Back in June, the parish priest as the parish where I normally go retired.
He was the priest at the Newman Center for most of the time I was at the University of Wyoming, and then twice here locally. He must be 70 years old, but he looks remarkably fit and vigorous, and indeed almost exactly the same as he did 30 plus years ago in his late 30s and early 40s.
Not too many people can say that, although a fortunate few can.
I note this as in the last few months I've been overhearing a lot of comments on retirement, observing a few folks I know who retired, and receiving emails on the topic as well. And in the news, of course, we have the proposed Pine Box Amendment to the Wyoming Constitution, which I posted about in the current election thread:
The amendment summary that will appear on the ballot states:
Currently, the Wyoming Constitution requires Wyoming Supreme Court justices and district court judges to retire upon reaching the age of seventy (70). This amendment increases the mandatory retirement age of Supreme Court justices and district court judges from age seventy (70) to age seventy-five (75).
It's been interesting.
A young person that I know, in her early 20s, stated to me "what does a priest do in retirement"? It's a good question. I don't really know, but the few retired priests I've known sort of continued to serve as priests. They're not relieved of their obligations to say Mass. For the most part, what those priests seemed to do was to move into a rectory and serve Mass, and hear Confessions. I guess what they're relieved of is their obligations to run a parish, which no doubt are pretty significant.
One Priest I know, who reached retirement age, did not. He was Nigerian and returned to his home country. Before he left, he told me that Priests in Nigeria do not retire, they serve until they die, which was his intent.
The Wyoming Supreme Court and the state legislature, some of whom are late Boomers, maybe the majority of whom are late Boomers, are endorsing the view that they can continue to serve five years past their physical deaths.
That's an exaggeration, of course, but as I've written about before, the assumptions that a person can work in a position of public trust until they go from the bench to a pine box and not suffer in their work in any fashion is foolish.
It's also, in my view, more than a bid arrogant. Shouldn't these positions be opened up to people who are closer to the average demographic of the state and nation?
And do they have no other interests?
I worry a bit about that, as I've seen at least two ancient lawyers seemingly age past the point of their actually having any other interests. They didn't want to go to court anymore, but they seemingly had nothing much else to do. They took annual vacations, but otherwise came into the office until they died. This is all the more interesting as neither one had started off to be lawyers, so the old fable that "I've always wanted to be a lawyer" that some lawyers lie about in order to convince themselves that giving up a chance to be a minor league baseball player or something made sense.
Another lawyer I know who is old enough to retire, but who is in good health, keeps on working a full schedule. I note this as our lives intersect in some odd fashions, one of which is that he also had agricultural interests. His father was a rancher and his sister married a farmer. He told me that at one time he imagined himself sort of retiring to the ranch, but just before his father had a stroke and then died, they sold the place. He seems set on being a lawyer until he dies, taking off sometime for nice biannual vacations.
I'm like my father in contrast. I just don't take vacations, which is a very bad trait. Maybe that's why retirement as a concept is on my mind, as I don't take much time off for myself, so I think I can catch up on that once I retire.
In overall contrast, one lawyer I know who has eased into mostly retired has in fact taken up some of his longtime activities in earnest. I sort of regard him as a model that way.
Another lawyer I know pretty well who is far too young to retire, but has it on his distant radar screen (let's say he's 50), has all sorts of retirement plans, most of which involve being a globe trotter.
He is, however, obviously not a physical fitness bluff and hits the dinner table more often than the gym, which is to say he hits the gym never. I don't hit the gym either, but up until this year I was in pretty good physical shape, maybe a beneficiary of genetics in that fashion. I hate to say it, and I don't know how to say it to him, but my guess is that he'll die before reaching that age. He speaks longingly and optimistically about what he's going to do, but there are things you have to do that, one of which his good health,1
I've noted here before, my father enjoyed good health right up until he didn't, and he died at 62. His father died at 47. Neither of them retired.2
A lawyer friend of mine and I have enjoyed good health up until this year, and we've both had scares in recent weeks. I'm not going into it, but I'm in the category of having dodged a bullet, maybe. Had I not, I would probably have been dead within a few years.
Of course, life is fickle, and you really never know when you are going to board the barque across the River Styx. Just yesterday, an old Guard friend of mine let me know that a guy we were in the Guard with died following a surgery that was supposed to have worked well. He was only about 65.
Leaping back up, my unhealthy friend also has a very large family, which is his right. There are certainly people with very large families that retire, but he's looking at a long list of college tuition payments, the first of which he just started and the last of which isn't anywhere near to commencing.
We pick our lies and take what that means, but some people don't seem to realize that. I.e, having a giant sized rib for lunch might not be your best option.
All of which gets to the topic of being able to afford to do that.
I married later than most men do (I was 32) and so we started our family late. My wife comes from a ranching family and while we've been very frugal, working to get her over the agricultural concept of money, which is extraordinarily short term and which features the concept of constant loans as normal, has been difficult. And a diehard absolute dedication to our children, now in their 20s, that she has, and which is common to mothers, is highly exhibited. All this means that while we haven't done badly, we haven't done as well as we could.
Maybe, however, we just don't know what that means. One of the blogs linked in here, Mr. Money Mustache, strongly takes that position. Lots of people can retire who don't, as they don't grasp they can.
In that context, I've tended to find that for men in my situation, I'm ten years older than Long Suffering Spouse, the latter personality resists the older retiring. We're past that point now, really, but it had been a pretty clearly on the horizon of resistance for a long time. In most relationships like this, with ours being no exception, the older person gets the larger income and that means a lot.
I'm not, I'd note, of Social Security retirement age, either. So this is more than a little hypothetical.
A good friend of mine who is a lawyer constantly talks about retiring, and then doesn't. Recently, he's been expressing the concept of stepping back into lesser roles.
This is interesting. When a person finds that there are aspects of his work that he doesn't want to do, but he'd like to keep doing the ones he does as a retirement plan, he better be working in a field that accommodates that. Law isn't that, at least by my observation. You are in, or you are out. It's not like you can decide to take a lesser role as a football player, for example. Law is sort of like that.
Still, I see a lot of lawyers go into their late 60s and then their 70s still practicing, which is the point of the proposed Pine Box amendment to the Wyoming Constitution. It's interesting. Some do seem to have stepped into some sort of genteel role, others not.
I've tended to notice that family businesses tolerate the stepping down role better than others. Farms and ranches often are, for example, and some small stores are. Before the complete corporatization of the economy, that might explain why these lines of work were so admired, really. They were part of life, with life predominating. Now your role as a consumer does.
Which might be part of the current war against retirement. It's interesting. Everyone in the larger society wants you at work. I've noticed this on a few things recently. It seems no one wants people in the US to retire. Ever.
Indeed, I saw this entry on Reddit the other day.
This is a rant. I’m sick of all the articles with the same message: work, work, work and never stop. The biggest reasons are: you want that “full Social Security benefit” at 67, (but hey why not hold off until you’re 70 and get even more?) The other reason is “healthcare is expensive”. The push from the media outlets telling us to keep working is essentially propaganda. Instead, why isn’t anyone lobbying for us to fight for better? It’s complete bullsh*t. “ If you run out of your own money, SS alone isn’t enough to live on.” Well I’m not planning to live out my life on a cruise ship FFS, just staying put in my own little house. I’m sorry I live in a country that lets poor people die. Is it too much to ask for our government to provide a decent pension and healthcare to it’s oldest citizens? Nope. This is how it is and rather than try to get the government to fix it, just keep working until you die. BTW I rage-retired 2 months ago, at age 61, due to burn out and I’m living on my savings while my 401k hopefully recovers a bit. But, it was always my plan to start collecting Social Security at 62 (even though my own Financial Advisor is against it) because my mother died at 51 and my father at 69. If I wait I may never see a penny of SS. I know this rant won’t change anything. I just felt like screaming into the void.
And then there's this item that was run in the online version of the ABA Journal.
A funny thing happened on the way to my retirement
Some items from it:
My attorney friend Ron Taylor, the former general counsel of Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Texas, once advised me not to retire from something “unless you have something to retire to.” That struck me as a truth, and I am fortunate to have other passions to pursue; for you see, my mistress, the law, gave me the freedom to develop them without totally giving her up.
And;
While many senior lawyers are resting on their laurels and leaving the legal profession, I’m still going strong after more than 41 years of practice as a civil defense lawyer, defending companies in mass casualty high-exposure cases. As I approached my 65th birthday last year, I struggled mightily with how to end my 41-plus year romance (43 including law school) with the law and the law firm, Wilson Elser, I have loved for 30 of those years.
When considering retirement, you can stage and prolong and enhance your career in the process, but to do so, you must first understand that in some ways, retirement for lawyers is a misnomer. It can perhaps better be framed as, “What do you want the next stage of your career to look like?” Retirement is an intensely personal matter, and the answer to this question depends on your interests inside and outside the law and what you want to do now.
At the core of this process is the ability to allow yourself to step back from what you were doing before in order to make more time for other things, such as your outside interests and hobbies. This is an opportunity to rebalance your life and to give you more time to do things outside the law while extending your career inside the profession. Work less at what you were doing before and do more of what you are passionate about. In other words, mix them up to suit your new reality. This can and should be a win-win situation.
The law as a mistress line is a common one among lawyers, and it isn't used in a complimentary fashion. "The law is a jealous mistress" is the line, and what it means is that the law takes up your time to the exclusion of all else. She won't let you hae any other interests.
The advice Ron gave the author essentially was to marry the mistress, I guess. Or sort of. That author seemed to be one of the balanced lawyers who was able to do other things. I'm much less so. Anyhow, when I read this line, I'm always reminded of the lines spoken by the wounded bandit in The Professionals, about how "the Revolution" goes from being a great love, admired from afar, and pure, to a jealous mistress, to a whore.
Not a pleasant thought.
Anyhow, this is an example, I think of society, which in the 1930s through 70s asked you to look forward to retirement, now wants to keep you from doing it.
"What do you want the next stage of your career to look like?”3
Indeed, society wants you at work no matter what you do. Thinking about retiring? Hang on a few more years. Thinking about staying home with your infant? Let's warehouse the little non-productive snot in a daycare. Thinking about staying home with your elderly parent? Let's put the used up geezer in a "home". Pregnant? Let's kill that drain on society before it's born and takes you out of the workplace for a few weeks.
Footnotes:
1. This puts me in an odd position, as I tend to be pretty honest and when I can't be, I tend just to hold my tongue. But when somebody who eats three gigantic meals a day and is extremely overweight tells you about their plans to travel when they retire, if you know then, what is your obligation? Do you say, "Bill, if you don't keep eating the cheesy entire walrus lunch special, you are going to stroke out and never retire?" Nobody wants to hear that, but maybe you should.
2. My father was at the point where he wanted to retire. He just didn't make it.
3. This fellow, fwiw, recommended the following:
Take your own deposition to gain clarity
Where do you begin? I took a novel approach—I took my own deposition! As a trial lawyer I’d taken thousands of depositions in my career but never one sitting across the table from myself. Lawyers are great at asking questions—after all we are trained in the Socratic method—so why not make a little exercise of taking our own depositions regarding this important decision? The goal is to “know thyself” and what thyself wants to do next.
Questions to ponder:
• How much longer do you want to work?
• Do you have any unfinished goals or projects you’d like to complete?
• What alternate legal work matches your skills and abilities, such as alternative dispute resolution?
• What legal topics interest you that you’d like to know more about?
• What bar activities would you like to pursue?
• Are there any pro bono projects that interest you?
• Would you like to teach law students?
• How about that book you were going to write inspired by your legal experience handling cases and closing deals?
There’s an incredible wealth of possibilities.
In cross-examining ourselves, we can arrive at clarity as to what comes next. You’ve given most of your life to the law, so put your experience to work for you. Make a plan based on your answers to your own personal deposition and follow it into your transition.
This cannot help but bring to mind the scense in the early Woody Allen film Banana Republic in which Allen, who accidentally ends up a Central American revolutionary, ends up subjecting himself to a devestating cross examination when he calls himself as a witness in his trial.
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