I recently retired from an excellent hotel accounting career spanning almost 31 years. It may seem like a crazy decision with many years left until a traditional retirement age; not least due to a significant loss of income. There are several reasons for my decision and the timing of this change.
-
I’m in the fortunate position of having a decent amount of savings - enough to sustain me for the next few years if needed. I owned a house in Southern California for the last 18 years. The appreciation in the housing market resulted in extra cash after I sold my home. I also saved part of my salary and most of my bonus income the last ten or more years.
-
I have a supportive girlfriend (and family), and, since I live with her, I’m able to keep living expenses at a manageable level. Supportive friends and family are so important!
-
A career in IT / coding has been a dream of mine since college. I wanted to pursue IT in college, but my college at the time did not offer this degree program. As a result I decided to pursue an accounting degree. Accounting worked out very well for me and enabled me to support my family. However, IT / coding continued to be a side interest for me throughout my adult life. I had a part time IT related job while in college where I learned a lot about computers and creating Dbase applications for clients. Throughout my accounting career I’ve always excelled in the technical processes and wrote multiple VBA macros in Excel that really streamlined some of my tasks.
-
As I’ve matured, making money has decreased in importance and experiences / quality of life has increased in importance. For many years I had relatively few vacations and opportunities to pursue other goals. The steady income and providing for my family were my primary goals and I was able to accomplish this thanks to my career. Now that my kids are grown and no longer depend on me, I have more freedom to pursue other goals. Make no mistake, money is still important. I still need to be able to live and have enough income to travel and eat out on occasion. However, having an expensive car or luxury vacation does not seem important to me in light of these other goals.
-
As for timing, I felt recently that it was the right time for me to make this change. I’d been feeling burnt out at work for some time, and this year has been particularly busy at work. As a result I’d been unable to take more than one or two days off at a time and had to cancel a vacation planned for July. In addition, I was looking at being too busy the remainder of the year to take significant time off. Not a good combination when you are already feeling burnt out!
Honestly, the final decision to retire was quite easy because all the pieces were in place and it was something I’ve dreamed about for quite some time. So far, a little more than one month in, I feel like the decision was a good one. I’ve been able to travel some, spend time with my parents, sister, daughters, and grandkids, and enjoy the freedom to pursue my dream of a career in IT / coding.
I think at this point, my challenges are getting through the Flatiron program and after that finding a job in IT. I’ve heard that it can be difficult to compete with younger “IT experts” in the job market. I’m hoping to prove this wrong!
Stay tuned to hear how my journey progresses!