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08.08

Retirement is Great... I Didn’t Plan it That Way, But You Should

By Vern Johnson

I have always enjoyed the work associated with my career, be it while I was a student, an engineer, or an engineering educator. Each period was the best time of my life up until then. As I reached and passed age 65, I wondered why anyone who so enjoyed going to work each day, was accomplishing goals, and was being paid relatively well to do so, would retire. Then one day it came to me: life will not last forever. It not only has a beginning, it must have an end. And if there is to be an end, I had to ask myself if there are other things that I would like to do, or should be doing, before the end. Up to that point, I loved my life, and had been too busy to determine if there really was life after work. If so, what would it be like? I could continue working if it was financially necessary, but I had been fortunate enough to have worked for employers who insisted that I contribute to a retirement plan that they also supported. If I retired now, I would be able to continue my current quality of living, but I wouldn't need to go to work everyday. Wow, I had a wonderful opportunity to find out what, if anything, I was missing in life. That is when I stopped planning for my next work challenges, and started planning my transition from active employment to active retirement.

Well, it wasn’t as easy as merely leaving work and starting a new life at home. I wasn’t really sure what that new life would be like. And besides, at the same time I was planning my transition, I learned that I had a form of cancer. Good grief, had I waited too long? My doctors said no, and with surgery, I was apparently freed of the dreaded disease. But there was a recovery time, plenty of sick leave left, and even some unused vacation. So I left work, used up some leave and the vacation time, and said goodbye to some of my best friends in the world.

But what about the job that had been so important to me? Could anyone really fill my shoes? Of course, a bright younger person was hired, given my old title, and now does it as well or probably better than I did. Life goes on there without me.

Life is good for me now, and I have never looked back. Retirement was one of my better decisions — just behind the mate and career choices I made many years earlier. Do I just sit around? If I want to, but that isn't very often, because there are so many things to do that I couldn’t find enough time to do before. There are things that didn't have enough priority before, and yet some of these things are very important to me and my family. So, I've become more family oriented than was possible before. The same is true of my church and civic involvements. It's interesting how not taking time each day for eight to ten hours of work has opened my life to many new possibilities. Today, I have a place in my grandchildren’s lives; my wife and I have become better acquainted; I purchased a cabin in the mountains near where two of my children and their families live (my home is near the homes of my other two children and their families); and, in addition to some mentoring and training I do with family, career associates, and fellow church members, my wife and I are able to work with an organization that provides food commodities to needy families in nearby communities. Life is good.

Enough about my retirement. Besides, we don’t all retire the same. We each have our own interests, needs and aspirations. Some of us make an easy transition to retirement, while others find retirement unaffordable, unexciting, unfulfilling, and maybe even lonely. Many years ago, I earned a doctor of philosophy degree in engineering, so maybe you will tolerate my sharing a little philosophy about life as an engineer from beginning to end. If so, stay with me for a few more minutes while I share a simple analysis of life that may help you determine if you are functioning in a way that can lead to a happy end.

My philosophy is based on the idea that life has four roughly equal phases, each of about 22 years in duration. It has a beginning and it has an end. The transition from phase to phase may blur a little, but not much. And since each phase is a preparation for the next, it is necessary to continually think about the future, and to establish and strive toward long-term goals. Life is a process that can only flow one way, and while you can occasionally find times to pause and even repeat some of the minor activities, in general you must accomplish the purpose of each phase during its timeframe and then move on. Life can end early, but one’s potential cannot be realized unless every phase is accomplished before moving on to the next. Fortunate is the person who understands the flow of life and prepares for its future stages.

Phase 1 focuses on preparation and learning. This phase is the time to:

• grow from being a dependent child to where you are prepared to become an independent adult
   

• gain a quality general education in school, and an initial career education at the college level
   

• learn to interact with those of the opposite sex, and possibly even identify a future mate
   

• set long-term goals for the remaining 3 stages

Phase 2 focuses on commitment, responsibility and practicing what you have learned so far. This phase is the time to:

• be an adult, use the talents you have developed to initiate a career and a family, and prepare for leadership in your career and community
   

• develop your knowledge and expertise to professional levels and develop skills to match those of a journeyman
   

• marry and demonstrate the ability to be a loving spouse and a functional parent
   

• prepare to become a professional leader, become worthy of leadership in the community, and initiate a financial foundation for retirement

Phase 3 focuses on leadership. This phase is the time to:

• demonstrate maturity as an adult and as a professional leader
   

• expand the complexity of your professional projects and the number of people for whom you have employment responsibility
   

• you and your spouse will continue as parents, but you will become grandparents and learn to love and indirectly support a new generation through your own children
   

• formalize your financial foundation for retirement and initiate plans to move from an active career to retirement

Phase 4 focuses on retirement, finalizing, pulling things together, completing and volunteering. This phase is the time to:

• continue the personal aspects of the previous stage, make the career move from active employment to voluntary career mentorship, and while you will have previously experienced the deaths of some whom you love/respect, death will become personal as you attend funerals for your peers
   

• learn to use your retirement fund to cover living expenses for the remainder of your life
   

• assemble family records and resources, volunteer assistance and mentoring to your children and their families, and ensure endurance of your family through reunions, family histories, and genealogies
   

• volunteer service to your community in ways that were previously not possible

We can each adapt this model of life’s processes to be more specific to our own situations, but I hope you find enough of the basics in it to be challenged to more completely plan your life — rather than to just live it as I did.

Something I mentioned earlier is so important that it bears repeating here again. In the olden days (the early days of my career), employers worried about their employees and they required such things as pension (I haven’t heard that term in many years) funds into which they and we both contributed. The last thing most of us thought about was retirement, but they required the contribution and we obliged. That requirement at the beginning of my career meant that when I retired, I was able to enjoy continuation of my same financial standard of living after retirement as before. Today's engineers change employers often and may lose track of such a fund, but the onus is often on them to develop a worthy pension. It is more important that today's engineers and technical professionals understand the four phases of life and their long-term planning elements than it was for me.

Good luck. I can tell you that retired life is great, because it is. I hope that someday you can say the same.

Vern R. Johnson is a Life Senior Member of the IEEE, and associate dean emeritus of the school of engineering and mines at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz. He is a resource member of IEEE-USA’s Communications Committee. Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.

Opinions Expressed are the author’s.