On April 1, 2010, I will retire from a 30 year career as a special education teacher and administrator. The purpose of this weblog is to provide a forum for other teachers who are about to retire in order to plan for meaningful work in the next phase of our lives. I hope we hear from the thousands of retired teachers around the world. We are, potentially, a powerful force due to the sheer number of us. We are all highly educated and most likely, financially secure.
I have several planned topics such as data on our community, the factors that determined our decision to retire, stories about kids we taught, the dreaded retirement parties, and our thoughts about the future of education. I will provide the prompts for these discussions. But building a real-time agenda with your input is much more important to me.
One reason I believe this blog can have a tremendously powerful influence is the content of most of the retirement sites on the web. What I found in my searches was mostly about how to save for retirement, how to invest for retirement, best-places-to-live-after retirement, and how to find travel bargains. I want to go deeper and talk about how a career in education shaped us and how we can use our knowledge, experience, and skills to build a better world. But keep in mind that a real-time agenda does not prevent us from addressing investments, travel and fun places to live!
Today let's look at some data to get us thinking. I want to gather evidence to support my belief that we are smart, young, wealthy and that there are lots of us!
In a report published by the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) of Georgia for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, there were 78,633 retirees receiving a benefit payment from the Georgia TRS. Their average monthly benefit was $2,921. The number of retirees includes teachers, college and university personnel, librarians, and others who were a part for the system such as cafeteria workers, and their beneficiaries. That is a lot of people with college educations and a certain level of financial stability.
I was interested in learning the average age that teachers retire because we are, compared to the majority of Americans, young retirees. Staff at Georgia TRS are working on finding that number for me. Think about this: if you began teaching immediately after obtaining an undergraduate degree at age 21 or 22 you would be eligible to receive full retirement benefits for 30 years of service at age 51 or 52. That is young!
If you have information about the number, age, and benefits of teacher retirees in other states, please post it here. Let's have some discussion about the size, quality and economic power of our community!
I have several planned topics such as data on our community, the factors that determined our decision to retire, stories about kids we taught, the dreaded retirement parties, and our thoughts about the future of education. I will provide the prompts for these discussions. But building a real-time agenda with your input is much more important to me.
One reason I believe this blog can have a tremendously powerful influence is the content of most of the retirement sites on the web. What I found in my searches was mostly about how to save for retirement, how to invest for retirement, best-places-to-live-after retirement, and how to find travel bargains. I want to go deeper and talk about how a career in education shaped us and how we can use our knowledge, experience, and skills to build a better world. But keep in mind that a real-time agenda does not prevent us from addressing investments, travel and fun places to live!
Today let's look at some data to get us thinking. I want to gather evidence to support my belief that we are smart, young, wealthy and that there are lots of us!
In a report published by the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) of Georgia for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, there were 78,633 retirees receiving a benefit payment from the Georgia TRS. Their average monthly benefit was $2,921. The number of retirees includes teachers, college and university personnel, librarians, and others who were a part for the system such as cafeteria workers, and their beneficiaries. That is a lot of people with college educations and a certain level of financial stability.
I was interested in learning the average age that teachers retire because we are, compared to the majority of Americans, young retirees. Staff at Georgia TRS are working on finding that number for me. Think about this: if you began teaching immediately after obtaining an undergraduate degree at age 21 or 22 you would be eligible to receive full retirement benefits for 30 years of service at age 51 or 52. That is young!
If you have information about the number, age, and benefits of teacher retirees in other states, please post it here. Let's have some discussion about the size, quality and economic power of our community!
(Ask me about the meaning of the picture I selected.)
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