Episode 6 - How some decisions change everything

"I believe it's more the hundreds and the thousands of little decisions you make every day, every week that chart your course." Listen to Larry Casey, former VP of Adobe, Enterprise Solutions who spent decades planning for his next chapter!

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SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the next chapter Conversations, a podcast about real life stories from people designing a meaningful second act or retirement. My guests will talk about inflection points and the paths they took to their next chapters in life. The goal for the podcast is to create more dialogue and build community around the R word, a word that was really hard for me to wrap my head around when my own journey into my next chapter began. My guest is Larry Casey, an IT professional who early on knew when he wanted to retire. Larry's career started off at one of the big three public accounting firms as a senior auditor. Then he went to eBay for five years as director of IT systems. For the rest of his 14 and a half year career, Larry was VP Enterprise Solutions at Adobe. Early on in his life, Larry knew when he wanted to retire and planned for his next chapter decades before it happened. He's the only person I know who, six years before he actually retired, put his retirement date on the company calendar. I'm looking forward to hearing his reasons and his inspiration for being so meticulous about constructing his next chapter. Welcome to the podcast, Larry. Thank you for being with us today. Let's jump right in with you telling us about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

All right, thanks for having me today. I'm 55 years old now. How long have I worked? I started when I was 11 years old with a paper out, seven days a week, 5 a.m., uh every day of the year. So I kind of got that work ethic early on, and I've worked nonstop since age 11. Uh, in terms of stability, we talked about my wife, Sherry. We've been together 38 years. We met in high school. That's obviously the best part of my life.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Do you have a philosophy or beliefs that you rely on to guide your life choices and decisions?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

I hadn't consciously had one, but when I started mentoring folks, uh, both there were some high schoolers in that we had a mentoring program and then other people within my organization. And always the kind of the initial discussions with them, they they had what at the time to them was a large life choice, where they felt it was a large life choice. And if they made the wrong decision, their life was never going to, you know, make their goals. And I really kind of communicated, I believe it's more the hundreds and the thousands of little decisions you make every day, every week that chart your course. Yes, there's some big decisions that help get you on the course or off, but try not to overstress on those because even if it is off in the wrong direction, you have time to make 50 little decisions over the next couple of years that get you back on course, as well as you just don't know what you're going to discover. Maybe that was a bad decision going that particular route, but I'm sure there's things you learn from it. You know, should I take an opportunity? Should I do this particular thing? I'm always interested in learning. Is there something I can learn from this opportunity? Will it make me a little uncomfortable? I mean, I like to be a little uncomfortable. I feel that I grow from being a little uncomfortable. I hate doing it, but I also know it's good for me. Um, so it's like exercise or eating healthy. It's like, you know, you should do it because it helps you grow. I always said I don't want a job I'm fully qualified for, because that's, you know, what's the point of that? I want a job where maybe I'm 80% qualified for and 20% I don't really know what I'm doing. And that's the part that I'm really going to learn from and grow from.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

How do you know when you're making those right little decisions or if you've made a wrong little decision?

SPEAKER_00 3:49

What can I learn from it? Okay. I learned I really hate doing that. And I don't want to do that again. Okay. I mean, maybe I'm an eternal optimist. I guess I have confidence enough that I know I can get to where I want to get to, just keep forging ahead. So it's wrong. Okay, but maybe I met somebody in that interaction that I like that person. I want to talk to them in the future of my life. Yeah, I don't think any mistake is unrecoverable. Uh, and you just kind of rotate and pivot from there and then get back on your your guiding point.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah, great. All right, let's switch gears to your motivations for planning ahead in such detail about your next chapter. Because you have a great story.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

I I am pretty detailed, yes. Um, but I guess yeah, it really started. I was 15. So I know not too many people think about, I don't think that many people think about retirement at 15. Um, but my dad passed away when he was 53, when I was 15. I was the youngest of six kids. And from that point on, you know, we we were we were probably lower middle class. So we had what we needed, but it wasn't rich by any means. But we always had what we needed. And even from that point on, my dad passed away 53. My mom was 50, I believe, at the time. And my mom's actually 91 now, um, still alive and still financially independent. So it was clear to me that somehow raising six kids in a lower middle class, my dad was able to save enough and make sure that the family was taken care of. I had always known that my dad had invested and had done some things. So I got some exposure to that early on. That kind of started me on the course of like, okay, I need to make sure by the time I'm 53 that I have everything in order, my family's taken care of. That's my guiding light. Anything post-53 is bonus.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

That really drove you.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah. Yeah. Now my mom's 91. So I have no idea where I'm going to end.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Well, you're 55 and going strong. So, you know, it's yeah. What did your family and friends and co-workers think about your approach?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Close family and friends, they pretty much knew it'd probably happen. Some close coworkers who also, as we got older, at least, they also were sharing about their goals and what they wanted to do when they retire. And so I don't think that for them it was too wild of an idea. And people were aware of the fire movement and all those other things. I wasn't that extreme in terms of, you know, trying to retire by 40 or anything like that. I thought 55, 53 was a reasonable number to shoot for. Other people at work, I think they just thought it was kind of probably silly talk. I was successful at work, high-level position, large organization, lots of fun projects going on around the world, which I don't I don't disagree with. And you're making good money. So they're just like, when all's going well, why would anybody walk away from that sort of thing? So I don't think they've believed it. Uh, but were excited for me once I did announce it.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

But yeah. So did you give a written notice like a year before? What was the actual pulling the trigger? I mean, I know you had it on the company calendar, but what other mechanisms did you have in place?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

I had been managing my own finances for a long time. I was investing in stocks even back in college with money that I had from working in. I was aware of the stock market and I was managing it myself. Then when I hit about 40, I think it was, then I engaged with a financial planner. Uh, just knowing that, okay, I know a lot, but I don't certainly don't know everything. And this is getting realer now as I get older. Uh, and so working with a financial planner and understanding different investment vehicles that I'm not familiar with on my on my own, what also helped a lot from the financial aspect is all the models that they have. And so with him running the scenarios, I still remember 663 scenarios that they run in their models. And when 663 models said that success is uh definite almost based on inflation and all the returns and things like that. I'm like, okay, that was a good enough number for me at least.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Uh that no matter what happens, I still should be okay, and the family should still be okay. So that was really comforting. Now, do I understand all 663 models? Not at all. So I do have a lot of trust in the professionals, and but at least that gave me the comfort to understand that. I still did work a couple of years beyond that, even. So he was saying I could have retired even a couple of years before that, but I was enjoying it. And I think what was important for me was to go through that transitionary period to when you retire. And I think for me, it's important. For me, it was important, I think maybe for others as well. It again, it doesn't need to be a black and white thing, like go from my mind, you know, working full time to then I'm suddenly off and I'm lost in this wilderness. I spent probably the last year, I didn't I hadn't announced it yet, but I knew that the date was probably gonna be that date. But I also spent that last year almost like on a farewell tour in my mind. So when you talk about the coping and that transitionary period, and it was okay, this is my last budget cycle. Let me just take a moment to appreciate or hate the cycle and understand it. And okay, this is the last time I'm gonna be doing this, working in this particular way, to more frivolous things like going to a uh Warriors game and sitting in a box, knowing I'm probably never going to sit in a luxury box at a basketball game again in my life. But that's okay. And just saying goodbye to things during that last year and appreciating them and knowing that they wouldn't likely reoccur. So that kind of, I think, prepared me for the time.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah. Oh, that sounds like a really healthy and gratitude-filled way to manage that for yourself to find joy and to find joy in the ending. How long did it take you to settle into not working full-time?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Not very long. I tell people I'm pretty good at it. I mean, I think I'm pretty good at this uh job.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

What were the key, what were the keys for you? Because I know a lot of people that retirement petrifies them. And so to those people or even even people somewhere in between, tell us a little bit about your mindset for that and and what you did for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah. I think it leads on to my grieving period, or for lack of a better term, started a year or so before I left. So getting my mind wrapped around that and understanding that piece of it. And then moving into retirement. I've had sabbaticals, luckily, five weeks, I think, was the longest sabbatical that I had. So I understand what to do in that kind of frame. And I know now it's years versus the five weeks, but I've had that disconnect before. So I started with that, and then I did load up my calendar a bit at the beginning to keep myself busy doing things that I had wanted to do for quite some time. But I made sure that everything that I had signed up for were temporary or point-specific activities. Made great progress on my honeydew list. Yeah. Um the first few months, I think, for almost anybody will go by rather quickly because you'll pack in some things like that. But don't sign up for a bunch of long-term commitments because you really don't know what your day is going to look like. So once I got past kind of the six-month mark, I said, okay, things have settled down now. I kind of know what a day looks like. I have not been bored at this point, keeping myself busy with activities and kind of being able to, I put in my going away message or my LinkedIn profile says, my job now is following my random curiosities. When I retired, I was telling people if I had my ideal retirement, I would do different jobs for like three weeks each. I've never worked fast food. I'd be interested in working fast food for three weeks, just to experience it and understand it. They got me a Home Depot shirt for retirement because I told them uh, you know, if you see me again, I'm gonna be at Home Depot helping you with your plumbing question. Um, you know, I just I like learning but but but only for three weeks. Only for three, yeah. But the temp agencies, they don't exist from when I was younger, where you could just like I'd be a receptionist for a couple weeks just to kind of experience it and see how it all works and work on an assembly line for a couple weeks at an automaker. I mean, I th that would be ideal, ideal, but I haven't been able to find how to do that yet. I just love learning new things. So unfortunately, I have to watch YouTube videos sometimes on how those things work to learn about it, but uh that would be ideal. I found in San Jose, the San Jose Planning Commission. I've been born and raised in San Jose, I've always been interested in kind of the growth of the city and how things are planned out. The time commitment is reasonable, it's interesting topics that I'm actually interested in. I can learn from, and I think I can add some value. It fit all the things that that I was interested in. I thought I could add some value, and it's something I get to learn a lot, which I was interested in as well, and helps me kind of keep my mind sharp as well.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Yeah. Wow, that's that's a great story.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah, it's been fun so far. I really, I actually really enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah, I'm gonna switch gears again. How have your personal and professional relationships changed since retirement? Let's start with your spouse and then go family, friends, communitate.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

For the better across the board. We could talk about individual individually, but one thing that's key, I think, across all of them, and I just I just say the word I'm present. I'm there now. I was always maybe physically present with them before, but I was never mentally present. Even at home, dinner table. I try to do my best, but then if with IT work and my wife would even say, Well, you're here, but just go to your office because you're not really here. Like, you know, don't don't pretend that you're sitting with me here and we're together, right? You're physically together, but we're not. And so I'm just present now. When I'm with someone, it just feels completely different. There's nothing else on my mind. I'm not checking my phone, I am with you. And that transcends all the people my wife, the family, the friends, even co-workers. I still uh am very lucky to many of my team members I talk to monthly, and I have lunch with them each quarter still. So even on three years, I'm still meeting with them.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yeah. How did you make that switch from always having your phone and being on to letting that go and being comfortable in your own skin and your own energy and body with like, oh, hey, I don't have to be on for all the other things in life that can like creep in and take the place of always being on like work.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah, yeah. Well, I certainly did go down the the news rat hole when I first retired. I was always reading news and things like that before, but yes, afterwards, when I didn't have 50 emails every couple hours in my work inbox, I unfortunately shifted a lot of that time to news and went down kind of the rat hole of just getting so angry by reading the news. I actually deleted TikTok before I even retired. Like a week before, I'm like, all right, I gotta make sure I don't go down the TikTok rat hole. Yeah. Um, unfortunately, all the other services have those too. Um, but even there, I've set up timers on my phone. So, like Instagram, I only get 10 minutes a day. And then my phone tells me, nope, you're done for the day. So I still have to set some guardrails for myself. Uh it takes time, it's hard. The phone has been in my hand, but it's always there. You gotta be deliberate about it and and just go through your detox of getting away from it. Yeah, and that's hard. I mean, that takes some, yeah. There's no there's no easy one there either, other than maybe your wife stealing it from me. I did have and my wife did one time. I was on sabbatical way back, and I got a call that wasn't that important on my sabbatical. My wife actually did confiscate my phone for a sabbatical, but I could do that back then.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Um now it's kind of the key to my car, so I can't really get what other advice do you have for people thinking about or in the midst of creating a satisfying next chapter for themselves?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

You really don't know what retirement's gonna be like. I had envisioned getting a sprinter van and going out camping all the time and just being on the road. But I decided to wait and then I rented one, did a trip, and I'm like, huh. Maybe in my 40s I liked roughing it a bit, but at this age, I kind of want a marriott on wheels. And I'm like, okay, so my dream of what I or you know, of what I thought I would do a lot of didn't really mesh with my reality anymore. And there's probably tons of other examples for since I was 40, I've always wanted a boat, and I just, you know, thought I'd be deep sea fishing every day that you didn't think of. And you also will validate some of your dreams and say, or your visions of retirement and say, okay, that's not really what I want now. There's no timeline, there's no rush. That's why I keep my schedule open so there's opportunities to just do random things that I hadn't planned on. That's the main thing. There's no failure with retirement, it's just learning and adjusting, and just like you did in your career. So just don't build it up to something it's not, or it doesn't have to meet your vision when you're 40 or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Try things out.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

That's smart. I think I agree with you. Like, go rent a place, go go hang out. Yeah, there was a time, like maybe think about going to a lower cost of living state. Let's get a place in Arizona because it's nice and there's spring training and you know, da-da-da-da-da. It would be lower cost for the kids. I said, okay. So we went there and we rented a house for a month and we did a road trip. And and about a week and a half in, you know, I said nothing. I like, I took tennis lessons there. I was still doing my online classes. I was cooking. I was like, I was like, okay, I'm here for a month. I'm gonna enjoy it. I'm gonna go explore. And about a week and a half into it, he came home and he's like, uh yeah, yeah, we're we're never gonna live here. So I was like, and I didn't even have to. So I'm like, okay, like I'm so glad, you know? And so his whole vision of when we retire, let's have this honk and big house. Yeah, like I was like, I don't want to honk and big house. I like our one-story ranch and very happy here. Like, I'm good. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

We we hired a realtor in in Hawaii. My in-laws live in Hawaii, we like spending time in Hawaii. We had hired a realtor, we looked at places, and then I'm like, I love Hawaii, but I don't love humidity. Like, I don't know, I can do this three months a year, yeah, something like that, but not a not year-round. So yeah, you really got to validate. I mean, just like any other thing, decision in life, you got to validate. It could be a dream, it could be things perfect, but yeah, yeah. I mean, we're very lucky around here.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Three things that you would tell your pre-retirement self. So enjoy the journey.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

I would also say good job to myself. I've set a goal, I worked at it, I stayed on point. That wasn't easy for that many years. You talked about guiding, you know, decisions in my career as well. It was like, okay, does this help me on my journey to the ultimate goal? Should I get upset about it if I didn't get a promotion or I didn't get this particular thing when I wanted it? I'm like, well, does that really take me off my goal? Even if I stay in this path, I'm still gonna hit my goal. So I would try to let it go and say, okay, yes, that's unfair in my mind, or you know, oh, I deserve that or whatever. But okay, fine. But I'm still gonna get to my goal regardless. That kind of helped keep me grounded as well, to be able to cast off the things that I didn't agree with or the stress of it. Other pre-retirement things to say, as it gets back to number one in terms of enjoying the journey, just continue to appreciate the people along the way. Nobody cares about a project, you know, three years after it's completed. I certainly later in my career, I did really rotate more towards focusing on the people and the team. And I think that's just as people age in general. I get more joy out of seeing others successful than something that I accomplished. And so if I could have done that earlier in my career, I think that would have given me uh more happiness through the journey as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Um the last question: any surprises or things that you didn't expect in retirement?

SPEAKER_00 20:01

I guess surprise is that time goes by so quickly. Okay. I just I mean, I'm used to I still get up to seven, I'm still out of bed by seven. With work, I used to be at work at seven and stay at work till six at night at least and come home. So I never felt I had any time. So I'm like, okay, when I retire, I'm just gonna have boatloads of time. And you do, but there's also things that consume it that aren't necessarily bad things. We make a lot more of our meals, but I actually enjoy that. Being able to go grocery shopping Tuesday at 10 a.m., there's nobody there. It's it's nice, it's relaxing.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

I know, isn't that great?

SPEAKER_00 20:35

First, I mean, I go to Costco now. I never went to Costco when I was working because there's no way I'm going on a weekend. Um, so I mean, time just goes by more quickly. I go for a hike or something, that's three hours. I'm like, all right, come home by lunch. All right, maybe I need a little nap. And so time does go by quickly. You have time for all the things you want to do. So again, you just need to be deliberate about what you want to do. So, yeah, I think just that time still goes by quickly, but you still have time for the things you want to do. And I just love the flexibility of being able to do anything on a spare of the moment and just following my random curiosities. Um, I'm still learning a lot as well. So I still find interest in learning about the world and traveling and exploring the world. Good things, definitely just physical and mental health. I used to come out of my office at the end of the day, and my face would be swollen and the stress, and my wife could see it on me. My blood pressures down. Back to the Larry that she met in high school, maybe not as thin, um, but still, you know, as funny and good looking. Um being able to spend more quality time with them. My kids are graduating from college or back at home for a little while now. So being able to connect with them again since have they have they noticed a difference? Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, it's funny.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

My youngest what have they said about it?

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Well, like my oldest, I wasn't working quite as crazy when he was born. So we talk about how we read them books every night and all this quality. Time. My youngest is like, Oh, what did you read? Me? I'm like, I don't even remember your first three years of birth. I would come in, I'd sit on the floor to read with him as well, and I would just fall back and fall asleep. So he remembers me snoring on his floor because I was so tired and exhausted. And now he's 17 and have been retired since he was a sophomore in high school. So I'm having that connection with him now that I didn't necessarily have when he was one to five years old or 10 years old when I was working all the time. So yeah, they didn't.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Are you taking a book into his room and sitting down on the ground and go, okay, come on, come on over here. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna snore tonight.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

I will do that tonight. Yeah, he'll freak him out and he'll tell me to leave, but I'll still do it. I love making him uncomfortable. I mean, that's that's the joy of my life as well. Well, I'm here and I'm present. We have a whole different relationship than we had before. Um that's that's great.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

That's yeah, that's wonderful. One thing I didn't ask you was health care and retirement. Yes. Um, you're early age-wise retirement because you retired at 53. So you've got a good number of years before medical kicks in. So do you have any thoughts? I I don't want you to have to like tell too much or reveal too much about you. But tell me about healthcare and how you planned for that so early.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

No, you're absolutely right. That was that was probably my number one concern. Not probably, it was my number one concern retirement. I had an accounting background before, and then I went into IT. So I've had my numbers. I have all my activity in Quicken for the last 20 years. So I knew where I was spending. And so, budget-wise and things like that for retirement, I felt I had a pretty good grasp on what I spend and what areas I could cut if I needed. But uh, healthcare and property taxes in California, um, two of the things you can't really influence much. Um, so property taxes, that's just set. You just plan for it, and it doesn't really impact your life, you know, on a daily basis once you have the numbers set. Healthcare, yes. Uh, so when you do retire, you still can do COBRA from your company for 18 months, which I did. So I stuck with the employer healthcare. You have to pay the full amount yourself, but at least you know the number and you know the coverage. And there's no way around it. Your employer coverage is better than your anything you're gonna find in the open market.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

So you just have to get over that. So if you do have conditions or things you want fixed, definitely get them done in the first 18 months. It'll be the best for you. The best coverage, without a doubt, is through the employer plans. After the 18 months, then you go through Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, insurance options. And when you go through there, at least in California, there are, you know, like Blue Shield and things like that, but they're exorbitant in cost. The most reasonable price option is through Kaiser. I had not had Kaiser since I was like 10 years old and I was worried about them. And I'm not doing a PSA for Kaiser. It's been good for us, it's worked. And the the fees are so much lower than the other insurance options that we're fine. Like if you need to go get something and just private pay, it's still cheaper to get Kaiser for catastrophic and be your normal care. But then, like I went to a dermatologist, so I just paid that out of pocket. You can get different options, but it's gonna be a big expense and and you know it's gonna continue to increase each year as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Uh yeah, how did you model that?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Well, I had read 18% potentially increases per year. So you just have to model that within the family. And it, if you have children, once they turn 18, then they can go and get it on their own. So that drops the price a lot. So certain things, yeah, when you're working, you kind of keep your kids on your medical until they're 26 or 27 or whatever it is. You keep them on there as long as possible. When you're on your own, it's much cheaper to actually have them go off your insurance and have them buy on their own because then it's based on their income and their coverage needs. So my youngest, for instance, just went off. We did the Obamacare on her own, and she's making so low at this point that it's basically free medical for her as an example. So you just need to look at things a little differently and understand it. But there's there's blogs, there's all kinds of things out there you can read about to understand it. But medical care by far, biggest expense and biggest worry.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

I really enjoyed this. This was super fun and helpful. I hope you found it fun.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

I did, and I can't wait to read a book to my son this mor this morning.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

And I so yeah, so thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Great.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

There are the dreamers and the planners. The planners make their dreams come true. This, in essence, is what Larry did for himself at the very young age of 15. He planned ahead in great detail, knowing early on that he wanted to retire before the age of 54. I liked hearing his perspective that life is decided by hundreds of decisions you make and that you chart your course, not just by the big ones, and that you can always go back and course correct along the way. His process for embracing the uncomfortable, even if you hate it, made me laugh. I hope it inspires you to think about what you might need to do in your own life that's unpleasant, but necessary for you to reach your own goals. I'll leave you with a few quotes about planning. Plans are worthless, but planning is everything, Dwight D. Eisenhower. If you fail to plan, you're planning to fail. Benjamin Franklin. All right, that's enough on planning. Go out and make it a great day. We'll see you soon. Thanks for listening.