Fitness - Getting Ready for Florida

 

We are going to The Villages in Florida next week.  

Why on earth would we go to Florida over July 4th week?  Simply because it will be hot as hell down there.  We are considering moving there because the place seems to encourage us to get outside and be active… and maybe that’s just a psychological, but we want to check it out and make sure we can still be active down there during the summer.

I’ve been stepping up my workouts and - downstairs in the AC - I have worked myself up to 2 miles on the treadmill.  So this week on walking days, I went across the road to White Clay Creek Park and did my two mile walk there.  We are having a heat wave, so I can treat it a little like Florida… get my walking in during the morning.

Tuesday morning the heat wave started and I noticed on the AccuWeather app that 10:00 in the morning (white graphic) would be similar to a typical summer morning in The Villages (blue graphic).  The real feel shade at 85 would be like early morning and the real feel temp of 93 would be like later in the morning.  I’ll tell ya… the heat kicked my butt!  The shade was tolerably pleasant, the sun was bearable, but not fun.

I repeated it on Thursday, but left a bit earlier in the morning… with the heat index in the high 80s which was a nice compromise.  I plan to continue with the walking in the heat for the next week until we leave for The Villages.

Except for this weekend!  The heat wave reached its zenith and although we went down to the boat, it was SOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOTTTTTTT (heat index reached 108 on Saturday).  We basically were slugs in the salon watching movies on the big TV.  When I captured the weather screenshot (around 5:00 PM Saturday) I had merely popped my head out of the companionway and it was so horrible we just stay below, not even venturing to the pool bar for dinner.

By sunset both Friday and Saturday, it was tolerable enough to sit out and enjoy being outside.

Sunday was predicting another (worse) day with violent T-storms, so we packed up early in the morning and headed home.  I did venture out to drive to Phoenixville, PA to hear Ian Fraser at the Colonial Theater.

This is more like I would envision Florida life during the hot season.  Travel to indoor activities with some exercise in the morning.  It was really hot (heat index mid 100s) walking from the car to the restaurant to the theater (and I was a bit underdressed in shorts and polo shirt), but it was a fun concert and I expect I can get used to this somehow.

One Week In

This week is my first week of retired life, but it doesn’t really feel that way since it was also the week work was going to have a shutdown… nobody was going to be working.

Originally, the plan was to depart for a sailing vacation for this week and next.  However, Vicky needs to work at night and we were hopeful that the boat would sell and therefore did not renew the T-Mobile hotspot.  We decided to wait on the sailing (I may take a single-handing trip after she returns to China) and I got started working on my fitness (double workouts most days), reading (working my way through Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi) as well as other odd jobs around the house.

On Thursday I did go out to drop the car off for some repairs and ended up at the mall for the first time since the pandemic.  That experience felt weird… almost like playing hooky from school.  The nearby mall was not dead like a lot of others these days but was fairly empty being a Thursday morning at 11:00 AM.

On Saturday we headed down to the boat.  It became evident during that trip that Vicky is REALLY worried about several aspects of my retirement, especially the sequence of return risks I spoke of earlier.  Of course we both worry about settling my alimony and selling the boat, but those will resolve themselves in due time.  This will take some time to work through.  (We ended up not going out sailing.)

On Sunday (Father’s Day), we headed up to John’s house and had a surprise invitation to Jess’s father’s house for a cookout.  Joe has a really nice home on the same farmland that John rents from and it was a beautiful afternoon with Levi and the extended family.  Vicky seems to greatly enjoy her time with the little one.

The BIG Decision - Where to Live

Where do we want to live in retirement?

We have been thinking about this for a while.  We have identified two main options.

Staying in NEWARK, DE

We have a nice house.  But I have to acknowledge that we're living here because of my job - we even purchased it through the company's relocation benefit when I first started.  Furthermore, Newark, DE ranks an "A" on Niche.com for places to live.

Our house is large and nicely appointed.  We have space for both my library and organ and plenty of room for guests.  Since moving here we have redone the roof and patio, replaced the HVAC units (all three) and put in a customized kitchen.  

It has some cons... we do still get water in the basement fitness room immediately after extreme (2+ in.) rains.  And I swear that the stairs will someday kill me... they're kind of steep and slippery.  (A problem I've noticed when folks build a house and opt for additional height in the rooms.)

So it will need some work... egress windows and water proofing in the basement and maybe some carpet on the stairs in order for it to work long term for us.

Finally, it's biggest draw is that it's only a two-hour drive to go visit our son's family.

Staying put is definitely an option.

Moving to THE VILLAGES, FL

It was about a year ago when YouTube suddenly decided that I needed to know about The Villages in Florida.  This is a MASSIVE retirement community built over the past 30 plus years by stringing together what seem to be a huge number of "active 55+ communities".  They share amenities across the entire complex, so villagers have access to something like 110 pools, dozens of rec. centers and 700+ holes of golf and more than 3000 clubs & activities.  All of this is connected by miles and miles of golf cart pathways so you can essentially live your whole life (if you wanted to) using only a golf cart for travel.

We went there for our "lifestyle visit" last year.   I have to say that the place is designed to encourage activity.  I have been guilty of leading a relatively sedentary lifestyle apart from my sailing hobby.  While down there, I started talking long walks, played a couple of rounds of pitch 'n putt (the most golf we could hack at the time), rode a bike for the first time in 15 years, and even went swimming!

There are some (serious) cons... mainly that it's a two day drive from John and his family.  It IS quite centered around the senior lifestyle, and while I'm fine with that, Vicky is 9 years younger than I am, so she's still coming to terms with this.

Also, it IS in Florida.  And it gets hot down there.  We had previously planned to go down there for the July 4th week... just to see how bad the heat gets in the middle of the summer.  I figure as long as I can be active early in the morning and it cools off so you can enjoy the live entertainment at the town squares in the evening, we would just hang indoors in the afternoon (or by the pool).

So time will tell.  I do feel we shouldn't keep this hanging over our head too long though.  The goal of the July trip is to rule it out if the heat is intolerable.  Beyond that, I hope to know by the end of the year what we want to do.

As a final note, I'll add that I understand that the decision to be active or sedentary is in my own head.  There are plenty of opportunities to walk, bike, even swim locally.  Free live music each night and golf cart travel, however, doesn't exist around here.

Major Risks - Medical Coverage and Sequence of Returns

I have been focusing on the positive so far.  There are a couple of major risks with retiring (slightly) early at 59.  Vicky and I were discussing these last weekend.

They are medical coverage and sequence of return risks.

Medical Coverage Risk

Because I have moved around from company to company, I have no company promising me medical insurance coverage from 55 through "life" (whatever that means these days).  Earlier this year, when I was working with NewRetirement.com to plan my retirement, I went looking in the HR pages for my company and there I discovered that having started there after 2014 (I started in 2015), I qualify for nothing after retiring.  That was both scary and freeing... I was on my own, but also I had no reason to continue working until some magic age (e.g., 65 or 15 years of service) because it wouldn't make any difference to me.

The main reason for my original plan of waiting until the end of the year to retire was to get past the 2024 election.  I'm going to have to rely on COBRA and Obamacare.  While Obamacare is more and more an accepted government benefit, I have heard the one candidate mention a couple of times in the past few months that he still intends to undo this program.  If that comes to pass, I may have to deal with 3.5 years of getting health insurance as a person with pre-existing conditions.  We'll cross that bridge if we have to.

Sequence of Returns Risk

This is a risk that EVERYONE has to face these days as they enter into retirement UNLESS, the have a fully funded pension that doesn't require savings, OR they are retiring on SSI only.

Without going into a lot of financial details, the basic thinking is that for someone relying on investments to retire, the magic of compounded interest will serve you greatly as retirement progresses.  BUT if you have a series of bad years early in your retirement life, that is hard to recover from, and indeed, looking at the worst of the Monte Carlo simulations confirms that.

There's not much one can do here.  At some point, you just have to jump into the river and see where it takes you.  The best way to handle some early bad years is to have as much flexibility in your plan (especially the spending).

Looking Forward - What Am I Retiring TO??? What is the plan?

 

I've read frequently that you shouldn't retire FROM somewhere unless you have something to retire TO.  For me, that's not a likely problem.

I am retiring from work.  I have a PhD in Chemistry, and obviously I like the field (or I wouldn't have spent so much time and energy in this field), but I've never been the type of person where my job is my life and identity.  Work was always a means to fund my home life, family and of course my hobbies.

So, what are the current hobbies that I'm retiring to?

1. Reading has been a life-long pleasure for me.  Clearly, for the past 34 years (longer if you count education), a bulk of my reading has been professionally oriented.  I have done leisure reading, but not as much as I would like.  Pictured above is my Easton Press collection of books.  I plan to spend some time each day making my way through the 100 Greatest Books, as well as my Hemingway, Twain and Short Story collections.

2. Fitness has also been big in my life.  Stop laughing!  Yes, my body type might not lead to that conclusion... you just have to know that eating has also been big in my life. 🤷  

I have a fair bit of fitness equipment and do use it regularly, but since I like to exercise in the mornings, it has always seemed a bit rushed.  I frequently can't quite get the workout I intend because I have to head to work (even if it's just upstairs to a Teams meeting).  Those excuses are gone now.

But I also want to be more active in general.  I used to walk several miles each evening and ride bike frequently.  These are things I intend to add back into life.

And yes, I would like to loose some weight.

3. Organ music has been a staple in my life since 7th grade.  I had to give it up for a long period, but with my acquisition of the Allen GW4 a few years ago, I plan to do more practicing.

4. Sailing will remain a part of my retired life - certainly while we still own Seas The Day (she is for sale), but even afterwards with some charter rentals.

5.  And of course there's the Honey Do list, Cooking, cleaning, watching movies and all of that stuff as well.  Oh, and don't forget naps!!

My expectation is that I'll break most days into segments.

Mornings will be exercise and "office time".  (I still have to communicate with other people, manage accounts, write my blog, etc.)

Afternoons will be some reading, some practicing and maybe a nap.  Afternoons will also be where I do little projects.

Evenings will be spent cooking a nice dinner and sharing a movie (or more reading).

I don't think I'm going to be sitting around doing nothing.

My Biggest Career Regret, and My Proudest Accomplishment

 

This is Day 1 of retirement for me (first Monday not going to work).  There are lots of thoughts, so I may make multiple posts....

... AND, I really want this blog to be a forward looking thing... not wallowing in the past, BUT this will be one exception.

Vicky and I were driving up the NJ Turnpike yesterday, passing the time discussing many aspects of this retirement thing, when she suddenly asked "Over your whole career, what do you regret the most?"

 Initially I started to say that I don't really have any, but then the thought came... yea, there is one.

It's funny in a weird sort of way in that my biggest career regret is also attached to my proudest accomplishment.  

Did I tell you that I have a US Patent?  I do.  It's even an analytical chemistry patent (which is hard to do as an employee of a "normal" company - meaning a company NOT producing products for analytical chemistry, but merely using them).

It comes from the middle of my career, around 2007.  I was working for a huge multinational flavor and fragrance conglomerate at the time, where I was the head of their main R&D Chromatography Lab.  Without going into proprietary detail, one thing that flavor and fragrance companies do is research into how to engineer a flavor or a fragrance (really just a mixture of oils) to do a certain task.  

One example of this is the BBQ flavor on your potato chips.  If they just put the flavor oil on the chips they would have soggy chips.  By using flavor engineering and spray drying the flavor with starch, you end up with that BBQ flavored power that nicely sticks to the chips (and your fingers).  On the fragrance side, a company might want their fragrance in a fabric softner to stick better to the fabric so the piece of clothing would smell fresh a few hours after the laundry process - perhaps as the clothing was being put away at the end of a long day.  

My boss at the time had termed this "long lastingness" and was determined to help improve this property.  A neat part of that job was my freedom to dream up ways to measure this.  This involved coming up with all sorts of ways to capture fragrances and coax them into a GC system for measurement.

One day I walked into her office and she threw a white towel at me and said "Smell this!".  I took a sniff and said it smelled like a neutral towel - no real fragrance.  (Side Note, this exchange is not as weird as it sounds... we were in a fragrance company, after all.)  She then told me to scrunch it up for a few moments and then take another whiff, which I did, and then I smelled one of our "Fresh Air" fragrances.  My eyes went wide when she told me the towel was washed two weeks ago!

That was the start of the "Capsule Project" for me.

What ensued was multiple years of intense and interesting analytical effort... thousands upon thousands upon thousands of analyses over many years, and the above patent is for an analytical procedure I invented with a couple of colleagues to crack the problem of "how do you measure fragrance on clothing when the fragrance is sealed in microcapsules?"

And this leads to the "Biggest Regret" part.

Microcapsules are microdrops of fragrance wrapped in a hard cross-linked plastic shell.  The regret hit me during a big celebration we held a couple of years into the project... we were celebrating the completion of a large capsule making unit.  I had just visited the plant and just one of the two reactor vessels would fill my two-story living room.  The announcement at the celebration is we would now have the capacity to create two batches of the microcapsules per vessel each day... and that another facility was being built in another of our plants in Asia.

Everyone was cheering and sipping the champaign the company brought in for the celebration... I wore a smile on my face, but inside I was devastated.

I'm not a staunch environmentalist, but at that time I was beginning to read about microplastic pollution - especially in the oceans - and here we were celebrating the fact that we could now manufacture TONS of plastic microcapsules that would get put into fabric softner, laid down on fabrics, removed in the next wash and rinsed down the drain to (eventually) the ocean.  Yes the company had paid some consultants to do a study and the conclusion was that these would be caught by filters at sewage treatment plants, but that just means a side trip to a landfill first (before ending up in waterways).  All this just so families could smell some fresh smells on their laundry for a longer period.

My regret comes down to what kind of world are we leaving for the future, and did we REALLY do our best to provide for them?

Retiring via Layoff - The New Retirement Landscape. How Do You Plan for This?

Dad and I in 1987.

THE GOOD OLE' DAYS OF PENSIONS.

I was in seventh grade when my dad retired from Bethlehem Steel.  He was 62 at the time and I remember him saying that he realized he "was working for nothing" so he retired.  And indeed, the family income rose a bit when he first retired.  The family income was increased a bit more when a great aunt came to live with us and contributed a portion of her SSI as well.  

Back then, you worked for a company for 30 years, retired with a full pension and all was well.

Well... almost.  There was a darker side to this era.  Most companies didn't fully fund their pensions.  While I was off at College, Bethlehem Steel (BS) convinced the government to allow them to separate their pension system into an executive system and a rank and file system and (you guessed it) as soon as that was approved, they FULLY FUNDED THE EXECUTIVE PENSION SYSTEM and then DECLARED BANKRUPTCY!  The "pension" that was so generous to Dad slowly eroded to the point that it barely covered Mom's MediGap policy at the end of her life, which she lived on only Social Security Income (SSI) at the end.  Yes, there were other institutions in the community - assisted "senior" housing complexes and nursing homes for poor people - which allowed Mom to enjoy her remaining years, but it was a far cry from the benefits promised to my father during his working years.

Watching that unfold, combined with a book (I long forgot the title - something about the retirement problem in the USA) I stumbled across in the local library which told of the many ways corporations can screw folks on their pension systems, set the stage for some early "retirement" decisions I made as a fresh young employee.

MY RETIREMENT PLANNING OVER THE YEARS.

After receiving my PhD in Chemistry, I started at Exxon in late 1990.  I had a good salary at that time, but it was based on my being a fresh graduate.  Through a quirky change in their systems, I received my largest pay raise ever (14%) at the end of my first year... they had changed how they calculate salaries... your years at graduate school were now counted as "experience" and I went from being a PhD with zero experience to a PhD with 5 years experience.  At that same meeting I was introduced to the "Exxon Thrift Plan" - a new sort of retirement supplemental system where you could save some of your own money (one of the early 401Ks).  It was explained that in the future, retirement would be a "three legged stool" consisting of your pension, SSI and your own savings.

I have always had a cynical side and I had a hunch way back at that meeting that my own saving for retirement was going to be important and so I began back then by putting half that raise into the thrift plan.  Over the next few years, each time I received a raise, I added another 1% of my salary to the regular contributions.  It took me a couple of more years - some wasted because I didn't know anything about investing - but by the late-mid 90s, I was maxed out on 401K savings and investing it all in their growth stock fund.

One other thing to note during my Exxon years was I finally realized that credit card debt, fees and interest were eating us alive and after a failed attempt or two, we finally kicked the credit card habit in the late 90s.

When I left Exxon for IFF in late 1999, Exxon sent me a letter indicating that my 9 years of work there entitled me to a "pension" that might make a car payment when I was 65.  I held onto the Exxon Thrift Plan and noted that IFF also had a 401K (run by Vanguard) which I immediately maxed out and invested in something called "S&P500 Index Fund".  IFF also had a pension.

Two things happened during the next 15 years at IFF.  First, they closed down their pension system in exchange for a (pitifully small) enhanced 401k match.  I received a letter that the IFF pension for about 9 years would also perhaps make a car payment when I received it at age 65.  The second thing was a divorce.  I ended up loosing half of each pension, half of the combined 401k funds AND as a bonus prize, got to pay my ex $42K of alimony for the rest of my life.  That's how they reward a woman for having an affair with the married financial planner handling her father's estate.  (Yes, I'm slightly bitter.)

I joined Agilent in 2015 and learned that they had no pension for folks entering that year, but they had a 401k with a match.  Again I maxed it out and also added the "Catch Up" contribution you're allowed to do on 401Ks after age 50.  Through the magic of compounding interest, I'm entering retirement with a 401K balance that's not quite 10x my salary (which happens to be Fidelity's recommendation for retirement).

RETIREMENT TODAY

But... the phrase "I'm entering retirement" makes it sound like I'm a more active player in this decision.  I am being laid off.  I'm also learning that this is the new norm in the USA.  Many people don't necessarily choose to retire... instead they experience some sort of job action (layoff, downsizing, assignment to a place they can't transfer to, or fired) and given the bleak job prospects of older Americans, they decide they are finished and begin the retirement phase of their life.

I'm actually quite lucky.  Given my savings, I'm very well prepared for this.  In fact, I was expecting to retire on my own around the end of the year.  This layoff moved my retirement up a few months and with a standard severance package will have little effect on the resulting finances.

Retirement is Work! (at first)

After a day to get used to the sudden move up in my retirement, the rest of this week was spent learning about the process.  Wednesday morning was a lot of reading of attachments to the company email and an hour with Cassie, my boss, helping her to understand where everything was located.

I basically work through the end of the week at which point all access to the company information gets terminated.  I then have the company email until mid-August to do job searches and the like (intended for those who got laid off and aren't able to retire) before termination (end of salary, benefits, etc.) happens.

One of my last projects (one that I'm quite proud of) was "GC Live".  I started this with a proposal a few years ago and shepherded it through the pilot phase last year and we began the series this year.  Of course the timing sucks a bit in that one of our webcasts/live streaming events was scheduled this week.  In the initial discussion we decided that I would not be present in the studio, so I watched my friends do this from home as just an audience member, which was a unique perspective.

The rest of the week, I have to say, was pretty boring.  I answered a handful of emails as they came, had a couple of calls, and an evening meet-up with a group of friends Thursday evening.  Friday morning included a last call with Cassie, and Friday afternoon I shut down the laptop for the last time (except for some email checks over the next few months).

I updated my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles at the end of the day.

Evidently I'm Retiring

 

This will be a quick initial post.  I had the meeting with Jim (my boss's boss) today.  My company is doing a slight reshuffling and my position is being eliminated.  So I guess I'm retiring.

It's no biggie... in fact, I'm quite excited.  In all honesty, I've been aiming for an end of the year (early) retirement and today's action simply pulls it forward a few short months.  With the total severance considered, I'm getting a free six-month vacation before my intended retirement date.

Blogger has sort of become my personal journal.  I use it to share what's happening in my life with family and friends (and the public - you're free to watch), but also to sort out my thoughts on these happenings as well.  (Just click on my "about me" section to see my travels to China, my relationship to a group of monks in NY state, a brief few thoughts I had on prepping, and of course my 10 year sailing hobby.)  My blogs also serve as a combination photo & memory album.  Anyway, this retirement thing seems to be big enough now to warrant its own space.

I'm well prepared, having been a retirement saver my whole life, and I saw signs that this might be happening.

So a celebration seemed in order.  Vicky and I headed downtown to a nice cafe and I had a big ole hunk of meat.  I promise a focus on fitness is in my short term future, but not tonight.