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Not That Person

Richard Quinn  |  Jun 26, 2024

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY an “enjoyable” retirement?

I suspect there are as many answers as there are retirees. But one thing remains a constant: the need for an adequate income. Given a choice, I don’t think many people would choose to live a frugal, barely financially sufficient retirement.

My father retired at age 66. I say “retired,” but the reality is one day the owner called him into the office and said he was no longer needed. My father loved his job selling carsand had done it for decades. The next day, the owner called my father, literally crying over what he’d done, but he didn’t change his decision.

To say my parents weren’t prepared for retirement is an understatement. There was no pension or retirement plan. They had $30,000 in a checking account, plus some shares worth $2,625. Their sole income was Social Security. They survived financially because my sister and her family lived with them and shared expenses, including the mortgage.

Did they enjoy retirement? They never complained. But they also did next to nothing—no travel, no entertainment except playing cards every Saturday night with my aunt and uncle. My father died at age 78 from emphysema and heart disease, the result of years of heavy smoking. My mother died 17 years later, at age 87, her body riddled with cancer that she never mentioned to anyone, including a doctor, until we forcibly took her for treatment when she could no longer stand the pain. Despite my request, a doctor told her she had cancer. She died the next day.

During my career, I spent many years helping retired employees with their retiree benefits. I also received hundreds of letters from retirees begging for a cost-of-living adjustment to their pension. Those letters had an impact on me.

My views on saving and retirement income are clearly influenced by my parents and by my experiences.

In the years immediately before I retired, I had no target retirement date and certainly no notion of retiring before age 65. I didn’t plan to travel or relocate or even downsize. But I did think about income. Frankly, based on the stories I’d heard from our company’s retirees and the unions who represented them, I think I was afraid of not having sufficient income for the rest of my and Connie’s life. That may have been illogical, given that I have a pension which—when combined with our Social Security—is equal to my job’s base salary. But it doesn’t seem illogical to me, not even today after 14 years in retirement.

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