Before you retired

[Grandma Helen]

What was your favorite thing about your career?  What age did you retire?

[Eaglewoman]

Favorite thing was the paycheck-  have been retired 22 years and they still send me a  check every month. I retired from my real job at 58- then worked several other little jobs for 5 more years.

[officerripley]

The favorite thing was the medical benefits; got to keep the med. ins. I had for only a little more $$ per month; good thing I had it because if we'd kept the med. ins. Huzz had through his job, it would've cost us $1,200/month (it's up to about $2,000/month now, I hear).

I was 55 when I retired.

[MTwoman]

Good money and benefits. Retired with great joy at 65.

[Patricia]

I was a stay at home mom for the most part but did put in a few years in elder care work. I miss talking and joking with the folks I cared for and making my coworkers job easier by helping them so they didn't have to back track. Plus the camaraderie of working with a group, for the most part they were great folks. 

[Holly Schmucki]

Haven't retired yet and the people I work with are the favorite part of the job

[PartTimeBrewer]

I retired at 69 after 32 years as production supervisor of the afternoon shift in a factory that made paper coffee cups. I was a working foreman and enjoyed the hands-on part of the job more than the interactions with the people. It kept me on my feet and provided a variety of challenges at times. However, since the machines were largely automated, there was a lot of boring standing and watching.

[OneEyedDiva]

I went from being unit secretary to municipal VD Investigator then state Public Health Rep (PHR) for the STD department. I was in the same office for those 28 or so years. As a PHR, later called Disease Intervention Specialist, I loved interacting with our patients. Boy we heard some wild stories about how they got infected and what their sexual lifestyles were like. But many times we were quite helpful and we certainly educated them about their ailments, how to manage them and not become reinfected. I also loved the freedom of being out in the field. We PHRs had a very unique job and not everyone could do what we did, no matter how educated they were. I took early retirement at age 50, one month before my 51st birthday. That was my present to myself. I had planned to retire at 52.