Exactly six months ago, I retired… (part 1)
8/16/24
Exactly six months ago, I retired. I’m calling it “pretirement” actually. I’m 53 now; I was 52 when I retired. I don’t have any retirement income – no social security yet (I have nearly 9 more years to wait for that, at least), no pension yet (I need to wait nearly 7 more years for that too). I can’t really say I retired from my final job as one normally would – with a gold watch, a handshake, and a pension. I just kind of said when I would be done working and then, I was. Hence, ‘pretirement’.
For the last six months, I’ve intended to start a blog about my retirement – discussing what I do to stay busy, my thoughts about my new life, places we go, places we want to go, and so on. Today, I’m finally starting it – better late than never, I guess – and I’m kicking it off with a series of posts titled “Exactly six months ago, I retired…”. A lot has happened in six months, I think – so I hope I can remember at least some of it. By the way, I should clarify… when I say “we”, I’m talking about my wife and I. “We” are not retired – not yet. It was originally going to be “we” but it became just “me” – for the time being. That’s not because “we” didn’t achieve our goals – actually, if anything we exceeded them. Our goals changed (or, I might say hers did), but that’s a topic for another blog (or maybe later in this one – we’ll see how long I can ramble today).
I definitely feel a sense of accomplishment for exceeding the early retirement goals my wife and I established and for being ready to pull the trigger on retirement at such a young age. However, there have been indications from others over the years that I appeared to already be ‘of retirement age’ or at least that I was quickly approaching it.
- About 10 years ago (with me at the tender age of 43), we were vacationing in Florida. We were enjoying a relaxing day at the pool when my wife observed a noticeably older couple showing interest in us from across the way. She commented that she believed we were about to be approached – for whatever reason. Now, a side note… my wife and I used to enjoy our vacations more as a ‘solo’ couple – we would occasionally have conversations with people we encountered (after all, we weren’t rude to others and weren’t completely anti-social), but we didn’t seek out strangers to chat with. We enjoyed our time together and that was fine with us. Her parents, on the other hand (especially her mom), would strike up conversations with random people all the time and would return from their getaways with stories of the people they met along the way. We observed this in person several times ourselves and always found it unusual. As we’ve gotten older (a theme that I suspect will be repeated several times as I blog), we have moved more ‘toward the center on the social scale’. But, getting back to our Florida vacation – when, again, I was only 43 – we preferred to keep to ourselves. The couple in the pool wasn’t aware of this or didn’t care. They slowly headed in our direction, just as my wife had predicted. We retreated to a corner of the pool near the deck chairs we had claimed for the day but didn’t make the bold move of climbing out of the pool to make a run for it. As I mentioned earlier, this other couple was ‘older’ – probably in their mid 60’s or so – and, as such, they didn’t exactly pounce on us so much as they meandered in our direction (presumably with feet aflutter below the surface of the water) while the ‘Jaws’ warning played in our heads – ‘ba dum, ba DUM, BA DUM!’. Eventually, they did strike up a conversation during which they revealed they were retirees from Canada and went on to discuss some of their past retirement travels such as Viking Cruise Line excursions throughout Europe – an idea that has sounded better and better to us as we’ve gotten older (again a theme I expect to repeat). They asked about our retirement exploits and we shared that we were still far from retirement age, chit-chatted for some period of time, and eventually made our escape without ever being invited to swim together, dine together, or do any other retirement-type activities together.
- I remember a couple years later being asked to complete some kind of marketing / opinion questionnaire in an online form. One of the initial steps was to provide my age. The choices were in 5-year increments for ages 20-25 years, 26-30, 31-35 and then 36-40 years. But, my age (45 at the time), was in an age group with a 10-year increment (41-50) and was only one age group below the last selection of 51 or older! So, I was already at the point where my opinion wasn’t valuable enough for the company to care about my specific age within a 5 year span AND I was only a few years away from being part of the group whose input likely wasn’t even wanted at all.
- Around this same time, my wife and I were shopping at Best Buy. Specifically, my wife was looking at the selection of FitBits and similar devices, while I was browsing around another section of the store. My wife noticed a very elderly gentlemen nearby – occasionally wandering somewhat closer to her but then walking away without initiating any conversation. She had the same sense as she did with the couple in the Florida pool – that this gentlemen was planning his approach. I then joined my wife near the FitBits, possibly just in time to interrupt the delivery of the opening line he had been practicing in his head. Shortly after this, he came up to both of us and said “You know you can get one of those for free through Medicare.” We thanked him for his advice and he shuffled away. My wife then insisted she was about to be hit on before I interrupted with my prematurely gray / white hair once again leading to confusion over ‘our’ age.
- When I turned 50 years old, we left town for a brief birthday getaway. We returned only 2 or 3 days later to find an invitation in our mailbox from AARP to join their exclusive club… again, that was AARP – the American Association of Retired Persons. AARP thought I was ready to join their club. In exchange for prompt payment of my membership fee, I would receive an insulated trunk organizer as a free gift. Apparently, an appropriate and useful gift for a retired person is an insulated trunk organizer. Well, first of all, I was only 50 years old and wasn’t retired. Second, I already had the exact same insulated trunk organizer in my car that I had purchased with money from my job… the one I wasn’t yet retired from (because apparently an insulated trunk organizer is a useful item for someone who isn’t retired yet too!).
I’m still not sure if it was my swimming skills or my white hair that led people to assume I was of retirement age prematurely. I don’t remember what company considered me too old to value my responses to their survey when I was only 45. But, I do know that AARP thought I should already be retired and ready to join their club at the age of 50. Now that I’m 53 and I am retired, I just might accept their invitation – but they’re going to have to pony up something better than another insulated trunk organizer.
next blog entry…
[8/16/24] Exactly six months ago, I retired… (part 2)
RetiredInIndiana 