The Right Time to Retire Isn't Just About Money

For several months, I contemplated the precise date for my retirement. I would settle on a date in my mind, only to later push it back. I knew I wanted to retire soon, not too far in the future, while still having a good number of healthy years ahead. But when exactly?

My desire to retire was strong. I believed in the work I was doing, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. And I didn't wish to reinvent myself in a different job role. I simply wanted my time to spend as I pleased.

However, every time I zeroed in on a date, I paused, knowing that informing my employer would initiate the process of leaving the organization. Financially, I was sure it would be manageable. Specialists recommend the following steps to determine your retirement date, and I had done as much:

• Identify your goals for after retirement

• Evaluate your expenses after retiring

• Estimate the costs associated with your retirement goals

• Prepare an emergency fund plan

• Calculate the required amount and factor in inflation

• Review your current savings

Yet, even though each morning for the last three months seemed ideal to reclaim my time, no moment felt "right" to leave the family that my work had become. Retirement, even if financially possible, is a two-way street: you leave behind the demands, pressures, and annoyances of work, and in return, you also lose the benefits, rewards, and connections it provides. It was this second aspect that always made me hesitate. I was about to give up parts of work I cherished.

My decision on a date crystallized in mid-December, after watching a video chat about "Conscious Endings" by Heatherash Amara, an author I follow.

She explained how we are not taught to handle endings as a process rather than a one-time final act. When something important ends, it does so many times over, in stages, in comebacks.

A friend of mine jokes about two women who served a 20-year prison sentence in the same cell and were released simultaneously. On their first day of freedom, they stood outside the jail, talking for another six hours because they hadn't finished their conversation. He tells it as a joke about women's talkativeness, but now I also see it as illustrating the bonds we form, even when we're focused on leaving.

"Conscious Endings" also prompted me to see endings as unavoidable. I would eventually leave my job, even if I intended to remain employed as long as my employer would keep me. In that scenario, the timing would be decided by my employer, my health, or my death. Endings are unavoidable, and achieving the perfect ending is elusive, whether it pertains to a song, a movie, a book, or our tenure in the workforce.

This realization about endings gave me clarity about the meaning of deciding that date. Embracing the new status of retired meant surrendering another status I'd had for some 50 years, professionally employed. It wasn't retirement I needed to prepare for, it was the surrendering.

And so I decided on my date of surrender: January 31, 2025. It was a Friday, making it a fitting last day! It could have been December 31, 2024, aligning with the year's end, but we are all part of so many collective, habitual endings that occur on any December 31 that I didn't want to add my personal one to them.

Weekend aside, it's been three days of official retirement status, three days on Status R. I'd like to tell you about those in the ensuing posts. Let's say I am in that six-hour conversation after forging a 50-year bond with the workplace. Six hours, six months, six years...we'll see. I'm ready.

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