ON THE ROAD TO.....RETIREMENT-PART 1

I don't usually post a lot of personal stuff here but, I am going to make an exception as I get closer to the BIG R.....Retirement. Over the years when some one would ask me "When are you going to retire?" my reply had always been, "The First!" Which always brought the followup question, "Oh, the first of the Year," to which I always replied, "No, The first time they piss me off."  Well, it finally happened and a few weeks ago, they pissed me off enough for me to finally pull the trigger and start the process.

I have been employed by the State of Virginia for the past 43-years, in fact this is the only job I have ever had. But, without going into the politics of working for the government, the last few years have been challenging and it finally dawn on me, "You don't have to do this anymore." So a few weeks ago I started looking into actually retiring.

One of the best benefits of working for the State is it's leave package. If you treat your leave like an extension of your pay check and carefully manage your leave, a seasoned employee only has to work about 8 months of the year. The problem is when you finally decide to retire the the state will only pay you for a small portion of your unused leave. So the first thing I did (after picking an actual retirement date) was to calculate my leave and figure out how much leave I have to take so that I can get paid for the max while not loosing any.

The one thing that I found is that my agency's personnel office (if you want to be politically correct - human resources office) is really little help in helping figure out my current leave balances and no help at all in calculating my future leave balances. So my own calculations show that I will have about 70-days of discretionary leave that I will have to take by the end of the year.  Figuring that each month will require an average of 20-days leave, I will have a little over 3-months of leave to take. So with that being said, I will basically stop working about the middle of September.

My next thing was to sit down and do a monthly budget. Listed my bill, and other monthly expenses. For the last year I have kept a pretty detailed log and have a pretty good idea of what I will cost me to live month to month.  Some of the expenses will go down, like gas to and from work, and eating out. Some may go up like, groceries.  So I have a good idea what it will cost me to live month to month and have found that I should have a good bit of money left over for discretionary spending, and hopefully may be able to continue to save a little each month.

So now that I have set an actual retirement day - January 1, 2018 and an actual leave date - September 15, 2017, it was time to looking in to the dreaded paper work.  I first started the process by looking on line at the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) website and downloaded the Retirement Handbook.  This is a must for anyone who is considering retiring from the state in the next year or so. It is full of information and I found it very helpful.

My next step was initiating a call to my agency's personnel office and setting an appointment for an initial review. From where I live in southwest Virginia to my agency's personnel office in Richmond it is a good 4-hour drive. I have to say that this was a total waste of time.  The person I initially set the appointment with and was scheduled to meet with wasn't working and I had to meet with another person who did little else but print off the necessary forms. She could not even get logged into the correct website to calculate my financial numbers. The entire meeting took about 20-minutes. So 4-hours up and 4-hours back for a 20-minute meeting. Waste of time. I ended calling the VRS office direct and found that they are very helpful and provide a bunch of information that my personnel office didn't. The VRS Representative also was able to correct some of the "Mis-Information" that my personnel office had given me.  Moral of the story, while you may have to deal with your personnel office for some things, I have found that it is better to go to VRS for accurate information.

Some people will disagree with my next statement but after meeting with my financial and tax people, I have decided to start drawing my social security as soon as I can. After considerable thought, there are a couple of reasons that I have chosen to take early social security.  First and foremost, is it is never ever a good idea to allow the government to manage your money. So I am going to get my money that the government has been holding for me and run with it.  The second reason is by drawing social security I will be able to leave my investments alone and they hopefully will continue to grow. I anticipate that with my monthly retirement and social security check I will be able to live comfortable while allow my investment to grow. The initial plan is to use my state retirement and social security for my monthly bill and still have enough left over for monthly discretionary spending and using my investments for emergencies and travel.

The next big benchmark that is coming up will be actually filing the retirement papers and applying for social security, and that will come in the middle of September. The VRS will not accept applications for retirement no more than 120-days in advance of the actual retirement date. Applications for VRS retirement must be files 60-days in advance and they advise 90-days is ideal.

Since I have made the decision to retire, another question that I am often ask is, "What are you going to do."  My answer is more often than not, "Nothing."  But the truth of the matter is, I plan on traveling. I have even thought about sell out and becoming a full time RV'er, but have basically talked myself out of that for a couple of reasons.  First, while I like the idea of waking up in different places, the constant setting up and tearing down does not appeal to me.  Second, I have watched a number of YouTube Videos from full time RV'ers and the one thing that they all have in common is that you are driving your house and there is always something breaking.  Most full timer's are really quite handy at fixing thing themselves but the truth of the matter is I am not that handy and if it requires much more than changing a light bulb, I am totally lost.

So, I have decided to keep a sticks and bricks home, whether it be at my current location or at another site we will have to just wait and see.  But I do plan on traveling, some times it will be just a day trip, others it will be a weekend excursion, and yet another time it may be a week or so it will just depend on my mood.  I do plan on taking a couple of extended trips each year. One in the spring of the year around the time of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and another in the late summer or fall of the year.

Over the years I have have kept a rather detailed travel journal and I have also kept track of my expenses. In 2015 I managed to take a 9-day trip to the the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Hudson Valley of New York. During that trip my average daily expenses was $107.00. Of course my biggest daily expense was lodging, followed gas and food.

In 2013, I attended the NCAA Basketball Tournament in Kansas City, Missouri. This trip took about 17-days and again I kept a very detailed travel journal and expense log. My average daily expenses was $97.00 per day. This included lodging, food, gas and tours.

A lot of people tell me that is very low considering hotels and food should be my biggest expense, and I am a able to minimize or some time eliminate some of the bigger expenses like food, and lodging.

I am a big fan of rewards programs especially hotels and gas stations.  Currently I am a member of the Choice Hotels reward program which features Comfort Inn, Sleep Inn and Quality Inns.  I really like Choice Hotel's programs as it seems like I can accumulate enough point for free nights quicker especially during the early spring and late fall when they often offer double points or stay two nights and get a free night.  Plus accumulated points don't expire.

While Choice Hotel are my number 1 hotel chain when traveling I am also a member of the Holiday Inn rewards program.  While Choice is usually cheaper than many of the competing brands, I have found that Holiday Inn are by and large more customer service friendly and the rooms and common areas are nicer.  I am usually able to keep my lodging expenses down by using my rewards points for either free or reduced stays at Choice Hotels and Holiday Inn's Nationwide.

Another way that I reduce my expenses, is in my daily food budget.  Most of the hotels I stay at feature a complimentary breakfast.  I always take advantage of this breakfast before hitting the road. For lunch, it usually hit up fast food (I know it's not healthy) but a lot of the time I opt for subway, or eating the lunch at a place that is recommended by the locals.  For supper, it usually a nice sit down chain restaurant or again a local recommended place.

Also another way that I minimize food expense is I start buying gift card a few weeks before I depart. I usually by them at Kroger's where I get double, triple, and even 4-times the fuel point which serves to reduce my fuel cost when I am on the road.

So you ask what is on the horizon. Well, first up is submitting social security and VRS Retirement applications in September.  Then in October my sister and I are off to Washington D. C. for my birthday.  She has never been to our Nations Capitol so it is going to be an awesome adventure.

Then in November I am planning on taking a short Amtrak Trip just to see how I like traveling by rail. Everybody I have talked too tell me you will either love it or you will hate it.  Where am I going, well I haven't decided yet, I am looking at either Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia. If it doesn't happen in November I am looking at somewhere in Florida in December.

January 1, 2018 will be my official retirement date and somewhere along the way, I will be getting a new car. Yes, Hannah Honda (my 2010 Honda Insight) has almost 180,000 miles and it is going to be time to trade her in before I hit the road for my first big retirement Adventure in March of 2018.

Yes, my first big road trip will be in March 2018. Right now, I am planning on a Texas vacation where I want to attend the 2018 NCAA Basketball Tournament at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.  I won't know for sure until I am able to purchase ticket in Mid-October, but right now I plan on hitting the road the first of March and spending the better part of a month piddlin' around Texas.

So that's the plan for the next few months as I make my way down the road to retirement.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - AMERICA

The 4th of July would not be complete without fireworks.  This year despite a light and steady rain, the Town of Christiansburg, Virginia celebrated the 241st birthday of our county with a great fireworks display at the High School .  Because of the rain I chose to view the the "bombs bursting in air" from the shelter of my back deck.  Here is a short video of how our small town celebrates freedom and independence.