Photo by Kamp Fender
Greystone Park resident Connie Allen, right, uses real currency during a tutoring session in mathematics with pupil Kathryn Fulton. Allen is a retired educator from the Vestavia Hills school system, and she now tutors children in many different subjects.
For 66-year-old Greystone Park resident Connie Allen, retiring from her teaching job last year wasn’t about taking it easy. It was about shifting her focus to what she loved about the job most: impacting the lives of kids. That’s why, she said, she pursued tutoring.
“I had taught forever and ever, and love, love, loved it, but I was just getting tired of the rat race of it,” she said. “But I was very concerned about retiring.”
Allen wasn’t ready to quit doing what she loved, she said, and definitely still felt like she had the energy to give back to society in some way, just not through the teaching she had offered for the last 37 years. Through her tutoring, which she has done on and off ever since she began teaching, she can work with students one on one at her own pace.
“I taught so long, and I was afraid because I thought it would be such a void [when I retired]. I’ve also tutored forever because I love helping kids. When I quit, I thought, ‘I’ll just keep this tutoring up because there’s such a demand for it,’” Allen said.
In recent years, a variety of reasons have contributed to rising retirement ages and to people, including residents along U.S. 280, staying in the workforce longer. Some choose to stay at work because of financial need, while others may choose not to retire because of their enjoyment of work rather than having a lot of free time.
Bryan Hancock, owner and financial advisor for the 280-based, fee-only company Timberchase Financial, said he talks to many people in this area of Birmingham about retirement options. He said their reasons to continue working are typically closely tied to a continuing sense of purpose.
“I think the big issue is when people retire, they don’t have a purpose or they struggle to find a purpose, and working [a job] is important to that,” Hancock said.
Due to improved health and longevity, which has led to increased life expectancy, healthy people tend to work longer, especially since there are fewer physically demanding jobs than there used to be, according to data from MarketWatch.
Another huge reason Allen decided to tutor, she said, was she felt she had so much experience and personal development over the years that it would be a waste not to give back that knowledge — even if it’s in smaller time increments — when she is in good mental and physical health. In addition, Allen said because her husband still works a lot, they don’t get to travel yet, and tutoring has been a good way for her to stay busy.
Allen, who said she hopes she can keep tutoring as long as possible, said she’s gotten to know so many “neat little families” over the last couple of years. She has made it a personal goal to try to get to know the whole family so the children feel more comfortable, she said. She tutors preschool though sixth-graders, and she focuses each lesson on helping the kids develop confidence and view mistakes as learning experiences rather than failures. She tutors about three or more afternoons a week.
Photo illustration by Kamp Fender
When people plan for their retirement, Timberchase Financial owner Brian Hancock said he urges them to look at it instead as planning for “financial independence.”
“It helps me to do something that I enjoy, but it also helps me to supplement my income, because teachers, we have a decent pension ... and Social Security, but there’s so much more you need these days,” Allen said.
Key financial reasons for later retirement, Hancock said, include the shift to 401(k) plans and the delayed retirement credit incentive set up through Social Security, meaning the longer people work and wait to claim their retirement fund, the more money they get.
Hancock said the clients his company works with are often people with substantial resources, often higher than average nationwide statistics. Even so, money is still a contributing factor to the decision to continue working, he said.
The most recent U.S. Census Bureau data shows the average retirement age is about 63 years old, though that is technically considered an early retirement age as far as Social Security and Medicare benefits operate. U.S. Census Bureau data also showed that people experience an average retirement length of approximately 18 years.
At Hancock’s company, which has been in Birmingham for 15 years, he said the conventional and corporate term “retirement planning” is one of the main topics he advises people about, although the term “retirement,” as a client once told him, is “100 percent fatal.”
“Retirement, in its traditional form, is where you have a retirement party at age 65, get a gold watch, then go sit on a front porch and chew tobacco for the rest of your life,” Hancock said. “That’s usually not good for anybody. What we really focus on helping people understand is we really want them to become financially independent and change careers or change functions or purpose, any of that is perfectly fine.”
According to a study done in 2016 by SmartAsset, a national financial technology company, the average retirement age ranges across states from 62 to 65 years old, with Alabama in the earliest bracket at 62 years old.
Hancock said he often finds the old saying to be true that the joy is not in the destination, but in the work itself. Several times a week, he said, he goes to the same restaurant where the same waitress helps him. She’s an older woman who might work a little slower because of her age, but she “works harder and more diligently than the people that are 50 years her junior.”
“She has a lot of joy and is very engaging with the customers,” he said. “When I see her, I see someone who may or may not have to work, but knows if she’s not working, she’s going to be someone sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair.”
Even though Highland Lakes resident Pat Lynch retired from his 30-year career as a managing partner with Birmingham Budweiser, it took him only about a month before he decided to re-enter the workforce by opening his own business consulting firm, Pat Lynch & Associates.
“I didn’t know exactly what direction I was going to go after that. I had built, through my years at Budweiser, strong relationships. We were heavily involved in legislation in Montgomery that had to do with alcohol, and I knew a lot of people, a lot of local politicians,” Lynch said. “So the natural progression for me would be to use those relationships to build a business.”
He said he knew he could be a business owner and do it at the slower pace he wanted. However, what started off as a part-time career turned into a full-time career again, just with the ability to be flexible with his hours if he needs it.
Hancock said he knows a lot of people who are just getting started with the prime of their careers at what is considered traditional retirement age.
“I was really too young to stop and play golf, which is a really big hobby of mine, and I enjoyed making deals and getting involved in business,” Lynch said. “I’m having fun doing what I’m doing, even though it does take a lot of my time, but that’s OK.”
Photo by Kamp Fender
Pat Lynch is a former managing partner with Budweiser distribution who opened his own business consulting firm, Pat Lynch & Associates.
Money, Lynch said, was not the overriding decision to start the business, but the extra money is certainly a nice part of continuing to work. He added that when the time comes for a lot of people to retire, including some of his friends, people realize they are still physically healthy and valuable to the workforce in some way.
“They still have the ability and the experience level, you know, to be beneficial to business today. That’s a lot of the reason people go back to work,” Lynch said.
A big part of making sure people capitalize on their resources and finances when they get older, Hancock said, is proper planning. Reaching the end of a career move without a plan is part of the reason why Hancock and other fee-only companies are trying to change the conversation around retirement.
“People, they check off their list. They wanted to remodel the bathroom and take a trip to China, and they come back, looking at the future, and really there’s nothing they’re responsible for,” he said. “We literally, with our clients, change the discussion from retirement planning to changing careers.”
Lynch said his philosophy on retirement comes in part from his parents’ influence on him. Even though his mom retired, she had a specific purpose: taking care of her extended family. His dad, on the other hand, would have probably never stopped working, he said, if it weren’t for health problems.
Disability and health issues become a factor for some people, which is another reason to plan toward financial independence.
Generally, people start bringing up all this at age 55, Hancock said. People come to his company at all stages of life, especially if a spouse dies, leaving only one person to handle the finances.
“Usually what happens is there’s some financial complexity that they can’t see their way out of, and they just need to ask a second opinion about and then one thing leads to another,” he said.
Hancock encourages people to look into planning, especially since “we can’t think of traditional retirement anymore as an appropriate solution for most people.”
Some common advice he gives first-time clients, he said, is to talk to financial advisors and know where their money is being invested, as well as be confident their advisors are giving them sound advice. Hancock said if families have multiple financial advisors, they should have a comprehensive view on all their finances so everyone is on the same page when retirement or other financial shifts come around.
“There’s just a lot more opportunities now than there were, say, 50 years ago,” Hancock said.
