If you’ve read my blog you probably have seen that I have had one of the cushiest gigs in retirement imaginable. I work about eight hours a week and get paid expenses plus right at six figures a year in income. That works out to $250 an hour. But its even better than that because the pay is flat fee, I get it even if there is no work to be done that week or that month. I’ve had this arrangement for the last five years. Sweet, right?
So now I’m considering stopping paid work altogether. I’m turning 65 next week, and I have more money than I will ever spend and I’m just not really excited about continuing to do what I’ve been doing. I think it is time to reinvent that part of my life, to replace eight hours of work with something else that could be a different type of paid work or might not be any kind of work at all.
I’ve got a full life without work. I chair a college board of trustees. That brings with it board meetings, committee meetings, commencements, an occasional speech or interview and opportunities to rub shoulders with the Governor, politicians and government agencies. We have a local charitable foundation that runs a clinic, health and fitness facility, hospice house and a few other missions in the community. I also chair the board there and like the college there are meetings, committees, press, speeches, etc. I volunteer with my University and serve on the advisory board of the engineering department. I’m a member of the local and state Chamber of Commerce’s. I’m active in my church.
I have multiple hobbies. My wife and I are up to run before 5 AM with a group of friends three days a week. We both play tennis several times each week and do drills with each other in addition. We also play on several tennis teams across the state. We play pickle ball, though we are new at it and not nearly as good as we are at tennis. We bass fish, actually do all kinds of fishing on local lakes, trout streams and even off shore ocean fishing. We cook together frequently, she is the master, I am the grasshopper. We read. We watch movies, though that is an individual sport for us. She doesn’t get that Die Hard is the best Christmas movie ever.
We hike, a lot. We spent ten years hiking to every waterfall in the official book of Arkansas waterfalls by Tim Ernst. These are not waterfalls on nice trails, these involved life threatening bushwhacks through cliffs and over extreme terrain. That’s why it took ten years. We ride off road trails, Arkansas has some of the best in the country and we have a little side by side two seat ATV that will go anywhere, almost. We ski, not often but we enjoy it. We travel all over the US, by car mostly. Every year we have several multi-thousand mile trips out west, up north or across Texas to hike, ride off road, to fish or to see our kids who live far away. Of course I blog a little as well. We travel overseas too, this year was to have been a hiking trip in Switzerland. But Covid happened so maybe next year, or the next.
Life is pretty full without my consulting gig, its only a few hours a week in any event. But it has served a purpose. It has kept my employability alive, l have no gap in my resume thanks to consulting. I’ve done some other gigs in addition to the main ones, like expert witnessing and chemical plant operations consulting. Even a little paid lobbyist work. All that contributed to my making over $100K per year in retirement in spite of not working very many hours. And since we spend about $100K it has allowed us not to dip into our investment income at all. It also has kept me socially active in my old world of business. I deal with many of the same people I dealt with in my 9 to 5 job. It kept me feeling plugged into the network of movers and shakers and politicians. It kept my name in the news from time to time. All things I enjoy. But the work itself, I really don’t enjoy that part much. I became an expert in the narrow niche I consult in because I knew I could monetize it in retirement, not because I had a passion for it, and maybe that was a mistake. It pays well but when you are past needing more money then without passion it becomes drudgery. I’ve never been good at doing a good job if I wasn’t having fun. And that’s the problem, I’m not having fun at it now. So I’m going to quit.
I know what I do have a passion for, what I truly enjoyed most in my career. It was mentoring and teaching less experienced people about engineering and giving them career advice. Or it could be in the personal finance mentoring area, but that is already a crowded field and I’m not a real expert. We have a local university that has a fledgling engineering department, I am going to try to see if there is some way I can get involved over there. Failing that I’m going to need to invent something else. I’m open to suggestions.
What say you? What should I replace that eight hour work week with?
How do I find a part time gig that fits my passion to mentor, paid or volunteer?
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