Retiring

After many years in our separate careers, Dwayne and I retired this year. This blog will attempt to document our adventures in our new-to-us motorhome, a Safari Trek.

Some background:
Dwayne - 27 years with the US federal government, specifically with the IRS, in Information Technology.
Patti - 33 years with IBM, most of that time with the education group, specifically with the group that develops the education for enterprise customers of IBM to learn how to effectively use IBM's Information Management software (primarily databases).

I had been suggesting to Dwayne that he should retire; he would respond, "I'll retire when you do; it wouldn't be any fun to be retired if you were still working." While that was understandable, due to our age difference, I didn't see that it would make sense for me to retire "yet"! A couple of years ago, I found out that there was a benefit that I could not access until I was 55 - so that set an earliest limit on when retirement could be considered. Since the fateful 55th birthday was coming up for me in July, 2014, we started discussing it more seriously. We put together a retirement budget, ran some numbers, and prayed.

God had been working on my heart for this for a while; I had thought that I would really have a hard time leaving IBM. Most of my life had been as an "IBMer" (how many companies do you know whose employees are named by their company name? IRSer? UPSer? Oracler?). But, back in 2005, God had brought me through a time where I thought I would be laid off, in fact, I was looking forward to being laid off to see what God had in store! But, He had other plans for me at that time - plans that allowed me to work with such an amazing group of folks - and He taught me to hold onto the IBM job with hands open to Him, allowing Him to take it from me at any point.

In the months at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, it became more apparent that God had other plans for us that did not include us staying employed with our two fulltime jobs. As a result, Dwayne retired May 31, 2014, and I retired July 31, 2014. While I miss the folks that I worked with every day at IBM, I am LOVING retirement!!!