING about what goes next. Like how exactly I am going to call every client I have in a month. And what is the best way to present this so that clients don’t think I can afford to retire because I got rich off of overcharging them. (This is, A) not true and B) they might never think such a thing and I am inventing stuff to worry about.) I am developing hang nails and acne thanks to the stress. Also I am eating junk food and not sleeping or working out like I should. Hmmm, this reminds me of 2008-2009. This is going to get better, right?

I’m in this weird in-between status and I hate it. I cannot wait to get started on the project of calling and meeting with my clients one last time. The sooner I get that over with, the sooner my retirement begins. I know it will be emotionally hard, and I have been told that because I am young for retirement I need to be prepared for some of the clients to be angry about this. But anything is better than forced inactivity. UGH.

I am not really an an emotional girl. In fact, I have been told that I have a calculator for a brain. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment. Lately my emotions have been all over the board. There are 23 days of regular work before I begin the retirement process. Yesterday I was exultant. Today I’m about to cry. The day I filed my paperwork, I thought I was going to be physically sick from fear. I’m driving myself crazy, and I’m sure my husband is losing patience too.

I cleaned out my office desk drawers today- which clearly should have been happening much more frequently. There was 23 years worth of stuff in there- junk, mementos, etc. I found baby pictures of my kids, both of whom stayed at my office when they were infants- and somebody’s pacifier. I also found assorted awards I’ve received and old thank you notes from clients, some of whom have been dead for a few years.

I threw most of it away and put a few boxes into my car, which I’m unpacking now at home. Suddenly I’m all weepy. I’m trying to figure out why, but I don’t guess it matters. Tomorrow I’ll feel different. I hate this. I worried for a while that the fearful moments meant that I was doing the wrong thing, but then I thought of all of the times I’ve been fearful in my life, and all the things I make myself do even though I am afraid.

I actually don’t like flying. Or bridges. Those are unfortunate fears as I happen to love to travel, and I live in a wet area. Its hard to go anywhere without crossing a bridge between here and there. And I love exploring Europe. It’s awfully hard to do that without a plane ride. Sometimes you have to push through your fears to get where you want to go.

There have been many times in my life when I have been afraid to do something. Most of those times, I was glad I did it anyway. A few times I let the fear get the best of me, and I regret not trying more than I think I would have regretted failure. At least then I would have known whether or not I was capable. I can only remember one instance when I wish I would have paid more attention to my fear.

I’m sure there is some evolutionary reason why change is so very scary. Logically I know this is the right thing for me. I have saved and planned for this for years. We will be fine without my job, and there are a million things I would rather do than go to work. Tomorrow I will be excited about this- maybe.

Friday I had to go to a nearby town to run some errands. While I was there, I had lunch with one of my oldest friends (tenure, not age) who was a neighbor before I, then she, moved away. After we finished our lunch, she asked if she could ask me a work question- she’s also a client. Her niece knew someone she thought I was working with- my replacement. She skewered me with a look. “What’s up with that?” I looked at her. I was busted.

“Well,” I said, “I have to swear you to secrecy.” She nodded in response. “I’m retiring in 6 weeks,” I confessed. She was surprised and she wasn’t. As one of my oldest friends, I’d told her more than once that I planned to retire before 50, and I’ll be 48 in 3 weeks.

She (like everyone else) asked what I was going to do. I told her that mostly I was going to stop being in a hurry all the time. I was going to enjoy a little time for myself. I was going to be a mom.

She’s very thoughtful, my friend, and it was interesting watching her processing the information. She asked how long I’d been working with my company- 23 years. She’s been a client nearly that long. She thought a little more and said that a lot of her friends who were teachers retired at 25 years and felt they’d done it long enough. Yep, me too. They were enjoying themselves in retirement, maybe I would too.

She was a little horrified when I told her I had to surrender all of my licenses, but asked me if I wasn’t ready for a complete change of job in any case. She’s right on that. I am. I told her about my vague idea of teaching college and she thought I’d be great at that.

She made me really think about how to explain why I need to do this. I really don’t know if I want to retire forever or if I’m just burned out on my job. I expect its the latter. I just didn’t want to quit until I knew I wouldn’t ever HAVE to work again.

My job is weighty. Even when I’m not there, I worry about my clients, the market, paperwork, order errors, whether I remembered to input notes, new industry regulations, company policy changes, returning calls, whether checks got issued or received on time, or got lost in the mail, answering emails, finishing required paperwork, sticky client meetings, etc, etc. I can’t tell you the number of times I wake up worrying about this or that, and put a note on my phone to not forget to do something tomorrow. My job isn’t awful, and there are things I know I will miss about it. I could do it longer if I had to, but it invades every corner of my life- even when I’m with my kids or on vacation. And I’m just done with that.

I think I daydream about teaching college because it is one of those jobs that when you leave the classroom, its over. I don’t think I’d worry about my students on the weekends the way I worry about clients. I’m pretty sure that I’ll never wake up in the middle of the night worrying about teaching a class. And if I did, I’d quit. If I can’t find a job that I don’t take home with me, I won’t have one. Its fairly likely I won’t have one anyway, but I can’t seem to function without a plan B. Teaching college is plan B- at the moment, anyway.

I have a little more than three months on my countdown calendar and its getting a little scary. This is not the first “Oh crap” moment I’ve had. The first one was when I hired my replacement, because at that point it was too late to back out of this.

After that momentary panic, I got to find out how I really felt about it when my sucessor didn’t pass the licensing exam. This was my chance to change my mind- but I didn’t. To be honest, I nearly cried when it looked like I’d have to find someone else. That would have taken months and there is no way I’d have been able to retire on time. So why am I also frightened to feel like the gate has closed behind me- that there is no way from this point except forward to retirement?

I have been thinking about this for over a decade. I’m tired to death of my job. Every morning I wake up and think “I don’t wanna go.” I honestly think its burnout on my job, and not work in general, but its hard for me to tell if I’d like another job better since I’ve never really worked anywhere else.

When I started, I had a degree plus an MBA, and I was barely making 20K per year. My income rose pretty quickly though, and by the time I was good and sick of it, I was making much more than I could have anywhere else. My husband didn’t want me to quit, and at that point I would have had to take a job making half of my current income. I ran the numbers, and if I stayed where I was I could retire in just a few years. Changing jobs meant working years longer. I stayed. And then the retirement package became available and I stayed again.

I won’t need a job, but I think I could probably get one if I had to. I haven’t been without a job since I was 25. I’ve never really done anything else- I know I can do this job, and I doubt I could get another job in my small town that pays anything near what I’m making now. But I don’t need to make what I’m making now. We have retirement funds that will cover more than 34 times our expected spending. In a few short years my husband will be eligible for social security. We have more than enough.

Retirement is a scary mental shift though- we’ll be going from socking away large amounts of cash to WITHDRAWING it. My husband and I have never touched our stash- for any reason, ever. I have no fear of recessions while I’m working, my job is secure and my savings buy into the market when its cheap. But a recession while you’re retired, that’s a little scarier. I might not be able to get another job if the recession is ugly, and I might have to sell securities that are down in value.

We should be fine- I built a lot of padding into our budget, and we could cut it down a lot (almost in half) if we needed to. And I’ve analyzed this in a zillion ways. I came up with my own withdrawal strategy and back-tested it through every awful market I could. My girlfriend who is a CFP looked at it, and laughed at me. She can’t believe I’m worried about this. We’re really safe. Logically, I know this. Emotionally, its just scary to pull the plug.

Honestly, I have a pretty good work situation. I’ve been told (lots of times and by lots of different people) that I’d be crazy to quit my job, but I’m going to.

When I was in my 20’s this was my dream job- I wanted to be a professional who helped people improve their lives and get paid a lot of money to do it. I had something to prove I think. I picked a tough career, and I was going to be AWESOME.

I thought housework was a drag, and gardening was stupid- I mean really, you have to plant flowers over and over, EVERY YEAR- how stupid is that? And making the bed, who thought that was a good idea? You have to do it every day, and really, what is the difference? You’re going to mess it up when you go to bed that night anyway. What a waste of time.

I wanted to be where the action is. I loved getting a million things accomplished in a day, and collapsing in bed, exhausted but proud of my work every night. Kids? I mean, I’d just wedge them into my schedule when I got around to having them- how hard could it be?

Somewhere along the way something, or more probably some THINGS changed. I don’t have the same drive I did when I was 25. Whatever it is that I was out to prove to the world or myself- I proved it. I achieved most of what I set out to- and my dream job? I’m just tired of it. I don’t want to do it anymore. Also, it isn’t the same job I accepted 20 years ago, and my company has gradually changed into a different animal altogether- one that I’m less thrilled to work for.

And what I love to do? That changed too. I’m tired to death of hurrying. I like to linger over my coffee. I like looking at my flowerbeds and watching them change and grow. I like spending time with my kids and my husband- even my dog. I don’t want to grocery shop on my lunch hour and fix only meals that can be on the table between work and soccer practice.

I actually like to cook- when I’m not exhausted from work. Today I cut some brilliantly fall-colored branches from a tree in the woods beside our house and put it in a vase. I smile every time I walk by it. Last week I put a coat of wax on our soapstone counter tops. It made the whole house smell like the lemon verbena wax I used. I cleaned out the freezer and made the forgotten bags of summer blackberries into blackberry liqueur that is the most gorgeous shade of purple. And I’ve started making my bed- every day.

There are a lot of other chores I’d like to do, but I don’t have time, and/or I’m too tired when I get back from work. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I just want to be a housewife and a mom for a while…

I decided to go into finance in college when a relative died suddenly, and we realized that she hadn’t had any help with her finances. Her life could have been so much better if someone had helped her- but no one did. I wanted to do that.

I liked my job, even though it was hard and very stressful, and in the beginning, the pay was awful. I always saved for retirement, even when money was tight. I figured if I was telling my clients that they had to, then I had to do it, too. A few years in, I got a divorce, and then a few years later, I got remarried, and then had two kids. And then 2008-2009 struck. I cannot begin to tell you how awful that was.

I never aspired to be a therapist, and counseling people about their money became a very large part of my job during that year. Some clients were angry that it happened, and angry that I didn’t know beforehand and warn them to get out. Some were terrified, and I spent hours trying to talk them out of selling at the lowest points of the market decline. Some clients wanted me to fix it, and didn’t want to believe that sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. I was miserable, but I didn’t want to leave my clients till the crisis was over. And I knew I didn’t want to be around for the next recession.

The next few years, the market improved and the job was getting better, but so were our finances. By the time I was 41 (in 2013), early retirement was looking achievable. By 43, we were financially independent (barely), and I was thinking hard- really hard, about quitting at 45. The company I work for was changing- we’d gotten new management and they were pushing the company in a direction I didn’t want to go.

And then, the year before I was going to walk out the door, they came up with a retirement package. It was a really attractive program, but the kicker was, I wouldn’t qualify for it till I was 48. FOUR MORE YEARS. By this time my husband and I were both making healthy incomes and we were saving more than 40% of it (since we are cheap.)

I knew if we waited 3 years beyond my original plan, we were going to have saved too much. But the retirement package would solve the healthcare problem, and help with some other things. I started taking Fridays off, and that helped ease my stress enough to make it through the last few years.

So that brings us to now- 4 months before I announce my retirement. I will have to work with my replacement for awhile, easing the transition into my role, and then a bit of consulting work. But then I’m done. It turns out that quitting a job you’ve had for 22 years is a little scary, no matter how prepared you are.