My retirement journey

Welcome to Decoding Retirement Life!

I’m Karen and I retired in May 2020. I spent most of my career as a researcher. In 1991 I started working as a research analyst for an international organization. It was my dream job. I moved from New York City to North Carolina and spent the next nearly 30 years conducting research on health services in Africa and Asia. I loved my work. It was meaningful while also providing opportunities to travel to places I had never been to before. It enabled me to work and become friends with amazing people from all over the world. My job also involved mentoring and training colleagues by sharing my research expertise and I loved this role. Plus, a large part of my social community was at work, I met many of my closest friends there. 

But by the time I hit my mid-50s I was mentally and physically exhausted. I was a full-time single parent with a full-time demanding job. I began to think more and more about retirement but knew I’d have to wait many years because of finances and concerns about health insurance. Also, I felt like a lot of my identity was wrapped up in my job. Who would I be without my work?

Then came 2020 and for a number of reasons I left my job when I was 62. What a strange time to retire since nearly everything was closed at that point due to COVID. But I still needed to fill my time somehow so I treated retirement like another research project. Gathering information on things to do, ways to stay fit and eat healthier, places to travel to, as well as things I wanted to do around my house like decluttering and organizing. 

Do I have retirement all figured out? Absolutely not. But as I continue on my retirement journey, I want to share what I have done and learned so far in the hope it may make someone else’s journey a little easier. 

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