When I first started writing these … whatever they are: columns, postings, articles, I imagined I was writing them to my kids.\u00a0 I wanted them to know more about me and I imagined I would share with them wisdom and answers that I had come to over my life.\u00a0 This week reminded me that I still have real and substantive questions ahead of me and I don’t have answers for myself, let alone anything I would want to offer to anyone else.\u00a0 This week I was thinking about retirement.<\/p>\n
We met with an investment advisor this week to start to gather information to answer a very basic question: When can we retire?\u00a0 Before that, though, I found myself struggling with an even more basic question: What does it mean to be retired and if I know that answer, how do I get from where I am to there?<\/p>\n
I have one friend who is only about five years older than I am who is retired.\u00a0 In his case he has lived very carefully, started investing much earlier than I did in my career and is single with no kids.\u00a0 All of which has led him to a place where he can retire and start doing exactly what he wants to do.\u00a0 In his case he’s volunteering time to his church as a maker and creator for large scale projects.\u00a0 He’s also got a slew of projects and ideas he wants to work on, not to mention numerous projects that he’s started over the years and now can complete.\u00a0 He also plays volleyball, juggles and pretty much seems to do what he wants to do.\u00a0 That sounds pretty great.<\/p>\n
My best friend growing up has spent 30 plus years in the Navy and will be retiring either this or next year.\u00a0 In that time he entered as enlisted, picked up a Masters equivalent degree to become a Physician’s Assistant and then entered the Officer’s Corp via Officer’s Candidate School.\u00a0 He’ll retire and will work a limited number of hours as a Physician’s Assistant and will have more free time and still have a very solid income.\u00a0 So, he’ll be retired from the Navy but semi-retired (working part time) from the work force.\u00a0 That sounds pretty great as well.<\/p>\n
We had a joke back when I started working wondering where all the old engineers went?\u00a0 For us that would have been around 45 or so.\u00a0 Our company was young and had hired a slew of young engineers who, over the years, I’ve largely stayed in touch with.\u00a0 Even our managers were only 5-10 years older than we were.\u00a0 So the notion of working at 45 and what one would do was a bit of a mystery to us then.<\/p>\n
As time went on and we became the 35 year old engineers, we did see the engineers a bit older than us and they did continue to have careers.\u00a0 Some went in to management, some stayed engineers or moved up to Architect positions or changed careers in to Sales or Marketing.\u00a0 A few left the industry, but mostly they stuck around.\u00a0 Our joke changed a bit: Where are all the 55 year old Engineers?<\/p>\n
Now I’m a 47 year old looking out that additional 20 years and still asking the same questions: Where do engineers go after their mid-50s?\u00a0 I know I’ve moved in to management and many of my peers are doing that or becoming Architects or staying Engineers in various capacities.\u00a0 So, for the most part, we seem to be holding our own.\u00a0 It’s not like I’m hearing evidence of folks being forced out of the industry or jobs or exiting voluntarily.\u00a0 But, I suspect it will start happening in the coming decade.<\/p>\n
Like many things, Engineering is a young man’s job.\u00a0 A young engineer will put in 60 hours a week indefinitely in the early part of their career because they’re needed, they’re learning a great deal and they have the energy.\u00a0 Learning new things comes more easily when you are young.<\/p>\n
I don’t have many examples in my family for what retirement looks like.\u00a0 My Dad stopped working after a workplace injury a decade ago, so he stopped working in his 50s and he’s gotten by on disability and living carefully.\u00a0 Extended family members would stop working but I never had any insight in to how it was done, how they put together their finances, whether they were comfortable or struggled once they stopped working.<\/p>\n
My mother and father-in-law retired early, in their 50s, when Christina was in her early teens.\u00a0 They had lived very carefully and invested in real estate and put together a steady income stream that allowed them to travel and do the things they loved to do, including focusing on being there for Christina through Junior and Senior High as well as college.\u00a0 Later they would travel and visit their kids around the country.\u00a0 That’s a model that looks pretty great.<\/p>\n
On the upside, we’ve done pretty well putting away in our 401K and some other relatively small investments since Christina and I have been together.\u00a0 Both of us were in make-up mode after our divorces, so that set us back a bit.\u00a0 So, not enough to retire in our early 50s, certainly, but it looks like if I can somehow figure out how to keep working till I’m 65, I’ll be okay financially.\u00a0 That doesn’t actually sound very encouraging because I’m struggling a bit with the idea they’re going to keep letting me do what I’m doing for another 18 years.\u00a0 The industry will change, the needs of the company will change and I’m not sure they need a first level manager in his 60s, let alone his 50s!<\/p>\n
I question what I’ll be doing for the next 18 years.\u00a0 It worries me a bit, sometimes.\u00a0 I like to feel like I have some control over my destiny and I don’t like not knowing and, frankly, I’ve always seen myself as someone who worked and was a provider.\u00a0 That and trying to be the best parent and partner I can be have defined my adult life and much of my sense of self.\u00a0 But I’ve largely only worked as a software engineer and now a manager of software developers and product development.\u00a0 Certainly I’ve broadened my skills in those areas and I’m comfortable in a startup or a larger company, but will that be enough?\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 I’ll undoubtedly need to continue to learn new things, new methodologies, new ways of doing things.<\/p>\n
I’ve tried to encourage my kids to start thinking about getting in the practice of putting away money in to their 401k or IRA early because, as we all know, the magic of compound interest is a powerful thing and $10,000 put away in your 20s is worth so much more than $10,000 put away in your 30’s or, heaven forfend, your 40’s or later.\u00a0 But, it’s a bit of an uphill struggle for them, just as it was for me when I was that age, because they’re just getting started and putting away money for a mythical period 40 years in the future is much harder to do than what they know they want to do now and next week.\u00a0 But, as a parent, I’ll keep poking and encouraging and trying to model good behavior as we go along.<\/p>\n
I don’t know what I will do or would do if were retired.\u00a0 In my imagination, I’d have time to do projects and learn new things that I don’t have time or energy to do now.
\nI find that it’s very hard to put time in to learning a new thing right now but I suspect it’s largely due to the fact that I’m working full time and between a lengthy commute and the full time job, that is 60 hours away from home and when I’m done at the end of the day, I’m just tired and my brain does not want to absorb new things.\u00a0 My brain wants to be entertained without having to work for it.\u00a0 Anything more is a struggle.\u00a0 And, I do struggle, but it definitely is more difficult and, I suspect, is more difficult as I get older.<\/p>\n
I know there was a time when I imagined that by the time I reached this age I would have all the answers figured out.\u00a0 My path would be clear before me and I would just be executing and enjoying my life.\u00a0 And, to be clear, I do enjoy my life.\u00a0 I appreciate my life.\u00a0 All the things that contribute to my life are in good and positive places.\u00a0 I suspect that as long as I’m doing the work to plan for that future and I know I’m putting away what I can when I can, perhaps that’s the best thing to do: Enjoy Now.\u00a0 The Future will be here soon enough and with it will come clarity about the things that I don’t know today.\u00a0 And, of course, there will be surprises and things that I can’t predict, can’t know, can’t see coming.\u00a0 But, that’s life.\u00a0 And, really, if I knew what that was going to look like, if I knew the answers, there’d be no mystery.\u00a0 It’d be like being told the end of a really good movie and I don’t want that spoiled for me.\u00a0 Meantime, I’ll keep doing the work to try and put myself in the best place, on the best path I can and let life come to me as it will.\u00a0 I guess I don’t need the answers now, won’t know all the answers maybe ever and that’s okay.\u00a0 It should be a fun ride!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n[box type=”shadow”] Note: Image courtesy of\u00a0http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/a_ninjamonkey\/ and licensed via Creative Commons<\/em> When I first started writing these … whatever they are: columns, postings, articles, I imagined I was writing them to my kids.\u00a0 I wanted them to know more about me and I imagined I would share with them wisdom and answers that I had come to over my life.\u00a0 This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"darrin","author_link":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/author\/darrin\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). For more info, see http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/2.0\/<\/a><\/em>[\/box]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"