I am not going to talk a lot about my career (I have written about it.¹

) I started working at the age of 16 and retired early at the age of 58. So I worked for 42 years, including several years as a secretary in academia before I was able to go to school and get a graduate education; I got my Ph.D. at the age of 34. I taught for 25 years at Georgia State University.

I enjoyed my work always, but there were negatives that we all know about, academic politics and all that. I think that is what finally made me realize there is more to life than academia. I wanted to try some other aspects of life. I never had what I consider a real sabbatical. For one year I had a Fulbright Scholarship, but I was doing what other people wanted me to do, an assigned research project. I wanted a permanent sabbatical, but I had to be financially able to do that.

Retirement is how I achieved that sabbatical. I feel fortunate that I was able to do that. I remember that my colleagues in political science at Georgia State, mostly men, would sit around and talk about retirement funds and work through the summer to make more money. I did not think about retirement funds and I didn't want to work during the summer. I wanted my time off in order to replenish my creative energies.

But then I began to realize things change. I needed to think about the future and provide for myself financially. I was not going to be able to depend on others to do it for me. When the SRA (Supplemental Retirement Account) became available by law in the early 1980s, I took advantage of it. I knew there would be payments from Social Security but I also knew that you could not depend entirely on Social Security and a pension if you wanted to maintain some semblance of your achieved life style. Women even more than others could not depend solely on Social Security—or even pensions— because the less you earn the less you benefit.

There are really three main things I want to encourage you to think about. The first issue I want to raise is financial planning for retirement. Think about it early, earlier than I did, even though I did manage to retire early. Think about the legal documents you will need whether or not you have a partner. You need a durable power of attorney, you need a will; you need a living will if you believe in that. If you don't have a partner, or even if you do, you need some designated person to serve as your surrogate to make financial and medical decisions should you become incapacitated. And it is much better to act on these needs while you are healthy and before it is too late. You need to think about long-term-care insurance, and if you decide that is a good choice for you, consider that the younger you are, the less it costs. TIAA-CREF is a dependable company. There are often useful articles on financial planning in the newspapers and on the retirement checklists that your employer will make available. I started using those checklists as I got closer to retirement.

The next issue is how to structure one's time after leaving a structured environment. People would ask me: “What are you going to do after you retire?” I would answer: “I do not know and I am glad that I do not know. I know that I am not going to committee meetings, not keeping a calendar. I am going to have free open space, see what happens.” That is what you do on sabbatical.

The first year that I retired I did not have a calendar. I didn't even have anything to put on a calendar. It was wonderful. But then things changed. My husband went into a severe depression and later was diagnosed with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's Diseases. As soon as he became sick I became the caregiver and I had to have a calendar to keep up with all the appointments with doctors.

There are all kinds of ways to structure your time when you retire. If you do not know the answer going in, you will think of something when you get there. It will come to you. In my life now I have a writing project, and I try to read and write every morning for one to three hours. I feel very hopeful. I have a book I want to write, following up on all the work I have done before I retired. In order to write that book, I need to learn philosophy and I am teaching myself philosophy. I am having a wonderful time reading philosophy.

The third and last issue that I would encourage people to think about is preparing for the unexpected. Usually it is health-related. Be prepared for the unexpected. Have a philosophy of life that includes flexibility about structuring one's own life while recognizing interdependence with others, whoever that may be.