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Misty Miller, 65, regretted retiring early because she thought she had it right.
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Miller found retirement isolating and financially challenging, so she returned to work.
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This story is part of an ongoing series about the regrets of older Americans.
Misty Miller filed her retirement papers seven years ago, saving more than $500,000. A week later she asked for her job back.
Miller, 65, was a legal secretary in the private sector before working her way up to staff services manager for the California Housing Finance Agency. She paid off her mortgage and put as much money as she could into her 401(k). In her late 50s, she decided she could retire early and live on her monthly retirement checks of more than $3,000.
However, she said retirement was “the biggest mistake” of her life. She said she spent too much, and that her job gave her social connections and purpose that she was missing. She returned to work shortly afterwards.
“I’m just terrified that within two or three years of retirement I’m going to be broke again, my money won’t last and I’ll live to be a hundred years old,” Miller said. “I lived through spiraling inflation in the 1970s. I’m just terrified of inflation.”
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Miller is one of more than 3,800 older Americans between the ages of 48 and 96 who have shared their biggest life regrets with Business Insider since September. Common regrets include not saving enough for retirement, taking Social Security too early, not prioritizing education, or not preparing financially for an unexpected medical diagnosis. See Miller in our video and check out our full list of stories.
Miller was born to upper-middle-class parents, and her father had a law practice, she said. Her parents wanted her to major in business in college and become a CPA, even though she wanted to be a writer. She was educated in English and lived from paycheck to paycheck for a few years after college while working various part-time jobs. She took out about $4,100 in student loans, which she paid off by the time she was 28.
She worked as a legal secretary for eleven years and was a legal assistant at an insurance company, where she worked no less than 60 hours a week. She wanted the more regular hours and benefits that a public sector job brings. She was hired by the California Housing Finance Agency, where she was promoted three times.
While she worked, Miller set aside much of her salary for retirement. After years of frugal living, she had enough money to buy a house in Sacramento for $93,500 in 1990; 28 years later she sold it for about $350,000. She also started investing seriously in the stock market in the 1990s – something she wishes she had started sooner.
In 2017, she had more than $500,000 in her retirement accounts. “Then I thought, I’m rich. I could retire,” Miller said. “I also thought I could cash a check from my 401(k) every month and everything would be fine.”
During her career, she said she was so focused on money that she missed family time. She said she rarely visited family or called important people in her life. She said her nieces and nephews grew up without knowing her, and she regrets not spending part of her salary on trips to visit family, especially since she has no children.
Miller retired at age 58 because she thought she would be financially and emotionally trapped. Before she retired, she drove a 26-year-old car, colored her own hair and brought lunch to work every day. Miller said her finances would have been fine if she had continued this frugal lifestyle until retirement. Her husband also had a well-paying job, although they kept their finances separate.
But two months after she retired in 2017, she said she started spending too much, especially on real estate. She withdrew much of her 401(k) that year to pay a $110,000 down payment for a $515,000 beach house in Sonoma County, plus $57,000 for a central heating system. She said she paid about $90,000 in taxes on that withdrawal.
She sold the house in Sacramento, but Miller said she hated the beach house because of the cold weather and wanted to move back. In 2019, she bought a 2,000-square-foot, four-bedroom home — about twice the size of her first home in Sacramento — for $488,000 in suburban Sacramento and sold the beach house in 2020 for $720,000. However, she said the property taxes on her current home are five times what they were on the first.
“I’m housing rich and cash poor, so I had to go back to work for the state,” Miller said, adding that she had not spoken to a financial advisor about a long-term plan. “The master plan just didn’t work for me.”
Miller got a job at a local newspaper near the beach house paying $19 an hour. She looked for other employment options, but suspected that many employers wanted to hire younger talent.
“It’s challenging to find a job in your 60s,” says Miller. “I did my best to look as young as possible.”
In 2019, she landed a job at the California Department of Consumer Affairs and then moved to the Secretary of State’s office. She now works as a staff services manager at the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.
Miller has now saved about $450,000. Now that she’s back at work, she plans to invest in her Roth 401(k) and put all her money into an S&P index fund, which she won’t cash out early. She also hopes to rekindle her relationships with family and prioritize her friends.
“I’m saving money again and I plan on never retiring,” Miller said, adding that she wants to keep her private health insurance instead of going to Medicare. “It was a big mistake to just think I was rich and just spend all that money.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
