Joy of having income without working

Now that I am fully retired, meaning that I have employment (income) and have Medicare A, B and D plus Social Security, it gives me joy to look back at how I was able to get to the point where I could have more income while not being employed than when I was employed. That is, if I chose to start draining my deferred income. Since I have enough income without having to fully tap the IRA, with Dena employed and with a healthy Social Security monthly check due to waiting until seventy to collect and a minimal Medicare rate, I have no need to increase my income. Instead, leave it in the market and let it ride through the recession.

So where did it all begin?

• My first "paid" work was in the vineyard in the early 1960's, when I received a small portion of the grape harvest proceeds, placed in my savings account book at Marine Midland Bank in Eden.

• About the same time, I picked strawberries, for seven or eight cents a pint for Mrs Mroz, a few times in June.

• Cutting grass at NYSC Chief Justice Desmond's estate was the source of some cash, billing the judge by the quarter hour to mow his acreage. Minimum wage.

• Lot work at Knoche about the time I turned 15 was next. Winter Sundays. Cold and miserable. Treated myself to the morning donut truck and lunch at Red Barn, spending most of what I earned. Minimum wage about $1.60.

• One or two summers I sold soda at the Erie County Fair, in the grandstands. Sold cans of pop for $1, that I had to pay fifty cents to hawk. Probably the dumbest job ever.

• One summer, probably 1969, I worked cutting greens at South Shore Country Club. Forty hours, $64 gross and $48 take home.

• At Binghamton I got a job with A-V services, showing films, slide shows and more in classrooms. More minimum wage.

• My best gig was more entrepreneurial, showing films on campus and earning seemingly outrageous sums that I blew on dinner out with my friends, primarily at Sharkey's, three speediest for a dollar, 24 shrimp for a dollar.

• Summer of 1970 meant a great job at the steel mill, earning about $2,400 gross for the summer. Base pay about $4. Learned that I did not want a career in the mill.

• The summer after second year at Binghamton, 1971, was waiting and scut work at the high school, with Todd Lynch and Dan Finger, supervised very loosely by George Fidel.

• Towards the end of my Binghamton time, I worked on campus not for cash but for free room and half board, plus some stints in the campus pub, 1973-1975.

• Starting in 1973, fall meant grad school, with an annual stipend of $2400 for my two years in the MBA program at Binghamton. Plus free tuition, value unrecalled but not negligible.

• In 1975, I had three years at $4,800 a year, plus free tuition, value unrecalled but not negligible.

• In August 1978 I started as an assistant professor at the University of Kansas, with $18,000 for nine-month contract, with a tenth north added that first year for anew professor.

• Jump ahead to AY2018-19, my last year of employment (albeit with two more years of salary as part of my buyout), where I grossed about $190k, down from over $220k when I was teaching summers and picking up a stipend or two.

• Today, my TIAA annuity and Social Security are good for $7300 a month, plus Dena's employment adda another $5k monthly. By next year, I will have to draw down about $6k a month from my IRA, or about$18,300 a month in gross -- all taxable -- income.