Today is a very special day: My mom turns 70-years-old! If you see Cindee Hopkins, wish her a happy birthday! While it is a Tuesday, and we do not get to properly celebrate with her until Friday, we wanted to celebrate her 70 years with this interview. Throughout the interview, Mom describes her decision to retire slightly earlier than planned in order to prioritize her health, her spending priorities in retirement, how her spending has changed since retiring, the goals she still has to expand her impact on her community, the one money decision she would go back and change, her best money decision that led to a $100k return-on-investment, and her ideas for improving the workplace through mini-retirements or sabbaticals. (I promise I did not feed her any of these answers, even the ones that sound like they could come from one of my previous articles.)
For context, my mom worked as a teacher and receives a great pension, but she retired shortly before full retirement due to a combination of a back injury and the offer of a “golden handshake” (a lump sum of money offered to teachers who decided to retire that year). I enjoyed her early retirement because it meant that my parents retired after my junior year of college and were able to attend my senior year rugby matches as our most loyal fans of the year. While she is “retired” she continues to tutor and work with me to sell on Etsy. She also volunteers at the local library and senior center, running more programs and raising more money than most folks with full-time jobs. I found her reflections both valuable and innovative, and I hope you do too!
When you retired, did you feel ready financially and mentally? In reality, were you more or less ready than you thought?
I think I was more ready than I thought, and I felt ready. Number one because of my health with my bad back, and that became my focus of my first years of retirement because I couldn’t trust my back. So I went to a neurosurgeon to try to find out what was going on and he prescribed physical therapy, but that only runs so many weeks, and then I continued paying for it myself to make myself stronger because I knew I’d eventually need surgery. And that was how I was going to get my health and my life back.
Are you glad you retired “early”?
Yes, best decision I ever made. And it is not like I’ve left teaching entirely because I now have my side thing of tutoring. I’m still keeping myself involved in working with young adults and education, and that makes me feel good. And that didn’t happen though until I had the surgery. So, you know, my first few years, it was like my first four years of retirement really were focused on my health and trying to get myself in really good shape. And plus I was dealing with a sick parent, you know an elderly parent who was getting weaker and weaker too. And I was afraid to travel at that point because I could have these acute pain seizures and I would just literally collapse, and Dad would have to pick me up and bring me into the living room and get the drugs and I’d be alright, but I thought, “Oh yeah, lovely if that happened in Europe.” So, I was just afraid to do anything. So health is important!
Do you think it made a big difference retiring at [age] 58 rather than, let’s say [age] 65 in your ability to take those four years to focus on your health and actually make a good recovery while you still had some younger age on your side?
It made a big difference. It psychologically [helped] because it made me feel better that I was getting in shape, and I was able to continue playing tennis. Yes, I had some bouts when I couldn’t, but it kept me going. And I could hike. Yes, I think being able to be away from work and being able to call my shots, I was able to do that. And then I immediately got into other things like the librarian asked me to run the book discussion group and I went to a couple and I said, “This is fun.” Then, the Friends of the Library asked me if I wanted to be a “Friend,” and I said yes. So I just went into things that I’d always wanted to do but I didn’t because I was working, and I just didn’t have the time to do them. And I’m still doing both of those things and loving them.
I had to work full time, and yes, I had a couple months in the summer, but you can’t get involved in these year-round activities like the Friends of the Library that has its big sale right when school got out, so forget that. And there was no way I could focus on doing a book discussion group and being consistent with that while I was trying to keep up with all the bureaucratic garbage at work because I was team leader. If I wasn’t team leader, I probably could have done maybe the book discussion, but I wanted to be team leader to make more money so that my pension, once I retired, was higher. So that was thought out that I made like $5,000 more because my three best years are what they use to calculate retirement so that’s why I wanted that. I also like calling the shots too. I like being able to set the schedule and be organized and communicate and not feel like something has been dropped.
What are your biggest financial goals right now?
My biggest financial goal is I would like to have enough money to travel and go off–not just big travel but like in a week, I’m going up to Edith Warton’s The Mount to go listen to a speech and then have lunch, and I just want to have days where I can afford to do stuff like that. Or go out to dinner when I want. And I also do want to do big travel while we can. So I want money for that. I also want money to be able to make the house better for growing old and just safer. So updating things and getting grab bars and things like that.
Do you feel like you have enough money for those financial goals? I noticed the way you phrased that was you’d like to have enough money.
I do. I feel like we’re good. Because of the investments we have, and Dad’s still at West[ern] Conn[ecticut State University], I’m still doing my tutoring, but it’s fun play money to go off and do things like I want to. I feel like I do have enough.
How have your financial goals changed since when you were still working?
I have more freedom to travel and plan and do things. Like I can go down to DC to see my kids in March, which I would not be able to do if I was still working. I can go off in January on a trip with my kids. I can go on a cruise. The goal to fund those trips totally changed from when I was working. I have much more freedom because teaching, yes, you get the summers off, but during the school year, it’s very restrictive, and you’re also forced to have to travel when it’s the most costly.
Did you feel like because you were teaching, maybe you could only travel for half the time you could have if, say, you could have gone in November, March, or the offseason?
Exactly. That’s exactly right. We had to go in the thick of summer or at the holidays, and I literally heard a travel agent call it, “Screw the teachers week.” They literally called it that because the air rates went up, the hotel rates went up, everything went up. Car rentals, you name it. Because they knew that’s when teachers could get away with their families or just get away themselves.
It sounds like a lot of your financial goals are similar from when you were working until now, it’s just that now you’re more able to make them go as far as you want them to go.
Yup. That’s right, and I had my back surgery, so suddenly I felt confident to go off, like, I had the surgery in October, and in January I got to go ahead to and fly down to see you at the [Red Sox Fantasy Baseball] camp in Florida, and that was a big step for me to take that flight. And it was great that I was able to, and it was because I did all my physical therapy that I was able to. I got rewarded for that. And then I got braver, and then we started going to Europe. And now, last summer I spent a month in Europe when you put together my two trips. Within a year’s time, we spent over a month in Europe. Couldn’t do that when I was teaching.
How have your spending habits changed since retiring?
It’s funny, I feel I spend less because I don’t have to buy things like clothing for work. I don’t have to buy supplies for the classroom that I would get on my own that the school didn’t provide. And we live in a very affluent school district, but it’s still not enough. I don’t have to spend money driving my car everyday. I don’t have to use the gas, less wear and tear on the car. So I feel I’m spending less on things like that and able to spend money on oh, let’s go to dinner, let’s go to a movie, let’s go up to the Berkshires and hear this talk, let’s go on a trip. So the money is going to more enjoyable things.
How has your mindset around money changed, if at all, since retiring?
How has it changed? I don’t think it’s changed much. It’s just where I want to use [money] has changed. I’m finally realizing, yes, I’m getting older, so I need to redo things like the kitchen and the bathrooms and things like that where I work a lot or am a lot. I need to get those so they’re better. Investing–I always felt investing was important. I didn’t do as much as I should have, but at least I did some. And I’m still putting some away here and there, but I don’t really think I’ve changed a lot in that aspect of it. I just feel like I’m able to save more because of not working. That sounds really weird. But I’m very lucky in that I have a really good pension, and I knew working that I was working towards that pension, so I knew we had that. And I knew we invested in stocks and things like that. I felt like we had backups.
You have a pension. You didn’t technically work as long as you’re supposed to in order to get that full pension, but you still get a very nice pension despite that, which shows you can balance retiring a little early but still receiving some of those benefits.
Exactly, and that means you can put your health before your job. That’s pretty much what I did. I thought, I’ve got to put my health first. It’s not healthy. Yes, we got the golden handshake, which precipitated it even more. I felt I was getting too many messages that it was time to go, and I took them because I thought, “It isn’t going to get any better.” All of a sudden, I realized my health needed to come first.
If you could go back and change one financial decision from any point in the past, what would it be and why?
I wished that I had put more money into my IRA than I did when I was young so that it would increase in my savings. But, again, I was thinking that I would have a good pension. I don’t have to depend on the IRA as much as other people do, but it still would be nice to have more. That’s the one thing I wish I had done.
If you did have that IRA and the money from it, what would you do with it that you’re not doing now?
Travel more. I would tell my spouse, "You don’t have to work this semester at WestConn. We have the money. We’ll go travel, and you’ll use your mind traveling."
And then I have other things up my sleeve. I’m not sure if they’re going to happen, but I do like having the Etsy site with my daughter. [That’s me!] That’s a lot of fun to get some extra money, and it’s also inspired me to clean out the attic during COVID. Got that all done. Now, it helped me go through my mother’s stuff when she passed away faster [than I would have] to get it on the site. [It helped me] make decisions about what I wanted to keep, and what I didn’t want to keep, and what I wanted to sell. It also is making me get rid of things that I know my children don’t want. I really like that, and it’s a lot of fun. Like today to say, “Oh, you made a sale!” And it gets rid of stuff, and I really like that.
I’m also tinkering with one idea. You probably don’t even want to know this, and I don’t know if this is going to happen. But I thought it might be fun, if I decide I don’t want to tutor anymore, if I wanted to make PowerPoints or just revamp the PowerPoints I have [from teaching] and go around to local libraries, and you can make a few hundred dollars for an hour of just telling people about medieval architecture–like what’s Renaissance, what’s gothic–or about Roman engineering. That’s just a little thing in the back of my mind. I still have things that I want to do. And make money! And have fun. But I haven’t done that yet, and I’m so lucky, I’d be able to start here and test at my library and then branch out. You get your name on a site in Connecticut that all the libraries look at, and they can hire you.
That’s next, but I am still just getting used to the fact that I am not taking care of an elderly and ill parent. I’m getting used to having the extra time, like playing catchup and still dealing with her estate too. You know, there’s still things that I have to get through that I haven’t. I need to get through that before I take this next step.
What financial or money-mindset advice would you give your younger self?
I would say, invest more in the IRA. What else? That’s the real big thing. Maybe do a bit more in stocks [meaning a brokerage account] than I did, and pay more attention to it, and be braver with moves that we made. I had suggested something with the stock market, and Dad said let’s wait, and if we had gone with what I said, we would have made thousands of dollars more, or not lost thousands of dollars. We were still alright, but it would have made us money. I wish I was braver, probably more knowledgeable, but back then I just wasn’t that knowledgeable with it.
I think one of the smartest things we did is we bought a small starter house and fixed it up and then sold it for $100,000 more than what we bought it for. I think that was one of the brightest things we did, and then we bought the house that we live in [during] a buyer’s market. We were really lucky. And I saw that it was a buyer’s market and, even though Dad was dragging his heels, I said I’m going to go with this and found out how much we could get for our house. He couldn’t believe it. Because we could get that much for that [the starter] house, we were able to buy this house.
So you were braver with real estate [than investing in a brokerage account].
I was braver with the real estate, and that was one of the best financial decisions that I made. You know, it was great to have that little house, and we did a lot to it. As I said, I never dreamed we would sell it for as much as we did. And we were able to buy this beautiful house that we’ve lived in for almost 40 years.
What kind of changes did you make to the starter house to increase the value?
We redid the kitchen ourselves. We sanded the cabinets, refinished them, put new hardware on them. Let’s see, what else did we do? We added storage space in a little dining room. Again, we did it ourselves. Because it was a very small house; it was only 800-something square feet, so we tried to make space. We put bookshelves in another room. We put in new windows. We put in a wooden paneling - but just the fake stuff, we weren’t rich - in our bedroom just to make it look nicer. And we, of course, totally washed down and redid the carpeting and everything to make it nice. And then outside, we added a deck on the back, and we did it ourselves. We cleared out some of the trees to make it brighter. We made gardens on either end of the lawn facing the driveway to make it look nicer. So we did a lot of eye appeal stuff.
How much do you think you spent on the renovations?
Not that much because we did most of it ourselves, so I really don’t know, that’s a long time ago.
So probably like $10,000, less, more?
Yes, I would say $10,000 at the most.
So you’re looking at a $90,000 profit?
Yup. And we did the bathroom. And again, we did it ourselves. The big thing is we did it ourselves because we were young and we were handy, so we had the energy and the strength to be able to do it, and we did it. And yeah, it made us thousands of dollars. We did the shrubs nicer in front of the house. I made gardens, there hadn’t been gardens in front of the house. And when people look at that, they’re going to buy that over something with all weeds. It’s all eye appeal. It really, really is.
We call that a live-in flip. Probably a little slower than a traditional live-in flip.
There you go. Well, that’s what we did, and that was the best financial thing we ever did. We were lucky to get that house. Actually, we paid $25,000 and sold it for $135,000, so we made about $100,000 on it. I got a really good realtor. She took me around. I found this [their current] house. She came up to my [the starter] house. [The realtor said,] “Yeah, we can get this,” and the minute I sold Dad on that, we were off and running.
Would you say now that you now have less financial stress or more financial stress than when you were younger? Or have you always been stress-free? What’s your relationship with money, and how has it changed?
Less financial stress now. For awhile, when I first started working, they were always cutting staff, and my job, because I was [a junior employee] could have been cut some nights. It never was, but it came close. So that was a lot of insecurity at that time. And I was getting other degrees so I could teach in other areas, so I came to the point where they couldn’t get rid of me because they could plug me in other areas. I could teach math, I could teach history, I can do all that. Make yourself more valuable. But, yeah, it was more stressful then. It’s a lot less stressful now. I feel like we have a very good pension. We have investments. I got some money from Gram [her mom] because she was so wise in her estate and turning it over to me. Of course, you have to have family you can trust to be able to do that, but if you do, it’s definitely a wise thing to do. And you’ve addressed that in other articles, I’ve seen it. ([Yay, Mom reads our articles!]
(This was the end of the planned interview, but then Mom offered some great ideas about mini-retirements and sabbaticals to improve the mental focus and energy of folks still working. Enjoy!)
Well, I did retire early compared to a lot of people, I was 58. Yeah, I retired when I was 58, that’s early. Plus, I had taken time off to raise a child and took my child-rearing leave, which was one of the best things I ever did. It revitalized my brain. That would be a cool thing. It would be really cool if people at their jobs could get away for six months or a year to recharge the batteries because you come back with so much more energy and ideas. To me, that would be a cool business trend. I know businesses would never go for it, but that’s something I would strongly recommend. I think you’d get more bang for your buck out of it.
A mini-retirement, as we like to say.
Yeah, like a sabbatical. Yeah, you get some time off and you go here or there. If you even could combine it with finding useful information for the job you held, [the employer] would pay for it or pay for half of it or whatever. But you should get that time off and not have to worry about your job being there when you get back.
How often do you think those should occur in an ideal world?
Probably every five years.
Like six months every five years?
Yeah. I tell you, I felt so good after I took [the time off from work]. And I had so fun bonding with you and taking you places. You know, I did the things like I’m doing now. I worked at the library, and I brought you, and you would just rock in your little snuggly. I would type away and be working at the library. [I agree, this sounds great. I would love to rock in a snuggly at the library on this Tuesday morning.] And I read, and then I would get ideas for my classroom and teaching. It was relaxed and more open, and you just could take the time to think about things and be creative.
Do you feel that you have had a lot of creative thoughts since teaching, now that you have more free mental space and time that you wish you had when you were teaching?
Oh yeah. Definitely. I wished I had had more time to just sit back and analyze things or think about where I wanted things to go like for curriculum and stuff like that. You wish you had more time. And one other thing that would help is less bureaucratic garbage that we have in all professions, it seems. We do more paper pushing and rules and everything instead of just going with the flow.
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