The Wall Street Journal - USA (2020-11-16)

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Monday, November 16, 2020 |R9

JOURNAL REPORT|ENCORE

BYBRUCEHOROVITZ

HeadingInto

Retirement,

AStepataTime

With phased-in retirement, I dipped more than a toe in.

But I wasn’t ready to dive in headfirst.

their plans, the wife said, “I cooked
for 40 years, I am done cooking. I
told him it’s his turn.” The husband’s
response: “I will focus on dinner and
see how it goes.” The two laughed. It
might seem like a minor moment,
but it was actually profound. It im-
mediately helped the two set the
stage for their retired lives, with both
of them open to discarding habits
that didn’t serve them anymore. Nei-
ther felt confined or governed.
Couples who consider how retire-
ment can affect their daily function-
ing will position themselves to ad-
just and redistribute roles as
desired. This was also confirmed in
our research as successful adjust-
ment helped couples reach a high
level of marital satisfaction after
many years retired.

Negotiate

togetherness

Couples are often surprised to find
that they have very different ideas
about how much time they should
spend together after retirement.
Spouses can feel rejected, aban-
doned, smothered and resentful
when they make assumptions about
the amount of closeness and separ-
ateness they will share. For in-
stance, if a couple had a high level
of separateness before retirement,

one spouse may be overwhelmed
and annoyed when the partner is al-
ways around after retirement.
We talked to one woman who
said she was ready to divorce her
husband because after he retired he
became quieter and started watch-
ing a lot of television. His response
when she complained: “I talked for
45 years at work, I am done talking.”
The problem was that they were
speaking two different languages.
By renegotiating their level of de-
sired closeness and time spent to-
gether, and improving their commu-
nication skills, they each were able
to change the meaning they as-
cribed to the other’s behaviors. In-
stead of seeing her husband as lazy
andaloof,thewomannowsawhim
as a person who was exhausted
and needing to recover. Instead of
seeing his wife as smothering, the
man now saw her as encouraging a
more active lifestyle and enjoying
time together.
Our research findings indicated
that people who believed there was
an agreement on expectations re-
garding such things as time
spent together and affection
reported higher rates of
marital satisfaction dur-
ing retirement. When

these couples connected, it tended

to be meaningful. Merely being

around one another can feel lonely

if you’re not on the same page.

Find past

tenderness

It’s easy when stressed to forget

when times were good. If a rela-

tionship is strained because of

changes brought about by retire-

ment, couples may wonder what

they saw in each other in the

first place.

Reminding themselves of the

answer can be a powerful tool in

moving forward. In our research,

we found that people who were

able to reminisce about their

spouses had higher rates of satis-

faction during retirement.

After all, all couples have mo-

ments of success, even if they for-

get. They have learned important

lessons throughout life—as they

established careers, married, had

children, grandchildren and so on—

that can be a rich road map for

how to adapt for the retirement

journey. The key is to remember.

The couple may begin by telling

each other about a lesson learned

from a past challenge faced to-

gether. For example, when we con-

ducted our study we had not in-

tended to have the participants

talk with us; they were just going

to take a survey. We found, how-

ever, that by completing the survey,

many of them so deeply reminisced

that they had to share stories and

memories with us. Many pulled us

aside to express tenderness and

fondness for their spouses.

We made sense of this phe-

nomenon by understanding that

finding tenderness in the past be-

comes about reflection and creat-

ing meaning. It’s about couples

who may have temporarily lost

their way because of the stress of

change, but are eager to reconnect

with the person they may have

spent much of their life with. They

just need to know how.

Dr. Davala and Dr. Mims are

professors of counselor education

and supervision at the University

of Nebraska in Kearney. They can

be reached at [email protected].

F

or the pastfive years, I’ve been

trying to perfect the art of a

phased-in retirement. I haven’t

done it yet, but I’m getting a lot

closer.

But before I explain how I ha-

ven’t lived up to the ideal of a

phased retirement, let me first answer a

more-basic question: What exactly is phased

retirement,anyway?

Phased retirement (sometimes called par-

tial or gradual retirement) means you dip

much more than one toe into the retirement

waters, but not quite dive in headfirst. It

means a lot less money coming in—but at

leastsomemoney coming in. It means that

you—not your employer—are in charge of

your daily work and play schedule. It means

no more paid sick days; no more paid vaca-

tion days and no more employee benefits. It

means retiring in small steps instead of one

big leap.

Why do it? “It’s the perfect transition

from purpose-driven to a purposeful life,”

says Jody D’Agostini, a certified financial

planner at Equitable Advisors in Morristown,

N.J. “It’s a way to slowly off-ramp, but still

stay in the game. It’s a way to test-drive re-

tirement.”

Who should do it? There are three types

of candidates, says Scott Reed, a certified fi-

nancial planner at Hardy Reed in Tupelo,

Miss.: those who have cooled on their own

careers but aren’t ready to stop working;

those who haven’t saved enough to retire

but have to change careers for health rea-

sons; and those who want to enjoy life more,

but aren’t exactly sure what they want to do

with their time.

I call it Retirement Lite. For me, it has

meant taking many retirement-like steps, but

with a lifeboat attached. That lifeboat, in my

case, was having lots of freelance work un-

der contract before somewhat reluctantly ac-

cepting a buyout and leaving my full-time job

as a USA Today business writer five years

ago, at age 62. I didn’t want to take another

full-time job, but I still needed modest in-

come, so phased retirement seemed like the

best option.

I knew, though, that I had to prepare for

phased retirement as if it was full retire-

ment. That’s because you never know how

phased retirement will work out. And once

you leave your job, it can be very difficult to

find full-time work in your field again.

For me, phased retirement has mostly

been a good thing. It meant bagging the five-

day workweek that was my credo for four

decades, and slowly replacing it with a rou-

tine that typically involved two to three days

of freelance work a week, along with two to

three days of volunteer work.

Phased retirement has kicked me in the

teeth plenty. Freelance jobs are fleeting.

Most tend to have all the permanency of

new-car smell. Nor have I gotten fully accus-

tomed to getting paid, say, in September, for

a freelance-writing gig I completed in May. It

has meant cutting back on family vacations

and restaurant meals. It has also meant

checking my brokerage account statements

much more frequently—and with a height-

ened sense of angst.

At the same time, phased retirement has

given me my life back.

The greatest gift has been more time with

my family. I was around the house for both

of my daughters when they were seniors in

high school. This made it much easier for my

wife, Evelyne, to go to her daily job as a spe-

cial-education school aide without having to

worry about being at home to put out the

emotional fires that tend to flicker and burn

that last year of high school.

At age 58, Evelyne is still years shy of re-

tirement. She loves her job, which also is the

linchpin for our family’s health care. But long

before I considered phased retirement, there

were five boxes that Evelyne and I agreed

had to be checked:

• The mortgage was paid off. This can’t be
  a last-minute decision. For us, it began years
  before the buyout, when my employer first
  started to furlough staff. We immediately be-
  gan to double-down on our monthly mort-
  gage payments and it was probably the
  best decision we ever made. Our
  mortgage was paid off roughly
  six months before I entered
  phased retirement.


• The car was paid off. We
  don’t do fancy cars. But we
  were able to pay off our
  2012 Kia Sorento several
  months before I entered par-
  tial retirement. We still have
  it and plan to keep it for
  years. It has almost 100,000
  miles and we expect to see it

roll past 200,000.

• The 529s were fully funded.At the time I
  began phased retirement, I had one daughter
  just starting college, and the other was five
  years away fromher freshman year.


• The gigs were lined up.I wasn’t about to
  tiptoe into phased retirement with the cup-
  boards bare. I had lined up two monthly free-
  lance writing assignments with trade publica-
  tions and signed contracts for both. That
  guaranteed me a reasonable monthly income
  for my first year.


• The savings were there.I folded my 401(k)
  and a small pension into an IRA when I left
  my full-time job, with enough for a reasonably
  comfortable retirement.

My biggest mistake, according to Ms. D’Ag-

ostini, was taking Social Security at age 66—

my “normal” retirement age. We did that so

that we also could collect Social Security for

about 18 months for our youngest daughter.

As a full-time high-school student still living

at home, she was el-

igible to receive “mi-

nor child” benefits

on my record. But

by not waiting until

age 70 to collect my

Social Security ben-

efits, which is what

Ms. D’Agostini typi-

cally advises, we

gave up four years

of 8% annual in-

creases.

Another mistake

we made, according to Mr. Reed, was failing to

review how much we had spent the year be-

fore I began phased retirement. Yes, we got

lucky and ended up doing OK, but I went into

my first year of phased-retirement having no

idea how much income we actually needed.

Phased retirement has been full of financial

surprises. Like the $7,000 surgery that our

mini-Aussie puppy required after he ran away

and broke his leg in two places. Like the deci-

sion I recently made to get my oldest daugh-

teranewcarinsteadofausedoneforher

college graduation. Like the Family Medical

Leave Act coverage that my wife took for sev-

eral months last year, which left us without

her income during that period. Then there’s

my most pathetic partial-retirement indul-

gence: the $2,000 I paid a scalper for two tick-

ets to see my beloved Cleveland Indians lose

Game Seven of the World Series back in 2016.

(I would do it again.)

The Covid-19 pandemic, meanwhile, cost me

some freelance work, but it brought in some

additional work, too. It resulted in the tempo-

rary return of both daughters to the home

front. Since I’m 67 years old, it put all of my

volunteer work on hold. Goodbye, for now, to

my weekly volunteer gigs in food distribution

at a local food bank, as a kitchen assistant at

the local homeless shelter and as a naturalist

at county park visitor’s center.

Still, I’ve embraced phased retirement. It

has taught me to take care of me. I’m back to

swimming daily. I’m investing quality time in

my daughters that would have been unimagi-

nable before. Two years before Covid-19, I was

able to take my oldest back to college on the

West Coast, and squeeze in a day at Venice

Beach and another at Disneyland. I was able

to take my youngest daughter on a weeklong

tour of colleges from San Francisco to San Di-

ego, with plenty of beach time, too. Phased re-

tirement is a gift. It means I have almost

enough, but probably not too much.

In the end, isn’t that just about perfect?

Mr. Horovitz is a writer in Falls Church, Va. He

can be reached at [email protected].

I still needed

a modest

income, so

phased

retirement

seemed like

the best

option.

Bruce Horovitz and his Shadow.