Calling all retirees! I want your story

[Katie Miller]

Hello! I want to feature YOU in the next issue of BiggerPockets Wealth magazine (subscribe here! www.biggerpockets.com/magazine) if you have a fun/unique retirement story to share:

-Did you retire just before or during the pandemic?

-At what age did you retire?

-Why do you feel secure retiring in these uncertain times?

Answer the above by replying to me and I'll reach out to you via DM for more info if I like what you have going on!

[Michelle Fenn]

I guess I unofficially retired in 2009 after my husband passed away, I was holding a key employee insurance policy check and the stock market was tanking.   I purchased distressed properties with the money to renovate, hold and rent.   I was fortunate that my brother owned a contracting business and referred me to his friends that were new home builders.    They become my crews for the next 5 years because I could pay on Friday.   By 2010, the guys that use to work for the large companies found me.   An estimator for one of those firms convinced me that there was Opportunity for female  General Contracting firms.  He got me bonded and within 3 months my company was an EDGE Contractor and we were working on public projects, an anatomy lab for NEOUCOM, a Rat Reasearch Lab, Incubator Building for Micron Electronics and the Sound System for the MAC at Kent State, a Starbucks, the Auburn Science Center and Residence Hall for Kent, Track and Field house for City of Cleveland and a Soccer pavilion for the city of Barberton.    That was in a period of three years.    Before my husbands death I owned a computer consulting  business that sold and supported Computer Aided Design Systems for Architects and engineers.   

Interesting experience, everyone assumed that it was my husbands business, and I had to explain working 12 hours a day was how I grieved. We built a business but it was not my passion. My partner and estimator moved back home to Cincinnati to take care of Mom and a disabled brother. I closed down the business. I use to kid that they only let me out of the office to sign contracts. The GC is the last person to get paid on a public job and I did the prevailing wage paperwork for every subcontractor I hired. I got a real estate license and started to flip houses first for investors then as part of an LLC with a commercial loan broker. I have a hard time retiring, I do not need to work, my investments from the last crash provide me a comfortable living and 1031 exchange opportunities. I now help with the property management group in my current brokerage. Most fun I had was volunteering at Habitat for Humanity. After 25 years of fixing computer problems it was great to be able to do something that that you could point to and say that I did that, and improve others lives. Maybe it was a nod to my husband, he was an Architect and there are numerous examples to his talent throughout Summit County.

Entrepreneurs don't retire we just do new and interesting things, because we want to, not because we have to.