Realities of Retirement Planning

Early retirement sounds wonderful, right? In some cases it is a blessing, but in other cases it is a curse. My husband was a field grade officer in the military. He had been a “geographical bachelor” for years, which meant our family stayed in our home while he traveled to his duty station during the week and spent weekends at home (sometimes). Like most careers, changes start taking place, and he just did not feel like he fit into the new set of rules. He was a crusty old soldier and did not like some of the gentler ways coming out of the military’s human resource division.

Even though there were changes in his career, he found the decision to retire excruciating. He and I talked about it for at least three years before he finally decided it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it. His loyalty and responsibilities as an executive officer were extremely strong, but rolling with the new changes was difficult. He decided his military retirement was due.

Financially, can your family handle the drop in income? With military retirement, we knew what his check for each month would be and felt our family could handle the new income. I was still working full time as a teacher, so it was not like we were depending on his retirement check as our sole income. Plus, over the years we had been frugal and had paid off bills with the exception of our mortgage. We could handle the drop in his monthly income.

You must know what retirement income you will be receiving before planning such a monumental step. Do you have a retirement savings? What is your ideal retirement age? Have you created a retirement planner? If you do not know what your financial retirement would be, try using a site, such as CNN MONEY RETIREMENT CALCULATOR or BLOOMBERG’S RETIREMENT CALCULATOR.

Not only must you consider your retirement financial situation, you must considerd what are you leaving? Is it worth the life change or are you still needed in your position? My husband felt there were many good replacements he had trained for his position or he would not have left. He struggled for years knowing the time would come to make this decision. He did not take the decision or leaving his service lightly. You have to decide whether you can exist without your job or if the job can exist without you. When you are dedicated, it is not an easy retirement decision.

What are you going to do after you have retired? My husband was still young, in his mid-forties. He had been so busy for so long with no family time or time for himself. He was completely consumed with his job for many years. When retirement became a reality, he just wanted some down time and since we were fortunate enough to live within our means without the income we were used to from his military pay, he did not have a plan for post-retirement. That said, most people are not so fortunate, so you must have a retirement plan.

Ideally, many of us might think rest and relaxation with no expectations sounds good. You must have a retirement plan in mind. You cannot just sit down. You will lose your inner youth, your mind, and possibly your health. Get a retirement plan in place before retiring. It will save you and your family less stress and make the transition easier. Write down some things that you love to do. In the beginning you can start slow if you want. Here is a short list of things you could do:

• Read all those books you have been putting off because of lack of time. It is a nice slow start that keeps your mind busy and off of what you would be doing if you were still working.
• Write online about your area expertise. Joining a community like Hub Pages would be a great start. Sharing life experience is invaluable for our youth and others looking into the areas of expertise you can supply.
• Play golf or learn how to play golf. Playing golf as much as possible was his main goal, but he had to come back to reality. All in all, though, it is an excellent hobby to fit in when you can.
• Create a beautiful yard. Gardening and yard work are great sources of exercise.
• Rebuild an old car.
• Take a culinary class.
• Look into a new field of study and go back to school.
• Think of something you love doing and figure out a way to make money doing it.

The main point is that you cannot sit down and do nothing. Doing so is a quick road to an early death.

How is it going to affect your relationships? Being type A personalities, my husband and I had to discuss how it would affect our marriage if he were to be home all the time. For over twenty-five years we were used to having more time apart than we had together. We both understood the separation situation from the beginning, but this retirement change would be putting us together most of the time. He was used to being in constant control, and I was used to being in constant control. We knew there would need to be compromise, and quite frankly, we were both concerned.

Oh, this is the main question one must consider when your retirement age is young. It is like most educational situations, it is all theory until you experience it. If we had known the true situation that would come of his retirement, we might have given it a few more years of thought. We would have talked to more people who had experienced it and gotten advice. Instead, we analyzed everything to death and still did not get it right. Get advice, consider how it is going to affect you and your loved ones, and keep it real.

The decision for his retirement finally came, but then he was deployed for a second tour to Iraq. Neither of us felt he should take his military retirement before doing his duty. Retirement was delayed until he came back. We thought he would be going out “with his boots on.” It was a great way to end a prestigious military career, and in retrospect, it truly was the one decision we got right. So, he returns from Iraq and goes into what is known as “Terminal Leave,” which means he must take all the days of accumulated leave he had built up before the actual retirement was sealed. Since he hardly ever took days of leave during his career, he was on leave from June through October.

So, now he was home. It was summer time, so our fourteen year old daughter and I were on summer break. Our twenty-one year old son had moved out, so my husband was the only male in the house – even our mini-Dachshunds were female. At first it was pretty normal, but after two weeks when he did not have a place to go or men to talk to or operations to plan or a multitude of other job targets, he became bored and cranky.

My daughter was a typical teenage girl, but her dad did not know that because he was used to dealing with adults who were mainly male. Little did he know that she and he were identical in bull-headedness, which caused many problems. They could both argue with a fence post, hence their nicknames became Fence Post I and Fence Post II. I was caught in the middle. I realized he would not deal well with being home with the “women folk” who would not be ordered around. Several times I had to tell him we were not one of his soldiers.

Since the home front was my territory, I felt there were times I had to make a stand. He wanted to argue over the smallest things. He was irritable all the time. Nothing seemed to satisfy him. Both of us felt we needed to be in control, but I learned very quickly to pick my battles. Retirement was new to him and having him home was new to me. I had to keep a respectable front on for my daughter so she would not be disrespectful to her less-than-friendly dad. This was tough because they both reverted back to being young children by telling on the other for the least little infraction. While I can laugh at this now, then it was a terrible to be the referee with both expecting me to side with the other. To be honest, most of the time my husband was in the wrong, but I couldn’t let my daughter know I felt that way. I would pull her aside and tell her that her dad was having problems adjusting to retirement and she would have to try to be understanding and try to fly under the radar. This approach worked until she exploded the next time he gave her an unreasonable demand, like yelling at her for splashing in the pool. Uh, aren’t you supposed to splash in the pool? Was he worried that his flat top was going to get mussed?

Some things bordered on the ridiculous. But, in his defense, he had come straight from a battlefield and being in charge and responsible for thousands to living in hormonal “Girl-Ville.” I knew the poor guy needed a break. His happiest moments were on the riding mower where he could be alone with his thoughts and on the golf course where he could talk with someone whose testosterone level was higher than a Girl Scout Troupe. I realized something had to be done for our survival.

Truly, his retirement was the most trying time in our marriage. We had weathered separations where he was in exotic locations to war zones. Finally, I could no longer take his surliness. He was not the type who wanted recognition for his accomplishments, and in his career he had many. His friends and I ignored this essential part of his personality and decided to throw him a surprise retirement party. We chose to do it over the 4^th of July holiday because that was when the normal crowd of family and friends would show up. As he was cooking at the grill, he began to notice new people coming in - people he had worked with over the years. On the outside, he was polite, but on the inside he was livid and he knew who to blame. He let loose a string of insulting expletives to me and his close friends who helped me organize the party as soon as he got us alone. It was quite daunting to see this big man with gritted teeth and one eye crossed threatening to rip your head off. It rolled off his friends’ shoulders, but I had had it. I got back in his face and told him to suck it up, and that with the way he had behaved he was lucky anyone even cared about him at all. (Actually, it was a bit more intense because we both knew how to go for the throat and were not good about backing down.) I was furious. He did chill out for the remainder of the evening, but I was not finished with him or willing to let him off the hook because he had decided to behave like a decent human being for one evening.

The next day my fury was still there, but it was under control. I knew what I had to do. We were having coffee, and I said, “You have got to do ‘something, anything’ You need a retirement plan.” He just looked at me. I went on, “You are unbearable to live with. You are cranky and hateful. You cannot see any mistakes in the harmful things you say. You are alienating your daughter who used to be Daddy’s Little Girl, and your son does not know what to say to you. Mowing the yard and playing golf are not enough. You have to get a job, and not just any job. You have to go back to training soldiers.”

He knew I was right, and he began putting his resume out. He was called by many companies. His record and skill preceded him. Finally, he picked a major defense contracting firm that placed him in his God-given gift of training soldiers again. He is home more now, but he is back to traveling periodically and is still able to interact with the military and be involved in what is going on.

As for me, I have stopped thinking about smothering him with a pillow. He is gone enough to give me my space and for him to have his space, too. His relationship with his kids has improved greatly, and we have all settled into his new form of retirement.

Retirement seems like the ultimate goal. Striving for it and dreaming about it is one thing, but actually living it is another thing. You must have a retirement plan, especially if you are still young. You must include the ones you love. I was involved in all the decision-making leading up to my husband’s retirement, but I had no clue what was going through his head after he retired because he clammed up. Some people do this and have heart attacks soon after retirement. Fortunately, the only thing my husband needed to fear was being abducted in the middle of the night and being stranded on a small island in the middle of the ocean – my daughter and I had an alternate plan if he had not been receptive to my suggestion to finding a job working with soldiers.

© sholland10 2011. All rights reserved.

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