Semi-retired

[rowyn]

In keeping with my resolve to post "more incoherent whatever": a Second Post in One Day!  Because my first post was too organized. It had a subject and theme and everything. This is the exact opposite of my intent!

So it's two days after Christmas and I'm sitting at Pretend Coffee Shop playing 4thewords and trying to remember what else I wanted to write about. Hmm.

This is the last week of 2023, and it's my last week as a "part time" employee. In 2024, I'll be an "occasional" employee at the bank, and working just seven hours a week. I'm looking at it as "semi-retirement".

It's been a long time coming: somewhere between 2015 and 2017, I told my manager that I planned to retire in the next year or two.

My plan was derailed in 2017 when Lut was diagnosed with cancer and I realized that supporting both of us on my retirement savings was unrealistic. But continuing to work full-time while being a primary caregiver was exhausting, and I dropped to 32 hours a week in 2018.

In 2019, I dropped to 20 hours a week.

A week or three after Terrycloth’s death in 2023, I learned that he had left me some money -- I hadn’t been expecting that because he’d talked about leaving his assets to his family (and he did leave most of his wealth to them). But he left me a significant amount, half or a third as much as I’d already saved myself for retirement.

And I decided I was pretty much done with working a day job.

I like my workplace and my team and I still have skills that none of them can quite match. I didn’t want to quit completely and leave them in the lurch, and it would be convenient for tax purposes to still have some earned income (beyond the little trickle I get from book sales).

After speaking with my manager in September, I started using my accumulated PTO to take 7 hours off each week. I’ve been working 13-hour weeks since September. This week is my last 13-hour week. In 2024, I drop to 7 hours a week.

I don’t know how long I’ll be working 7 hours a week. It’s something like “until I and/or my manager and/or company HR gets sick of it.” It’s not clear who will get tired of it first. Apparently it’s something of a struggle to convince HR that it’s worth it to have employees who work less than 20 hours per week. My current manager started in her post this year and doesn’t know me all that well; unlike my previous two managers, I’m not sure she’ll consider me worth the ongoing headache of explaining the presence of an intermittent employee. And I don’t know myself yet if I’ll like having the structure of one workday per week or if I’ll still feel like logging in is a drag.

This bank has been purchased and merged with another bank twice since I first started back in 1997, with my years-of-service carried over to each new owner. I’ve been working here for twenty-six years. I don’t think I’ve taken more than two consecutive weeks off in all that time.

Although I am even less likely to take consecutive weeks off when I’m only working 7 hours each week. I already have a six-day weekend and I work remotely -- even if I wanted to travel for a few weeks at a time, I could easily login for 7 hours a week while doing so. It has become very easy to put in my hours each week without going through the bother of keeping my employer apprised of whatever else I happen to be doing. I'd have to tell them if I was spending several weeks working from another state, because that can impact employment law. But I don't like traveling that much, and my favorite person to visit -- Terrycloth -- passed away. Plus, I don't like leaving Lut alone for very long and he has negative interest in travelling himself. Odds are I won't be going on trips that last more than 6 days.

Anyway, I'm excited to finally be mostly-retired. "Retirement" has been my goal since I started working for the bank in 1997. In 1998, my optimistic vision of when I could retire was "2005" and my "this is as long as it could possibly take" was 2017. I am long past due. (At least I reduced my hours in 2017?)

I spent some time reconstructing expenses for the last two years and made a budget for the first time in 20-something years. I am a compulsive saver -- I've continued to save for retirement even while working 20-hour weeks -- but budgeting is not really my thing. Until 2007, I used to keep a close eye on my spending. In 2007, I lost track (too much +terrible butterflies+) and then realized that keeping a close eye on my spending didn't change anything  I did, so I never got back to it. I wanted to get back to it now to make sure that my sense of "I have plenty enough in savings to comfortably continue in the present fashion" was accurate. It is. I have some concerns about weathering a long-term disabling illness that would increase both my annual medical costs and general expenses. But I should be fine even then. 

Boy, this entry has still been pretty thematic. }:( I gotta work harder at this "disorganized and incoherent" thing.

Oh, I wanted to talk about my annual goals. I completed all the various final parts of Alien Peacelords: The Coriolis Effect https://books2read.com/alienpeacelords and released it! So that's done. (I will do a separate post tomorrow about Shiny New Book because that deserves better than to be buried in a long ramble). My last incomplete item from the annual goal list is "write an outline for a new book." I've spent some time thinking about new stories and have made some notes on two different ones, but do not have enough to count as an outline yet. Outlines are not necessarily super-long or detailed, though, so it's not out of the question that I'll finish this.

Anyway, that's enough for an entry (because anything is enough for an entry, that's the point) and it's late, so I'll call it here.

 

Comments

[filkferengi]

The pandemic pushed my lawyerspouse into involuntary semi-retirement a few years early, but here we are. He's already exploiting the tax implications of lower incomes, etc. Fortunately, we favor a low-stress, low- profile lifestyle, so it's no strain.

In a couple of years, we'll be eligible to take some classes free at the local university [our state has a program]. We're already talking about that. Have you begun exploring other activities and projects yet?

[rowyn]

This is my list of general activities I already want to do more of than I do:

Play (Kill Team, Terra Nil, Wandering Village, Boyfriend Dungeon, RftG. Apothecaria, 4thewords) Read (webcomics, Hoopla, books, webfiction, Dreamwidth, Discord, fediverse) Watch (The Dragon Prince, MCU, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, ??) Listen (podcasts, music, twitch streams. Podcasts and Twitch streams generally pair well with art. Music goes pretty well with writing and editing.) Art (Apothecaria, A Game to You, paint miniatures/terrain, A Dragonling's Family, fan art, sketching practice) Write (Apothecaria, blog post, email, chat, social media, the Hidden City, something new) Edit (The Jewel-Strewn Night, A Game to You, A Dragonling's Family, Fellwater) Exercise (walk, pace, stretch, lift weights, do aerobics video, clean, yardwork) Track (bills, activities, food, exercise) Social (chat, promote your books, promote someone else's books)

If I ever run out or get bored of those things, I'll worry about finding more hobbies. :D

[filkferengi]

That should keep you busy for a while. ;)

If you're into music, Mikey Mason has a show on twitchtv on New Year's Eve. He usually starts around 8 in his monthly shows on Twitch. https://www.twitch.tv/comedyrockgeek

Check out his music: https://mikeymason.bandcamp.com/

[rowyn]

Oh that list from my earlier comment really did not paste in well, oops. :D Sorry about that!

Thanks for the rec!

[filkferengi]

You're very welcome.