Retirement stories: Part 4. Three readers tell how they did it

By Chuck Woodbury
FOUNDER AND PUBLISHER
Amonth ago I wrote about my struggle with successfully retiring. As much as I try, I can’t seem to do it. In my essay I wrote about how I had concluded that a person cannot simply retire. There’s more to it:

“The thing about retiring is that you cannot JUST RETIRE. You have to RETIRE TO something — hopefully something you have always wanted to do but never had time. For many people, that’s RVing. For those who do not replace their work with something they love, retirement is just a pit stop on their journey to their final frontier.”

Didn’t follow the traditional route

From Carolyn Bennett
Dear Chuck,
Your article hit home and your story could be mine. Growing up in the ’50s, lives seem quite straightforward. As a woman I was supposed to get married, have a family and live happily ever after, most likely in the same house all my life.

Well, I took on nursing — one of the rare “jobs” a woman could have back then. I loved learning about how our bodies worked and helping people. I married a guy who had the same adventurous spirit as I had so we made a life on the road in our RV. We shocked everyone. What are you looking for? When are you going to settle down? When are you going to have kids?

None of those questions got the typical answer. And now, what the heck happened. Our age says we are old and should be retired. I’ve tried, and at 77 I’m still trying to figure out what job I want to do next!

Still works because he wants to, not for the money

From Dave Riddle
As a 70+ year old guy who grew up on a farm with parents who survived the Great Depression, well, I’ve been working since my dad picked me up and sat me on the seat of the John Deere Model M tractor and told me to steer down the corn rows so my dad could hand pick the corn.

I retired at 63 and 3/4. Why then, I’m not sure, other than it seemed like it was time to “retire” and do something else. So for 17 months, I tried retirement. It was not as satisfying as i thought it would be. Then, I met up with a work friend over lunch and I asked if he had any work that I could do over the winter. That conversation put me back in the working column for 21 months. It was a delightful time and I enjoyed my work.

Since then I’ve periodically taken other short-term jobs in my field, and never felt like it was a bad decision. My retirement life is part going out with the truck camper with my wife of 50 years, family and friends, church, outdoor activities, and taking the occasional work assignment. It’s been a wonderful way for me to retire.

The difference, I think, at this point is that I take the occasional work assignments not because I need a job, but because I want to take the job. The extra money is always nice, but the real value is the connection with my work and community of people, the mental stimulation, and the joy of realizing that I still have something to offer. In short, it helps define my purpose at this time in my life. I don’t plan to stop working until I experience that moment when I can no longer add to the conversation, provide my experience to resolving a challenge, run out of steam, or as you put it, I take my “journey to the final frontier”

Guilt? No. Balanced retirement life? Definitely yes. And enjoying every step of the way.

Travel is in their blood

From Diane and Dick,
I’m 75, husband 80. We’ve been RVing together for 27 years, 2 motorhomes, the latest 22 years old with 250K miles on it. (Not because we can’t afford new. We just love it.) We are both survivors of Silicon Valley. I retired at 50. The company was acquired by another company which asked me to stay a year to help in transition. I ended up staying two years with a hefty retention bonus. Six months later I convinced my husband to hang it up. He was 55.

We are blessed as our jobs in Silicon Valley provided us the financial ability to do this. This was in 2000 and the market tanked after this decision, and then again in 2008. We survived both. Many great trips, some as long as 5 months. Never wanted to fulltime. We now travel to Florida from California every January to March and then to Indianapolis (for the Indy 500 in May) for about six weeks or whatever we feel like. My mom is 96, so that keeps us from being gone too long. She has caregivers so is not alone.

We thought our trips this year would be it, but here we are discussing next year. We are both in excellent health, which is important. Although my husband has a pacemaker (long story), his heart is in great condition. We think at some point we will stop the long trips and travel more around the West. Our issue is, we have a 38-foot motorhome and tow a Jeep. So, the driving, hooking up, etc., gets a bit harder every year—at least that’s how we feel. However, we don’t want anything smaller. If we give up the RV, we will travel by car as we just love traveling too much.

So don’t worry about saying you are retiring and not doing it. If you love what you are doing, keep doing it.

Read last week’s retirement essay.

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If you have a story about your journey to your retirement, please email me at chuck (at) RVtravel.com and tell it to me. Try to keep it under a few hundred words. I’d love to include it in a future article.

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