So, it’s official. HR has been notified. My supervisor, his boss and our VP have been notified. My project lead and team have been notified. And my reporting team as well. I’m retiring at the end of the year! Actually, official date is Dec 4th, which is the end of the week after Thanksgiving. This will give me free time to prep for the holidays, and keep my benefits to the end of the year.
I’ve had my eye on the exit for a while. Of course, once I passed 59½ (and where did they come up with that as a marker), I’ve been able to tap into my retirement accounts with no penalty. And Charles’s retirement accounts too, which I inherited. I also had found out, in the flurry of paperwork during the summer of 2022, that I’d be able to collect C’s social security once I turned 60! (which would then roll to my own social security once I personally became eligible) But not while I earned “too much money”. There’s a whole formula – if you earn above a certain amount, they take away a dollar for every two of SS you are supposed to get, and a higher limit means you get nothing. So no point in applying for that until I stopped working, but the Social Security lady made the point that I could choose to ‘stop earning too much money’ whenever I wanted to.
So once I turned 60, retirement became much more of an option, but I still had to figure out health care. The more I heard about going on the marketplace, the less I liked it. My company healthcare is quite good. But I finally got it together to ask HR about ‘how retirement works’ and found out that when I leave, I am eligible for COBRA for three years. Now, COBRA is expensive, but it does work, and if I waited until I turned 62, I could retire, keep my company healthcare and ride that COBRA to Medicare age.
And I turn 62 in September. So, there we go.
Charles, of course, never got to retire and and he was so close. And so looking forward to it. He was going to spruce up the apartment and we were going to get a dog and two cats and we’d get a summer place down in Cape May… we had plans. And he was targeting when he turned 65… but that was COVID year and everything was up in the air. And his job was easy and he had no problem doing it from home… and then he started having health problems and he decided it was better to stay the course until COVID was under control and we’d figured out his health problems and and and… so he didn’t get to do that, even though he’d been working since like he was 15 and had more than earned it, and it’s heartbreaking because he so deserved it and it would have been lovely for both of us.
So there’s definitely a flavor of ‘retire as soon as you can, so you don’t miss out.’ And no one who knows me can doubt that I have a list a mile long of what I’ll be doing instead of the nine-to-five. Certainly more music. I can take more gigs, not only because I’ll be free during the day, but will also have time to just do the basic daily grind to be up for gigs. (I turn down a lot of horn stuff just because if I’m not actively prepping for an existing gig, I’m probably not in shape enough for something like ‘can you sub for me on Thursday’.) Maintain a certain minimum level on horn, voice and piano that I can do the spontaneous stuff and not embarrass myself.
I’ll have time to take my own health more seriously – meaning, mostly, exercise. Commit to a strength-training regime and (much more enjoyable) an ice-skating routine. Much like horn practice, ice skating is far more fun when you’re doing it regularly and don’t have to relearn everything every time you go. And it’s so good for you as far as core and balance. And bicycling too, now that I’m seeing better, and will be able to plan a whole day around a bike trip rather than fitting it into a busy weekend.
I’ll get to do the writing I’ve been putting off for decades. I have home renovation stuff to do. I can get out and enjoy my amazing city more. I can get a car and have time to take care of it and make sure it’s parked legally and take day trips and overnight trips all over the place. I can visit my family more. I can volunteer! (my parents, who retired at 55, had an amazingly productive retirement as far as volunteering) I can maybe go back to school! Traveling, so much traveling. And do the ‘life is a banquet’ thing while I still can, because I know from close observation how ‘still can’ can go away at any moment.
I will say that considering that I’ve never ever treated my IT career with any seriousness, something I’ve done mostly to earn rent has actually been mostly enjoyable and fulfilling. I’ve gotten to play with computers all day long and get paid for it, and that’s been kind of delightful. I’ve risen far enough professionally that I got away from the scutwork and am well-respected, but never so far that I was having to manage a team or work 60-hour weeks or whatever. My jobs, though ‘important’, have never been the ‘we’re waiting on a donor kidney’ level of importance, and that’s been fine.
The job I’m in now has been particularly lovely since the last job was such a fucking nightmare. If I needed to keep working, I’d be happy to stay there for quite a few more years. But… I don’t have to, and it’s time to move on to the next chapter.
And that’s what I’m going to do.
The Toast Point Page 