finances – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement

Still Employable- Although Maybe Just Barely

A couple of years after I retired, I published a blog post called Employable (Employable – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement.) I discussed what it felt like for someone to offer me a job at that point in my life. I sorted through a great quantity of feelings related to the offer, but my bottom-line response was that I didn’t want a job- even though it was nice to be asked. I had not considered starting a new career in retirement before the job offer. I certainly have not considered it since then.

Recently, a situation arose at church that involved a major re-juggling of administrative staff. Our parish administrator of nearly a decade planned to retire in mid-September. I initially agreed to help in the office one day a week to reduce the strain on our parish ecosystem while we transitioned to a new office organization. There were a few of us who were teaming up to cover basic processes for a couple of months. As the situation unfolded, however, increased complications bombarded the well-intentioned plan, demanding a more permanent and cohesive solution.

The church’s administrator (secretary/financial systems manager) semi-retired a few months ago. In her semi-retired status, she was concentrating solely on the financial systems. The parish hired a part-time secretary a couple of months before the church administrator was due to change to her part-time schedule. Unfortunately, as soon as the administrator officially started coming into the office only two days a week, the newly hired part-time secretary resigned.

Our parish administrator agreed to return to a full-time schedule while we found a new person to take on the entire full-time parish administrator job. We did find someone, but she had some pre-existing commitments that would limit her availability during part of the transition time. Our retiring administrator devised a plan to transfer skills in both the secretarial and financial administrator arenas between June and September. This succession plan also involved training me so that there would be at least one other person with a pulse who knew the mysteries of the church’s financial software.

I love plans at least as much as the next person. There are those who would argue that I take planning to an absurd degree. However, I also have my own little motto- “Terri proposes, and God disposes.” Such was the case with this transition plan. Despite our best efforts, there were a series of disastrous events that caused the plan to crumble beneath its own weight :

The retiring administrator fell and smashed her elbow into a million pieces, requiring extensive surgery.
As soon as the retiring administrator recovered from her surgery, her husband was hospitalized with COVID.
One of the stalworth volunteers who had been helping to keep the train on track went on a boating trip and got stranded in the middle of some body of water somewhere due to mechanical problems.
The rector was on vacation.
The photocopier possessed (or is possessed by) some sort of evil, vindictive genius. It stopped working for nearly an entire week- probably in protest against the excessive number of revisions of the Sunday service bulletin documents that we copied the week before because we kept finding errors. It turns out that cutting and pasting changes into five or six separate documents is not as easy as you would think.
I learned that my eyes are spoiled by the 27” computer monitor we have at home. The 23” monitors in the church office are just not cutting it for me, especially as I sit behind the new hire and try to coach her through different processes.
The retiring parish administrator, overwhelmed by trying to keep the parish office operational, train new workers, and care for her husband, suddenly declared she was moving her “retirement full stop” date up by a month. Instead of disentangling herself from us in mid-September, she decided to leave in mid-August.
Certain key passwords retired along with our outgoing administrator. One especially important system required that I get a new password through snail mail. I am glad our government is concerned about protecting privacy, but this particular system has the clunkiest password parameters I have ever encountered. .

During this period of limbo, I tried to use what I learned in the approximately 7 hours of training the original administrator was able to give me on the financial workings of the parish before destroying her elbow. It made me nervous when people kept saying, “Terri knows the financial stuff.” Terri knew the foam, not the root beer. My claim to fame was that I was putting money in the bank and paying bills. Beyond that, I was uncomfortably aware of the limited depth of my knowledge. People kept telling me, “At least you are getting something done- anything you are able to do is better than nothing.” I am not so sure that is true. After 30+ years working in a financial-related field, I am all too aware that a person can easily know just enough to be dangerous.

As time has passed and I have had the opportunity to complete the routine financial operations several times I feel much more hopeful. The retiring parish administrator was able to come back to work for a few weeks after her surgery rehab, so I was able to reality check some of the things I did in her absence. Despite my misgivings, I had not done anything lethal to my church’s financial system. The original administrator was able to resolve the hanging chads of work I had left over from the prior couple of weeks. I managed to expand the number of hours I was in the office while she was still working so I could sop up every last bit of knowledge from her brain cells. Learning from her tutelage increased my feelings of accomplishment and confidence.

When the retiring parish administrator was in the office, I did not get involved with the Sunday service documents. This was probably a huge relief to everyone involved, I know it was a huge relief to me. I was even able to take a day off and go to the beach with a friend. I called from a beach cabana to see how things were going and if they needed me to come in and help the next day. In my book, if I am calling from a beach cabana, things are good. They told me all was well and there was no need for me to come in the next day.

I think I needed to “act my wage.” My wage is 10 times more than most volunteers. However, 10 times 0 is still 0. That would imply that I should be investing $0 in worrying about or taking responsibility for any of this. Still… it is hard for me not to give my all. Predictably, it is also hard for me to give my all and not reserve anything for myself. When a friend texted me on Friday night to report that the bulletin did not reflect the correct person giving the sermon, I wish I had been able to react with more understanding, urgency, and courtesy than I did. Sadly, I may have “acted my wage” during that encounter.

Now that our former parish administrator is officially retired, the new hire and I have been on our own. I am continuing to train the new hire in the financial administration duties. This has often been of dubious benefit since I was only about a half step ahead of her in knowledge. I found myself confusing her because I still had so many missteps. I took a week or so to just do the work so that I could more clearly direct her. It is truly a case of the “partially sighted leading the blind.” That axiom takes on a whole new meaning when the “partially sighted” person is trying to read tiny print on a tiny screen from much further away than her eyes can accommodate. We spent half an hour of mucking about yesterday because the field I thought said “date” actually said “deposit.”

Despite the struggles of the past few months, we are making great strides, and I am proud of our little administrative team. While I do not believe we have yet produced a perfect set of Sunday service documents, they are getting better each week. The new administrator is picking up the financial tasks with agility. A volunteer who has helped in the past with the secretarial part of the job has kindly offered to take over some of the work for a few days so that our new administrator can concentrate on solidifying her knowledge of the financial aspects of the job. We are all working well together. We treat each other patiently and kindly. We ask for grace as we learn, from each other and from our “customers”- the God and parishioners we serve. People are more important than perfect procedures. We pray a lot.

You may ask why I tangled myself up in all this. Is it my inability to say no that has expanded that “helping out one day a week” to 20-28 hours a week? I don’t think so. I believe that we have the right long-term solution for the future administration of our parish. The process of transitioning to a new office staff has been wracked with many unanticipated complications. With God’s help, we can resolve the complications and move forward. Because of that, I am willing to invest in the solution.

However, even if I am employable… I still don’t want a new job.

Did you take a new job in retirement? How has that been for you? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a productive day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Boo!

The jack o’ lanterns are grinning maniacally. The ghosts are keening. The witches are flying on broomsticks against the harvest moon. Costumed freeloaders will soon be knocking on our doors demanding candy and threatening mischief if none is forthcoming. At least that would be happening if we didn’t live in an age restricted community of oldsters in central Florida. Halloween is just around the corner. Maybe we should talk about zombies, werewolves, and vampires today. Or maybe we should talk about something that is really scary…. Five common fears people often face when thinking about retirement.

So…. Turn down the lights and get ready to do some ghost-busting!

I will not have enough money to live as I wish in retirement.

It is difficult not to feel anxious about money when you are facing a rather substantial decrease in income upon retirement. Most people have a sort of intuitive feeling about how much money they can spend without having to think about it too much. We live at a certain standard of spending, based on what is often a fairly stable work income. We buy things we have always bought because we have always been able to afford them. We have a “set point” in our minds about discretionary spending. We have a sense of some dollar amount at which a non-recurring payment stops being an impulse buy and starts being an expenditure requiring deliberate decision-making. When we retire and cut our income 30-50%, that “set point” may change. In fact, our whole intuitive sense of what standard of living we can afford becomes murky. We don’t have any empirical practice at what living on this lesser income feels like when it comes to buying stuff.

One way to mitigate this dilemma is to “practice” living on a lesser income while still working. This helps show us that we can live the way we want to, even on a smaller income. It also helps train our financial muscles to work differently. It hones that intuitive sense of what we can afford. For more information on how to “practice” living on retirement income, you can review my blog post, “The Elephant In The Room. http://www.terrilabonte.com/2016/02/the-elephant-in-the-room/

It is also important to remember that you don’t have to stop earning income completely when you retire. Earning doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition. Presumably, you don’t need to earn as much money as you did while working full-time. Maybe, though, you find you need some amount of additional income to shore up your retirement lifestyle. You can probably find a part-time job to fill the gap. You might even decide to start a small business to share your skills. Maybe you can babysit. Maybe you can do light caretaking, like running errands or doing housecleaning or laundry for elderly or disabled neighbors. Maybe you have a skill from your working life or a hobby that you can monetize. It may help you embrace retirement with financial confidence if you know that you have a back-up plan.

I’ll start gaining weight or….

Smoking too much, spending too much money, drinking too much, getting depressed over a failed relationship, or…. insert your bad habit of choice.

When I retired, I was worried about eating too much and gaining weight because I would be home more and have more time to consume food. When I was working, the amount of time I had available to eat was so restricted, it seemed like it shouldn’t be all that hard to minimize my caloric intake. Once I could reach for a snack from my own kitchen cabinet or refrigerator any time of the day, I was afraid that there would be no external circumstances to limit my grazing. I had friends who had the same concerns about being able to smoke without having to wait for a moment to run outside the office for a smoke break. I am sure it is the same with any unhealthy habit. It can feel like the freedom retirement brings may also take away the work-related limits on bad habits.

I found that it was actually easier to maintain and even lose weight once I retired. Yes, I had more time to eat. Yes, I probably do eat more than I did when I was working. However, what I eat is very different. Since I am eating from my own kitchen, my choices are limited to the pretty healthy stuff I’ve put there. I am no longer wolfing down a candy bar at 2:00pm because I could get it at the vending machine and it is the only food I have had time to acquire since I ate breakfast at 5:00am. I don’t feel as compelled to soothe myself with high fat and high carbohydrate comfort foods because I am not as stressed. In short, I am eating more, but the more I am eating is higher quality, more nutritionally dense foods. The other element is exercise. Because I am retired and have much more flexibility in my schedule, I walk over six miles a day and do water aerobics once or twice a week. The exercise has many benefits, including helping to manage my weight despite not eating perfectly.

The additional time you find in retirement can result in the expansion of unhealthy habits, but it all depends on how you look at it and what you decide to do with that time. That time can also provide you with the opportunity to explore, at your own pace, why you built those unhealthy habits in the first place. Rather than gaining weight (or bankruptcy, lung cancer, liver disease, another dysfunctional relationship, or some other consequence of an unhealthy habit), retirement can be the time when you gain happiness.

I’ll lose my friends.

Most of us have a social network that we establish through our jobs. Most of my friends were my work colleagues. Having these wonderful people in my life certainly enriched and sweetened my working years. I wasn’t sure how I was going to cope if those relationships withered when I left the workplace. Guess what? I never had to cope because those relationships never withered.

It is probably naïve to think that all your work friendships will endure after you retire. It is also counter-productive to think that the relationships that do endure will be exactly the same. However, it is defeatist thinking to assume you will lose your whole work-related social network. I found that, for the most part, the people I cherished from my working years are still closely in my heart’s orbit today. For more information about maintaining friendships after retirement, you can review my blog post, Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot. http://www.terrilabonte.com/2016/12/should-auld-acquaintance-be-forgot/

It might also be helpful to “practice” a new social network before retirement. If you are worried about not being connected to your work friends any more, perhaps it would be good to start expanding your circle of friends to other areas- church groups, civic organizations, neighbors, etc.

People retire and then they die.

Many of us know people who worked their whole lives in relative good health and dropped dead soon after retiring. There are enough of these stories circulating that we can get a little superstitious about entering the retired ranks. I think the logical fallacy of “because something happens after an event, it must have been caused by the event” is at play in those superstitions.

It is probably true that some people are so connected to their work that they get bored and lose their spark when they retire. I suppose that could contribute to a premature death. However, I don’t think most people die after retirement because they are so depressed they lose the will to live and just fade away. There may be a period of confusion and depression, but most of us find our way through that time and find our new lives. If a person does die shortly after retirement, seemingly for no reason, I think there is likely some reason. That reason may have actually been present before the retirement, but the person may just not have wanted people to know about it. The condition may have presented itself after retirement, but would have reared its ugly head at the same time, whether the person was working or retired.

If I retire, I’ll lack purpose in my life.

Most people think that their purpose in life is what they do. In reality, the opposite should be true. We should do what is our purpose in life. Unfortunately, for many of us, the work that we do to make our living isn’t what truly makes us feel whole and the best version of ourselves. We may find it satisfying and interesting and reasonably lucrative in providing for our wants and needs, but it probably isn’t what makes our hearts sing and our souls expand. Even though what we do for work probably isn’t truly our purpose and driving force, it’s easy to get in the habit of thinking that it is over many years of a career. Partly this happens because we just don’t have any time for much else while we are working. Partly it happens because it is much easier for us to measure progress and success towards “purpose” by keeping our focus on a career than it is to explore where our true purpose lies. After all, no one gives you a raise or a promotion for self-actualization.

If you are one of the lucky people whose “career” purpose and “self” purpose intersect, it is likely that you can find a way to live out that purpose passionately in retirement. You may be able to work part time or volunteer to follow your heart. If you can’t physically do the work that is your purpose, you can probably still consult, mentor, teach, or write to share your skills with others.

For more information about finding your new life, you can review my post Get a Life. http://www.terrilabonte.com/2016/09/get-a-life/

So maybe the shadows of retirement are not so scary after all. Now that we’ve pushed these skeletons back into the closet, how about some candy? Trick or treat, anybody?

Now it’s your turn! What were your fears about retirement? Do you think those fears were well-founded? How did you overcome them? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you an email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Happy Haunting!

Terri 🙂

The Elephant in the Room

Most of the people I know struggle with one major obstacle in deciding when/if to retire. Can they afford it? We might as well face it. Money is a big deal. Few companies offer retirement benefits any more. If the recession/depression of a few years ago proved nothing, it proved that our own sense of our economic stability can be fleeting. People are living longer and their money must go further. Medical costs are rising. Social Security benefits on their own aren’t usually enough to provide the lifestyle most people want. Additionally, many people look forward to having the time in retirement to do things they don’t have time to do while they are working. Typically, those things cost money.

I may not be the best person to comment on the economics of deciding when to retire because I am one of the few people still blessed with an employer-sponsored defined benefit pension. While nothing is completely guaranteed in this life, my government pension is about as secure as it gets. Also, I am far from a financial expert. I would not presume to give anyone advice on how to evaluate all the economic ramifications in making the very personal and complex decision about when to retire.

What I am an expert on, however, is worrying.

When I was thinking about retirement and trying to decide if I could make it work economically, I did the computations every which way to Sunday. In every scenario, it seemed clear that I would be fine. Still, I could not get over the feeling that I was somehow missing a key consideration and would end up destitute, eating cat food for Thanksgiving dinner. As worriers tend to do, I came up with some strategies to try to control the thing which I feared. While my strategy did not completely end my anxiety, it helped a lot. I thought I’d share what I did, in case any of you world class worriers out there might find them helpful.

I call it my “Three Ps” plan to financially confident retirement. Note that none of these “three ps” actually involve amassing any wealth, changing the amount of money you have, or saving on expenses. Smarter, more financially savvy people than I can probably tell you how to save and grow your retirement funds. I am going strictly from the point of view that “it is what it is.”

Plan

Create a tentative budget for living expenses, based on what you currently spend. Make sure to include regular savings to build an emergency fund. You may not need to save as much as you do while working, since you are no longer “saving for retirement,” but you can’t just start spending willy-nilly without saving anything for a rainy day (remember, I’ve moved to the southeast where there are many, many rainy days!) Then consider what is it that you really want to do in retirement and how much money will it take to live the way you want? Be realistic. Many people say they want to travel in retirement. But do you really think you will or is it just something you say because you don’t know what else to do? If you do want to travel, what would that look like? A lavish beach vacation once a year? A six-month tour around the world that will likely never be repeated? A constant caravanning hither, thither, and yon to visit friends and family? And will those friends and family members feel obliged to put you up when you are there hithering and thithering and yonning, thus saving you the cost of a hotel? If there is a hobby you want to pursue, will there be ongoing expenses associated with it or is the cost mostly to obtain equipment, which you may already have? Whatever you decide is important, make sure you include funding your retirement dreams in your living expense budget. If it turns out that your retirement income will not stretch far enough to cover those dreams, you can determine how much longer you need to work to fund them. Then, you decide if your dream to travel or take up polo is a bigger dream than your dream to stop working right now. Only you can decide that.

Pay off your mortgage

Admittedly, this may not be a strategy that everyone can employ. It might not even be the smartest use of money (remember my caveat on not being a financial expert), but there is a huge intangible benefit. No longer paying that mortgage, usually the largest of all the bills we pay, is incredibly liberating. You suddenly have all of this money every month. If nothing else, you are assured of being able to afford shelter, a basic human need. After all, once the mortgage is paid, that roof over your head is all yours. Of course, sometimes that roof needs to be repaired and you need to account for those maintenance and carrying costs, but mortgage is the real killer expense.

Practice

For several years before I actually retired, I “practiced” living on the amount of money I calculated to be my retirement income and saved the rest of my salary and other work-related funds. The benefits of this practice were twofold. First, I built up a nice little nest egg that I used, in part, to put the down payment on the home I bought for retirement (which I paid off when I sold the home I had in my old state). Because of this savings, I also knew I had a nice little cushion built up to tide me over any delays in actually getting my correct pension. Secondly, living on only the money I expected to have in retirement proved to me that I could live and live reasonably well on the pension I expected. This was a terrific confidence-builder and security blanket as I “took the plunge” into retirement. Now, many people might not be able to live on what they expect to have in retirement while they are still working because they are still paying expenses that they do not expect to have in retirement- like a mortgage if you are going to be paying it off before or when you stop working or college tuition if you are waiting for that last child to graduate before you retire. You can still employ this “practice” strategy. Figure out how much you are paying for those expenses that will be retiring from your budget when you retire from your job and add that amount to the amount you expect to have in retirement income. Then, live on that total and bank any employment-related funds above that “expected pension plus expenses that will get to stop paying at retirement” amount. Even if there is nothing left over to bank, this exercise will give you the opportunity to really analyze whether the income you will have in retirement will be sufficient to fund the life you want to live.

At the end of the day, it is a scary and exhilarating decision to leave employment income. While we dream of the day we can retire and enjoy the life we worked hard to attain throughout our careers, that elephant in the room trumpets financial doubts pretty loudly to those of us who tend to worry. On the other hand, maybe it isn’t an elephant at all. Maybe it is just our own insecure, self-doubting selves causing a ruckus over nothing. I think the best strategy is just to think things through, analyze your finances realistically, and then…. Just Trust…. Yourself.

Terri 🙂

So what are your thoughts? Please leave a comment to share your perspective. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.