Embracing Opportunity for Change
My current company allows easy transitions to part time - and I've just ended the second week of it. I do see this as a phase into retirement - though not in a traditional sense of that, or maybe I should say the stereotype of that. I don't see it as ending my career, but a transition into a late career phase.
Backing up a bit - I'm starting this second newsletter of mine as it seems there's not a lot on LinkedIn around "post retirement career" phases. My explorations about my next few years has found me seeing a lot on major and not so major late career steps, but little on LinkedIn on it. So, I thought maybe a newsletter and a bit encouragement with each article for discussion in the comment threads, including folks' own stories.
Backing up further - I had been thinking since about 10 years out of what I thought would be my retirement date about various milestones and such to be sure I'd be ready. Turning 60 was one checkpoint, though I procrastinated a couple of months. The sixty checkpoint I had was a deep financial analysis of my state.
I had spreadsheets with some simple calculations, but I thought about going more sophisticated. I found newretirement.com, since renamed boldin.com, and put in numbers to the free edition. Letting the web based app churn away and ... it essentially told me that I could have retired earlier in 2024. After an extended trip overseas I returned to BoldIn, got the quite reasonable priced subscription version with more features, and validated the results. Still not quite ready to believe, I worked with professionals to validate ...
How scary and freeing to know you don't have to work if you don't want to. But what to do with that freedom?
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Moving to part time is one step in freeing time for exploration. I continue at 80% (32 hours per week) - many at work likely won't notice anyway as I've long worked part time on multiple projects. Some of my spots are in some sort of leadership - and responses about retaining those roles are fairly non-chalant - I was working them part time anyway, so they'd likely not notice ...
But, even getting to part time I've figured out a few things I'll do in next career stages. It's not so much I'll stop working, but transition to work where a paycheck is less a concern and I can take time for other things. But more on that journey another time.
As I mentioned, I share my stories here to prompt others to share in comments - or write your own article and post a link in the comments. If you are on a similar path and have questions to ask of those of us further along, please ask.
And honestly, if the response is the sound of crickets - ok, maybe this is the only post in this newsletter.
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1 个月Thank you for your post, Mr Mark! I have just turned 55 and am beginning to think about how I want to live the next 5 to 10 years. I will learn from your post and use it as a reference to deepen my joy as an engineer.
Retired Senior Principal Cybersecurity Engineer
1 个月Mark, I did the same thing working at 80% PT for 5 months but also set a full retirement date as soon as I started that transition. I am just as busy without a paid job but the difference is I do things when and how I want. It is quite freeing knowing you only have to answer to yourself and your family. It has allowed me to start doing the things and traveling to places I never got to previously. I wish I would have done it sooner.
Innovative | Problem-solver | Experienced leader in Cybersecurity , Engineering , and Architecture. Helping others grow in their cybersecurity journey.
1 个月Thanks Mark. There is a sweet spot where you can retire and not worry about money; the other is waiting too long to retire. It will be interesting to see how much of an emotional journey is involved.