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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, for our final "Think Again" episode, how to decide when it's the right time to retire.
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Basu, Narrating: Retirement is one of life's biggest transitions. There's a lot of talk about how to prepare for it financially. Not so much about what it means emotionally, mentally, spiritually.
Steve Lopez: The identity part of it, the who would you be…
Basu, Narrating: That's Steve Lopez. He's a longtime "LA Times" columnist and the author of the book, out now, called "Independence Day: What I Learned about Retirement from Some Who've Done It and Some Who Never Will."
So, to cap off this year's "Think Again" series, I'm really excited to revisit the conversation I had with Steve earlier this year about his experience with the big retirement question. See, when Steve reached his mid-sixties, he started thinking about retiring. But he wasn't sure how to go about it, when to do it, whether to do it, how to go from someone who loves his job to someone who doesn't work anymore.
So, being the journalist that he is, he decided to take this on as an assignment. He gave himself one year to decide whether or not to retire, and he talked to lots of different people. Some of them were still working into their 90s, like Mel Brooks and Norman Lear. Some are happily retired and traveling the world. Some are unhappily retired and realizing they should've given it more thought before taking the leap.
Lopez: During the course of researching the book, I didn't know what the ending was gonna be. And so, I went from oh, yeah, I've gotta retire to I'll never retire. Everybody I talked to made, I thought, such a compelling argument. I was in their camp until I woke up and then went and talked to the next person.
Basu, Narrating: I started by asking Steve what got him seriously considering retirement for the very first time.
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Lopez: I left college on a Tuesday night in 1975, and I started work the next morning three hours away from college in a small town in California, Davis, the home of UC Davis. And I've been working ever since, and that's not really an exaggeration. So, I'm coming up on 50 years, and I feel really privileged to have a job where I get to decide what I want to write about and parachute into people's lives and go and do it. And so, I love what I do, but I've done it. I've done it for decades, and that's part of what was motivating me. It's like, okay, if you don't have that many years left, do you want to spend them doing the same thing that you've done, to just repeat what you've already been through? Or do you want to try some of those things that you may have had on a list of things you wanted to try out? So that was part of the motivation.
Basu: It sounds like a social psychology test of some kind. Isn't there a test that says, you know, if you like red jellybeans the most, you should just keep on picking the red jellybeans? Why switch to green? You know you like red more. What's wrong with consistency? Right?
Lopez: You know what? That's a good question because for me, I had trouble thinking of anything that I would do that would be as gratifying as what I have been doing. So, you know, the red jellybeans were tasty. And I like lemon, and I like lime, but why give up the red? The red is my favorite, you know, [CHUCKLES] and…
Basu: I knew red would be. See, red is everyone's favorite. That was an easy guess.
Lopez: Is it?
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Oh, I feel so boring. I feel so boring.
Basu: No, but if you like it the most, that's the point, right?
Lopez: It is. It is. But here's another thought. How do I know there's not something out there that I would like more? I haven't tried it. I have not tried it because I've been on this track, and it's of my own making. You know, I had a family and had to pay the bills, and this was what I knew how to do, so I kept doing it. But I do wonder if there's something that would give me the sense of belonging and relevance and fulfillment that working for a newspaper gives me. And I don't know. I don't know that I'll ever find out.
Basu: Yeah. I will say it also sounds like you've had a few different opportunities to consider your own mortality and really think about what late years might look like and the turns in the road that are unexpected. You wanna tell us a little bit about those?
Lopez: I think you might be referring to my sudden and unexpected death 10 years ago.
Basu: Yes, that is exactly what I'm referring to.
Lopez: I am quite literally back from the dead. Ten years ago, I was struggling with those aches and pains that people my age, many people, begin to struggle with. And I had bad knees, and I tried every remedy, and it would work for a week or two, and then my knees would ache. And they finally said, a surgeon said, "You're bone on bone. We need to do knee replacements." Well, that wasn't a pleasant thought, but you know, the idea is that if it goes well, and it usually does, you get another 50,000 miles. And why not give that a whirl? And in post-op, after the first knee replacement, I went into cardiac arrest and flatlined. So, I obviously did make it through that, but I left the hospital with both a new knee and a pacemaker. And it put me on the same track that my parents were on. My parents had joint disease, and they had heart disease, and then they had cognitive loss around the time that I had my knee replacement. I started to think that you hear all of those stories about somebody who waits to retire, and when they do, they can't do the things they dreamed of doing because they're hobbled physically, or they don't remember their partner's name.
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And I feared I really did fear, given that I was on my parents' timetable, that I'd be one of those people. And I thought gee, maybe I better get out now while I can, while I can still, you know, pursue some of those dreams.
Basu, Narrating: People approach retirement in so many different ways. And we asked you to tell us about what it's been like for you.
Listener 1: Hi, my name's Ann.
Listener 2: My name is Derek Sharvelle.
Listener 3: Hi, my name is Peggy Dozier.
Listener 4: My name is Tony.
Basu, Narrating: Some of you said it's been great. So freeing.
Listener 5: All of my working career, I dreamed of traveling when I retired, so it's no surprise after I retired in June of 2018, I first took a trip to the Big Island in Hawaii.
Listener 3: I sat down and said okay, what is my bucket list now that I'm free, so to speak? I'm not working. I'm not raising children. I wanna think of the things I really want to do that I couldn't do before.
Basu, Narrating: Others told us it's been a big change, and it takes some adjusting.
Listener 6: I had no idea the spiritual adjustment to retirement would be so hard.
Listener 7: I think one of the big challenges for me in that first year of retirement was learning to transition from doing to being. We're so conditioned in our work culture to be productive and to attach our life meaning to productivity.
Listener 1: I've gone from being a teacher to being a student, taking quite a few classes online. The biggest challenge for me right now is figuring out how I'm going to contribute in this world again.
Basu, Narrating: But for a lot of people, retiring is hard because work is so closely tied to our identity. Who are we without it?
Listener 6: My career had been in social services for the last 10 years at a behavioral health agency. In my roles, I could make a difference. I had my finances in order and even new projects to tackle when I retired, but it never occurred to me to look at how the things that gave me meaning and purpose would change. It's been 16 months, but it's still hard.
Basu, Narrating: So, I asked Steve to talk about these different groups of people. Those who are excited about retirement and can only see upsides, those who are worried about losing their daily sense of structure, and those who are scared about losing their sense of self, their identity. Now Steve falls more into that last category, so he gets it. He's one of those people who loves his work and can't imagine stopping.
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Lopez: It's like you got it made. You got it made. Why would you try anything new or different? I mean, and that's what some people in the book suggested to me. Father Greg Boyle, who runs a… It's kind of a redirection program for former gang members coming out of prison. And he gives them some structure and a two-year program in Los Angeles, and they work in the bakery or in the silk-screening operation. They learn how to install solar panels. And he's my age. He's exactly my age. It's one reason I went to see Father Greg Boyle. And he said, you know, life is about finding meaning and feeling tethered and mattering. And if you've got that, why would you leave that? He said that in his life, he couldn't imagine doing anything other than that. He said Jesuits retire in the graveyard, and that was gonna be his course. And another guy was also my age, Randall Graham, who was crowned many years ago the Rhone Ranger, because he developed these red wine blends in California that became quite famous. The flying cigar, Le Cigare Volant, and Cardinal Zen and others. And I visited him in his vineyard where he is working on creating a climate change resistant grape. And there I was sitting with him at his vineyard, and we're tasting wines in the middle of the day, and I asked him if he ever thought about retiring. He said he was gonna die in the vineyard. And I said, "Well, I'm actually thinking about it." And he said, "What would you do in retirement that's better than sitting here in the middle of the day, getting paid to drink wine?" You know, and we're looking out toward the Monterey Coast. What do you think you're gonna do that's gonna top this? And that's a good question. And I really wrestled with questions like those.
Basu: That sounds like an extremely compelling argument in favor of continuing to work. It sounds like you did end up speaking with a lot of people in creative fields, and this tends to be the feeling that they have toward work their work. Right? Why would I ever stop working? This is what I do. Can you tell us about your conversation with Norman Lear, the screenwriter and producer? I mean, he recently turned a hundred years old, and he's still working, and I thought his advice to you was really poignant.
Lopez: Yes. When I asked him if he ever thought of retirement, he said never ever. Never ever. He claimed that he has never thought about it. And I believe him. I wanted to talk to him and also to Mel Brooks, another Hollywood legend, because they were both, at the time, still working in their 90s. And I thought, well, I wouldn't necessarily call what I do a creative field, but I do have to put something onto a blank screen. And I began to wonder if those creative energies are the essence of me and what would happen if that flow was cut off? You know, if that's your oxygen and you cut it off, do you suffocate? That's why I wanted to talk to Norman Lear and to Mel Brooks. And Norman Lear in particular doesn't seem to think of it that way. He is quite the philosopher. And I knew that because I'd read a lot of his essays about life and work and the meaning of it all. And what he said was life is about swinging in a hammock between what's over, that's yesterday, and what's next. And if something gets you out of the hammock, that's all you need. And he said you have to constantly think of the next, the next, the next. And that he had had a hundred years of wonderful nexts. And he said if you wake up, and something drags you outta bed or out of that, you know, the… use the metaphor of the hammock, that's all you need to know. Live in the moment because we don't know what's coming next. You're healthy. Your mind is still active. You're curious. Just, you know, indulge all of that, and just go with it. Live today and figure out tomorrow, tomorrow.
Basu: Oh, I like that a lot. And that's so visual and so memorable sitting in this hammock, right, between what's over and what comes next and always being ready for what comes next. It sounds like being game.
Lopez: Yeah. Yeah. And I do think that although in my research I kind of concluded that it's good to have a plan, I think it's also good to understand that you need to as a, um… One of my characters in the book, Nancy Schlossberg, in her 90s in Florida said, "Plans go awry. And you need to embrace ambiguity in retirement." And you need to understand that although you have this ideal… You've got this picture in your head of what retirement is gonna be, but retirement is like life. You know, the roof blows off the house, and you lose an investment, and you lose a loved one. And it's about loss and recovery and finding your way each day. So have a plan, but be prepared to change it and adapt.
Basu: [CHUCKLES] Right, right. It sounds like Mel Brooks gave you some ideas on how you can continue working but not retire from your traditional work entirely, right? What was his idea?
Lopez: He's not available, but if he were, I would hire Mel Brooks as my life coach because…
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He came up with the suggestion, not that I hadn't considered it. When he heard me out, what he said was, to summarize what he was hearing, "So, you like your job?" Yes, I do. Mr. Brooks. "You like writing your columns?" Yes, I do. "But you think you might wanna live, you know, on a kibbutz, or you might want to live in Barcelona and, you know, wake up and study guitar and cooking and language?" And I said yes. And he said, "Then go to the editors of the "LA Times" and tell them you know what? I really like this. I want to keep doing it, but not so much." So, he said, "Why is it not possible for you to chart out a course in which you enjoy the best of both worlds?" You get to do what you love to do, and you get to find out if there's something else you might love just as much.
Basu: And I understand that's where you have landed today, right? You decided to reel things back by 25%, so that is your workload and also your salary.
Lopez: Yes.
Basu: You came to this agreement with your employer. Right?
Lopez: I went to them and said, "Hey. I like this, but I want to do some other things." And I think because newspapers are struggling, it was a way for them to shed a little bit of salary. And it was a way for me to get to go and see my daughter who is, you know, gonna be away in college. And she's an athlete, so I can go and see her matches, and I can still work. And so, that's what I've done for the last year, and it has worked out. And we did it with the understanding that I might eventually go, okay, I'll work two thirds of the year, and then I'll work maybe one half of the year. And we'll see. I mean, so far, I'm holding on to the working three quarters of the year. And the way we worked out that hybrid time is that I can take the 12 weeks. Doesn't have to be a block. I could take a block if I want. And I can take maybe one week a month for a year or anything in between. And I really like it so far. Best of both worlds. Thank you, Mel Brooks.
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Basu, Narrating: So, Steve landed on the hybrid model, and it's working for him so far. He says this hybrid approach of a little less work time and a little more "off" time might also be good for people who aren't particularly attached to their job as an identity, but they are attached to the structure. It's a good dip-your-toes-in way of figuring out how you'll fill the rest of your time.
Lopez: One of the people in the book is Rabbi Naomi Levy who has a congregation in LA. And Rabbi Levy had good advice for people like me, which was if you are in that transition and thinking of retiring, find out whether what you think you want to do is really gonna work. So, to another words, sample the dream. And for me, it was okay, I've had a guitar gathering dust in the garage and never really learned how to play it. But I love music and have a big music collection. Is there time for me to learn how to play an instrument? And, you know, she advised that rather than retire to take up the guitar, carve some time out of your work life while you're still working, maybe on vacation or long weekends or a sabbatical, to sample the dream. Whether you think you want to fly airplanes or you want to volunteer at a nonprofit, do it a little bit to make sure. And so, I began playing that guitar to see if that's gonna be fulfilling. And I'm about 14 months into it, and I play every day.
Basu: Oh, wow. And how's it going?
Lopez: I'm getting better. I'm not going to join a band yet.
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Nobody would have me. Um, so, it is a solitary pursuit, but I'm finding great fulfillment in that. I'm making progress. I'm feeling good.
Basu, Narrating: Then there's the people who've got big ambitions for retirement. They want to travel. They want to live adventurously, do things they didn't have time for before. That was the case for one person Steve spoke to. When he called her, she answered from her boat.
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Lopez: Boy, that… When I talked to her, that's another example of me thinking yeah, that's what I want to do.
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I'm gonna retire and get a boat. I'm gonna do that tomorrow. That's a woman who I had trouble getting hold of. She answered, and I heard background noise like Marine radio chatter and asked her where she was. And not only was she on her boat, but they were off the coast of California, I forget, headed to San Diego or to Ensenada just with no great plan other than to let's just cruise the coast of California in our nice boat. And they had just bumped into some fishermen who tossed them fresh catch. Sunset was coming up. They were gonna have a cocktail and then grill fish on their boat. I thought okay. I've worked for 50 years. [CHUCKLES] I think I've earned the right to do something like that. Her advice to me, I should say… She had planned to, along with her husband, work really, really hard, get it over with, save up enough money to retire young. And her advice to me was if you can do it, get out now. Leave your job and do these things you want to do while you're young enough to enjoy them. You don't wanna wait to where you're complaining and grousing about, you know, I should have done this five, ten years earlier. You know, there are a lot of people who knew what they wanted to do, and when they have the time to do it, they really, really enjoy it. There are a lot of people like that out there.
Basu: Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about a different group of people altogether. And these are people who may want to retire, but they can't. Just circumstantially, financially, it is not possible for them. What did various people tell you about their circumstances when they reached that point?
Lopez: It's interesting that you asked that question. I just got an email from somebody who read something about the book, and he said I'm still working, and I work for the county. I like to think that I'm of service, but for me, retirement is not a choice. I'm your age, but I still have bills to pay. I'd like to retire, but I can't. And I think that's millions of Americans. There's a guy who, for me, is unforgettable in the book who thought he had it set up for his retirement. He had worked as a middle manager at a utility company, and there was a merger. He was offered a buyout. He thought this is a little earlier than I wanted to retire, but I got all these plans to travel the world with my wife. She was retired as well. So then, he loses a big chunk of his retirement fund in a market crash, and then, he's diagnosed with cancer. And, you know, even with Medicare and even with supplemental care, a lot of people struggle with medical bills. Medicare does not pay all the doctor's bills. And this guy ended up in his 70s applying to jobs and finding that they were very difficult to get. And the one that he settled for, well, it was the only one that he could get, was to work as a cashier at a Big Box discount store. That was his job. This guy's in his 70s. His foot was aching. He needed to get to the doctor. His wife was at home. Their travel plans were on hold, and he had no idea how much longer he would have to work. So, there are so many people struggling in retirement. And one part about struggling in retirement that I wrestled with is it's hard to know if you've got enough money because you don't know, when you retire, if you're gonna live for 10 minutes, 10 years, or 30 years.
Basu: Yeah. That's the million-dollar question, right?
Lopez: Right.
Basu: How much do I really need?
Lopez: Right. And so, you've gotta roll the dice on that equation.
Basu: What are some of the other big mistakes that you think people make when they think about retirement and planning for retirement?
Lopez: I love how Nancy put it. She talks quite a bit about ambiguity and embracing it, and also that in her study for her books about retirement, which she began researching after she had her own challenges, that people want to matter. You know, regardless of what line of work you do, you matter. If you're a teacher, you matter to students, and you hear back from them years after they've left the classroom. And if you're a nurse, that's noble work. And if you're a police officer, if you're an accountant, you do something that is a service that people need. And even if you don't love the job, you matter to somebody. You matter to the boss, to your colleagues, and people go into retirement without figuring out who they're going to matter to. And I thought that was great advice from Nancy. And she said it could be your dog who needs to be walked twice a day. It could be a grandchild who needs dental work and some help with the bills. It could be like, let's take my case, a non-profit that I've written about when I've written about homelessness and mental health policy, and I've gotten to know so many people. Maybe in retirement, I'm kind of what Nancy calls a continuer. And I maybe serve on a board or maybe serve as a volunteer, but it's a way for me to matter beyond the job that I've held for 50 years. So, I think mattering is a key to happiness in retirement.
Basu: You know, we've touched on this idea of identity now several times, and this idea of how much people are inviting work to be the defining feature of their identities, and how that's become a very common thing. You know, I told you just a few minutes before we started this conversation that my parents are newly retired. And I was talking to them about our impending conversation, and one of my dad's top thoughts on the top of his mind was how can people separate their work identity and the sense of status that goes along with work from what he calls at least your authentic identity? And this is something that I think a lot of people grapple with throughout their work lives. But how do you grapple with it specifically in preparation for whatever might come next?
Lopez: Yes, my work is very much a part of my identity. But I fear that I have not explored other potential identities. Although it's great, like Nancy says, to have a plan, and like Rabbi Levy says, to make sure you've got structure, I sometimes wonder if maybe I should carve out some time to do nothing at all, to not think about who I am or what I've done. And maybe it's a bit of the Norman Lear thing. It's like when you're there floating in that hammock, what tugs at you? And I've never given myself the chance to find that out. And I think to your question about identity, maybe there are mes that I haven't met, and maybe I haven't given myself a chance to make the introduction. And I don't know. I think that there are a lot of discoveries out there for me if I'm brave enough to take a chance on reinventing myself.
Basu: I've gotta say a lot of your book is personal reflection and really memoir. Reads a lot like memoir. And a lot of it is about loss, about losing loved ones, about losing cognitive and physical strength. Truthfully, there's a lot of sad undercurrents in our later years. And I'm curious to know what are some of the best pieces of advice that you heard on how to face some of these inevitable late in life losses?
Lopez: Um, it's so interesting that you asked this. Um… [SIGHS] You might have noticed that the book is dedicated to Jeffrey. Jeffrey is my son. I lost him as the book was being completed.
Basu: Oh, Steve. I'm so sorry. I didn't know that.
Lopez: Um, and, you know, it's a year now, and… It's a year, and I don't think I've begun to deal with the loss and the meaning of it and the how and why. And, you know, it followed years of severe depression and self-medication. Yeah, you're right. I wrote about loss in the book about losing my parents, about them losing their cognitive strengths. And um, I wish I could be stronger about it, about dealing with it and understanding it. But I fear it. Especially now having lost a son, I flinch now when the phone rings. It's like, okay, is everybody okay? My daughter, my other son. So, loss is with us in our work years. It's with us in retirement. And it's a big part of coping, and I don't know. I'm trying to cope. It's another reason I feel like at some point in my life, I need to just escape to nothingness, to just be in that hammock and wait for something. Maybe I should not get out of the hammock until something really different and compelling tugs me out of it, you know? And I don't know what that might be, but I'm open to finding out.
Basu: Steve, last question for you. Knowing everything that you know now, what are some words of wisdom you can pass on to someone who is wrestling with all these spiritual questions of when and how to retire?
Lopez: I do think that because our time is so limited… I just know so many people who are talking about when they're finally gonna get to do this thing that they've been thinking about. And some of them get to it, and some of them don't. And when I went and picked up that guitar, I just said okay, enough already. You've been talking about this. Play the damn guitar. There's nothing really stopping you from it except maybe your fears of how bad you'll be at it. So, I think, you know, confront those fears, and if there are things that you want to do and you can work it out, you can afford to try it. Even if it means leaving work for a while, do it. I thought that was good advice from Rabbi Levy to sample the dream regardless of how old you are, whether you're 20 or 30. I mean, one thing that I never did and had hoped to do in my life was live abroad. And just yesterday, I was going for a long walk, and I was walking across the campus of Pasadena City College. And there was a big banner hanging over the campus that said, "Study abroad, Pasadena City College in Oxford, England." And I went home and looked it up, and it's like, yes, you spend a semester abroad. You're not actually at Oxford University, but you're in the general vicinity. It's a full semester studying and absorbing British history and literature. And I came home and told my wife about it. I said we should take this class.
Basu: Yeah.
Lopez: You know, why not do that? So, if you've got notions in your head about things like that, just do it. Just do it. I mean, even if it's a hardship, and even if it puts you in debt, do it and deal with it later if you can at all swing it. That's how I'm thinking lately. Just give these things a shot.
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Basu: Steve, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed this conversation.
Lopez: Well, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Thank you so much.
Basu, Narrating: You can read Steve Lopez's book called "Independence Day: What I Learned about Retirement from Some Who've Done It and Some Who Never Will" on Apple Books. You can find a link to that on our show notes page.
This was the final episode for this year's "Think Again" series about life's biggest transitions. A huge thank you to all of you who sent in voice messages about the changes in your lives. We really enjoyed hearing from you. And if you missed any of our earlier episodes from the series, we've put them all together in a collection for you on the Apple News App. There's a link to that on our show notes page, too. And as always, if you like what you've been hearing, please give us a follow on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. Thanks for listening!
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