Retirement

As older workers begin thinking about retirement day and the years that will follow, two conflicting assumptions often emerge.Assumption No. One: Retirement represents the "golden years," a period of relaxation and financial security that opens up opportunities to travel and pursue personal interests. This myth says retirement will be the best years of your life.Assumption No. Two: The years following retirement hold three terrors -- loss of identity once provided by a career, the inevitable onset of poor health, and financial decline.

The chancellor of the University System of Maryland has asked Calvin W. Burnett to stay on as president of Coppin State College beyond his planned retirement date of Aug. 31. Chancellor William E. Kirwan said it made more sense for Burnett to remain president rather than appoint an interim leader to carry the school until the selection of a new president, which is expected by January. Burnett, who has served as president for 32 years, announced his retirement last winter, saying it was time for a new leader to tackle the revitalization of the historically black West Baltimore campus.

WORKERS plan for retirement by saving money for decades. Too often, retirement experts say, they don't give enough thought to how they will spend the last years of their lives. "We tend to view retirement as a no-brainer. We look forward to it. We'll get there and love it," said Clare Hushbeck, an economist with AARP. "We know from anecdotes where it isn't always so easy to structure your time, arrange for social contact, all the things that you got used to in the work day." Often people discover a year or so into retirement that hitting the links daily is boring and traveling is tiring.

IT LOOKS TO ME LIKE RETIRING is a lot of hard work. That life transition is still a long way off for me -- I can't give up a job until my youngest finds one -- but I have been daydreaming about what it will be like to retire: Books, gardening, museums and galleries, travel, cooking, movies, friends. And, apparently, an MBA. The idea that employers will provide us with an income and health care for the rest of our lives is one that died out with our parents' generation. Corporate America wants out of the long-term care business, so more and more businesses are handing their employees a gold watch and a pillowcase full of money as they leave and saying, "Make it last."

DALLAS -- No, Dallas, he doesn't want a downtown parade.But a peaceful retirement season also is not among Nolan Ryan's final career wishes.As Ryan issued his "one more year" announcement yesterday at Arlington Stadium, he also was talking about going out in a World Series blaze.Man, would that be something special. But, then again, Ryan does pitch for the Texas Rangers. Frankly, I think he's got a better chance of surviving a ride up Commerce Street.But regardless of the Rangers' history, be there anyway this season when Nolan Ryan is on the mound.

A friend of mine once proudly announced that he was saving 10 percent of his salary. Then he suddenly lost his confidence and asked, "That's enough, right?" No doubt we could all benefit from saving more. But knowing how much to put aside at minimum can be maddeningly difficult to calculate. On a macro level, even national benchmarks are ambiguous. According to the latest data from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. personal savings rate was 0.3 percent of income in November, perpetuating a five-year decline.

Mary Hudson has some advice for couples thinking about retiring together: Don't. Although that may go against the romantic notion of marriage and spending your golden years together, people like Hudson and experts who study the issue say there are personal and financial incentives for one spouse to delay retirement. The 77-year-old widow and retired nurse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has seen plenty of married friends go through painfully difficult times as they adjust to spending many more hours together.

NEW YORK -- With the first wave of baby boomers reaching the big five-oh, paying off mortgages ought to be taking center stage. Your retirement security may depend on whether you can knock off this debt before your current income drops.The 50s are life's trickiest decade. With luck, you'll work all the way to 60 and beyond, earning more money and pension credits. But there's a good chance that your earning power will be cut, by disability, downsizing or a forced early retirement. Your next job, if there is one, will probably be at lower pay.Homeowners in their 50s have generally been repaying a mortgage for 10 or 20 years.

Boomers, I think, anticipate their retirement in ways our parents did not. We not only save for it -- our parents expected their companies to sustain them and we do not -- we think of retirement as a well-deserved vacation, while our parents might have felt discarded, put out to pasture. Some of my fellow boomers can't imagine not working and expect to leave their offices on a gurney. Some don't believe they will ever be able to afford not to work. But some imagine a retirement filled with recreation, hobbies, travel and grandchildren.

A FRIEND recently confided his agonizing struggle to decide whether he and his wife should accept an early-retirement buyout from her employer. It was a debate that lasted, maybe, 12 minutes. The cash-strapped employer (in this case, the state of Illinois) is offering to double workersM-F pension accounts, plus some interest, if they convert the money from a traditional pension to a lump-sum distribution and leave the payroll. State officials say they hope to eliminate up to 3,000 noncritical jobs through the offer, saving $81 million in the current budget year.