Retirement

I’ve known since I’ve started working at Martin Marietta in 1984 what the magical formula for being able to retire with a full pension was. It was when your age and company service added up to 85. So, my earliest retirement date would be August of 2015. That seemed a long way off for a young 22 year old computer programmer who didn’t even have a steady girlfriend at the time. But as life has a way of doing, time marched on. I ended up with a steady girlfriend who ultimately became my lovely wonderful wife. We had two wonderful sons who graduated high school and college and ended up with really good jobs (and consequently left us with an empty nest). Our plant went through several shutdown scares and finally in October of last year, shut down for good. A few of us retained our jobs. I had a really good arrangement. I was allowed to work from home several days a week plus actually work in a real office area where I could come and go as I pleased. I honestly planned on working at least through 2016. But the job started getting more and more stressful. As a lot of companies seem to do, there was the expectation of the same amount of work to be produced by a diminishing staff. I actually ended up doing quite a bit of work on two vacations in Wisconsin. I had to spend more and more time working from the office instead of home. The final straw was getting home after a particularly rough day and finding my blood pressure was 148 over 95! Right after I checked it, I get a call asking me to drop everything and take care of an issue. I became concerned that my health was going to get worse and worse.

So, I sat down with Donna and we talked about my going ahead and retiring. She finally convinced there was no reason to stay. Our pension had been frozen several years ago, so I would not get any bigger pension by staying longer. The only possible pro was that I could withdraw from my 401k if need be penalty free if I waited til 2016 to leave. We only planned on doing that in a real crisis. We had the pension plus a good amount of other savings/investments – we’ve been following the Dave Ramsey plan and we’d been out of debt for years. I prayed about it for several days and made the decision to leave at the end of September and let my management know. Just about everyone seemed to understand my reasoning for leaving. I worked on knowledge transfer with the people who’d be taking over my work. I spent a LOT of time on the phone with our benefits service center. I found out there is a TON of paperwork you have to fill out to retire. In additional to getting my pension distribution set up, I had apply to get my pre-65 retiree health, vision, and dental plans – our company is very generous in providing these for us. After some back and forth and a lot of help from our Centrus Energy Benefits person, I got that done. There are also a good amount of things that have to be done before you leave the company (items that have to be confirmed and checked off). My co-workers had cake and ice-cream for me one day (a very nice gesture) and Donna and Cheyenne came to my office for that.

The day finally came and once I got the final paperwork filled out, I was ready to go. I said goodbye to everyone there. There were several people I’d known there for over 30 years. I would especially miss my fellow network admins Bill Griffin and Skip Hancock. I finally walked out the door and got in my car and left I called Donna to happily tell her “I am retired!”. It was a strange feeling. It’s still a strange feeling; it’s finally sinking in that I don’t have to go to work each morning. I still look at my cell phone or think I should go check my work email and then realize that I don’t have to do that anymore. A couple of days later we went to Longhorn Steakhouse and Krispy Kreme in Clarksville to celebrate.

The question I get the most is “What are you going to do now?”. I had a couple of work offers but I really didn’t want to jump into working again unless I had to. I’d hoped to spend a lot of October in St Louis, but the Cubs messed that up for me. We’re going to the Spiritual Sword Lectureship in Memphis later this month. I’m running a marathon in November plus going to see UK play in Lexington. Donna and I and the boys and Cheyenne and Shelby plan to go to Miami and Fort Lauderdale at the end of November. I’m hoping to make a trip to Glendale Arizona in January for the NFL Playoffs. I have all sorts of places I’ve always wanted to go to – Hershey Pennsylvania, Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. But, the thing I want to do the most is be more involved at church than I have been. I’ve already started doing that. I’ve also agreed to become part of our eldership. I’ve made the excuse for years that I didn’t have the time but that certainly isn’t the case anymore.

The other question I get now is “How is retirement?”. I tell people “Great, but you should ask Donna what she thinks” (with a smile on my face). I’ve asked her a couple of times and she says she loves doing more things with me and having me around more. I’ve said it before and will say it forever I suppose – she’s the most wonderful woman in the world.