BestBoy

Comments:

• I share Jonathan’s amnesia about past accomplishments, praise, and laurels. But, from an early age I have kept a file—first paper-based, later electronic—of good reviews, emailed compliments from colleagues and people I have served, etc. I did this explicitly so that in later life, when my memory would likely dim, I would not forget them, At times over the years I have visited my “Kudos” file when I needed a reminder!

  Post: Never Quite Enough

  Link to comment from September 21, 2024

• Like you, I began working at a university (my own alma mater, in fact) at an early age (27 for me). Also, like you, I enjoyed excellent 403(b) retirement account contributions, first rate health care insurance, and ample time off. For me, an added benefit was that I greatly enjoyed being in what our provost had once called "the last of the medieval institutions!" I encouraged those who reported to me to take advantage of free tuition, lectures, and events on campus (and gave them time off to attend, if during the daytime). There was always something to do--art exhibits, musical performances, departmental colloquia, and theatre, etc. The fact that the university was enveloped in a beautiful campus was a cherry on the top. I eventually left for higher level job in a part of the US that my wife and I wanted to live. My new institution (a liberal arts college) allowed dogs in the office; so, I always encouraged my colleagues to bring theirs in so I could play with them at lunch time. Pure bliss! As my career was coming to a close, my wife and I took a leap of faith, and I accepted a job running a department at a university in Europe. We like it so much here that when I retired (a bit early as we had planned), we stayed in the beautiful city and country that has adopted us, even if obtaining fluency the local language has been challenging given our grayish hairs, and we regularly have to concern ourselves with currency exchange rates. The financial benefits have been great for this career direction, as have been the nonfinancial benefits of having really interesting colleagues, who generally weren't focused solely on making money. I had worked for a while in the for profit sector, after grad school, and found that while there were plenty of smart people there, academia suited me better. I also found that after a long, satisfying career, retirement was the perfect "Release 2.0" for our lives together. Best of luck in your own "Release 2.0" adventure.

  Post: Winding Down

  Link to comment from March 26, 2022

• I have been (early) retired from the vineyards of academic administration for the last 7 years. My wife and I use a "multiple streams of income" approach, consisting of US social security; a TIAA two-life annuity; a focused dividend growth stock portfolio in a taxable account; and a small pension and "social security" from my final job outside the US. The stock account provides 44% of our income; the balance derives from the other income streams, which act like a collective bond allocation. We also have funds in one T-IRA and two Roths, which we are reserving against long term care expenses. RMDs from these will start in a few years and they will be reinvested in a taxable account and held for the same purpose. TIAA has worked out very nicely so far, providing 24% of our income: Over the last seven years our payments have increased 7.6% cumulatively. This increase has come from TIAA's annual, voluntary increases (mostly small or occasionally zero in some years; but they have added up). We sleep well at night with little worries about volatility in the equity markets.

  Post: Drawdown Drawbacks

  Link to comment from March 9, 2022

• Here in Switzerland due to negative interest rates, I pay my bank to hold my deposits in amounts over 100K.

  Post: Mix and Match

  Link to comment from December 5, 2021