Topic: A Retirement Story

[Mako]

While everyone wants to read so much into this, I'm reminded of how my folks retired.

My father is 5 years older than my mother so for a long, long, time, they had both agreed that he would retire at 65 and she would retire at 60 so they would both retire at the same time.  One day, at about age 62 1/2, my father walks into his office and announces that he is retiring.  He will stay on until his replacement is selected but he's done.  Not only were the people in his office taken by surprise, it wasn't a decision he had shared with anyone outside my mother so even I was surprised.

I asked him what caused him to change his mind.  His only response was that he felt like he had accomplished the things he wanted to accomplish professionally and he had felt for the last 6 months or so that he was just turning the clock.  Once he reached that point, he no longer wanted to continue working.

That sounds an awfully lot to me like Pruett's comments about "it's just time."  Everyone around keeps thinking there has to be more to it than that but, having seen my father retire in much the same manner, I really don't.  I will concede that there have been frustrations lately but there are always frustrations.  Moreover, challenges tend to make competitive people want to stay around and rise to the challenge rather than leaving them to someone else.  

Could I be wrong?  Well, it wouldn't be the first time nor will it be the last.  But honestly, the way Pruett did it reminded me so much of the way my father did it that I just think he decided that, for him personally, now was the time to retire.