Don’t Die With an Excellent CalSTRS Retirement Benefit, 457(b) or 403(b) investments, and a Full Bank Account.
Instead of imagining this,
Imagine Maui beach,
Imagine enjoying Joshua Tree!
Or if you are single, a widow or a widower, imagine this. Yes, I got married to a wonderful woman, Georgiana, after Dan died.
If you are 60 or older, financially secure, and still hesitating about retirement, this message is for you (this message is not for those fortunate and passionate teachers who still love teaching and prefer to die in the classroom. In fact, my hat is off to you!). KEEP TEACHING!
Nobody plans to die early. But people do—every day—often with plenty of money still sitting in their accounts. What they don’t get back is time.
A few years ago, I lost a colleague named Joe, a longtime Los Angeles Unified School District teacher. His story still haunts me for one simple reason: he waited too long.
Joe was only 66. He had a solid pension. He had savings. But most importantly, he had a circle of friends already retired and living happily in Palm Springs. For several years, his friends literally begged him to join them. Joe loved visiting, loved the parties, square dancing, and the easy social life. He had already tasted retirement—and liked it.
Yet year after year, he couldn’t make the leap.
He said he didn’t know what he would do with himself.
He worried about leaving Los Angeles.
He kept postponing “the decision.”
Every spring, he would announce to his friends, “This is it—I’m retiring.”
Every fall, he would change his mind and return to the classroom!
Finally, after years of indecision, he told everyone he was done. But just before the new school year began, he backed out again and went back to work.
Six months later, he developed a persistent cough.
A few months after that, he died from lung cancer.
Joe didn’t die poor or without many retired friends.
He died with money.
He died without the retirement he kept postponing.
My late husband, Dan, took the opposite approach.
Years earlier, I was diagnosed with stage-2 colon cancer at 53. I did everything “right”—healthy eating, no smoking, no drinking, regular exercise—and still got blindsided. That experience taught us something most people try to avoid: life is fragile, and time is not guaranteed.
Dan didn’t wait.
He retired at 59, exactly as he had planned. We sold our Los Angeles properties and moved to Rancho Mirage. We hiked, traveled the world, and built a new community in our desert resort. We toured the country in our fifth-wheel. We wrote a book together. We lived our retirement.
Dan also died earlier than we expected, at 74.
But he didn’t die having postponed his life.
While short, he had already lived it.
This is the part most people avoid facing:
Retirement isn’t just a financial decision.
It’s a time decision.
If you are financially ready—if you have a pension, Social Security, and savings—then staying at work out of fear is not prudent. It is procrastination dressed up as responsibility.
Fear says: “What will I do?”
Logic says: “You will finally do what you don’t have time to do now.”
You will read.
You will travel.
You will learn.
You will volunteer.
You will spend real time with people you love.
You will reclaim your days.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth no one likes to say out loud:
When older, financially secure teachers delay retirement, younger teachers—full of energy, creativity, and new ideas—are kept waiting. The system works best when people move through it rather than cling to it out of fear.
So here is the bottom line:
If you have enough money, don’t wait.
Do not gamble your remaining healthy years on the illusion that there will always be “one more year.”
Joe waited.
Dan didn’t.
Only one of them got the retirement they dreamed about.
If you are financially ready, retire now.
Every August, Geogiana and I visit family at Cape Cod!
Steve’s BIO
Stephen A. Schullo, Ph.D. (UCLA ’96), taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for 24 years and at UCLA Extension, teaching educational technology to student teachers.
Steve wrote investment articles for the United Teachers-Los Angeles (UTLA) union newspaper for 13 years. Thrice featured as a retirement plan advocate in the Los Angeles Times and U.S. News & World Report. He co-founded an investor self-help group, 403bAware, for teacher colleagues and wrote thousands of posts in three investment forums since 1997. Frequently quoted by the media, he testified at California State legislative hearings and was honored with the “Unsung Hero” award by UTLA for his advocacy on retirement planning.
For the last 20 years, he has served as a volunteer on LAUSD’s Investment Advisory Committee as a “Member-at-Large” and former co-chair. The committee includes collective bargaining reps from the unions and monitors the district’s tax-deferred retirement plans, 457b/403b, for 55,000 former and current LAUSD employees, with $3.1 billion in total assets.
He started this blog in 2012 to help all PreK-12 public school educators nationwide, especially his colleagues at the Los Angeles Unified School District. He belongs to a small national group of 403(b) advocates (mostly teachers) who want to bring closer attention to the 403(b). During the last 25 years, over 40 newspaper articles have been published, and each one says the same thing: TSAs (Tax Sheltered Annuities) are terrible 403(b) plans. Over and over again, the articles report that the salesperson benefits from lucrative commissions and high costs. Nobody in educational leadership reads these articles, nor talks publicly about the proper place for annuity products. We come together at 403bwise.org. Come on over if you want to join us so we can help our colleagues avoid these self-conflicted retirement plans, TSAs.
For a copy of both books, click on my home page and scroll down to the two books. Click on each book and download it FREE. No obligations, as I am not a financial adviser.
Email Steve at steve.schullo@latebloomerwealth.com or ask your question in the comments section after a post.
