MEMBER FEATURES

Carolyn Stuve – the Unretired Retiree

When Carolyn Stuve retired in May this year after 30 years with the Las Cruces school district, she said it felt like graduating from high school.  “I was excited about it,” she said.  “I received gifts, had a party -- a whole new chapter was opening up for me.”

She is really looking forward to her retirement – all two months of it.  At the end of July, Carolyn returned to work as a private contractor working again as a speech language pathologist with children, but just three days a week so she and her husband, Mark, will have time to travel.

She’s certainly earned the luxury of choice.  Carolyn knew from an early age what she wanted to do with her life and not a year’s been wasted.  She heard in high school about Anne Sullivan’s inspiring work with Helen Keller through her sophomore English class and pretty much knew from that point on what she wanted to do with her life.  Retiring now from a vocation she still enjoys just isn’t an attractive option for her now.

When she works in private practice later this year, she’ll essentially be doing what she did for hundreds of young children in the public school system who had speech disabilities.  She’s seen quite a variety of language disorders over the years as classrooms became fully inclusive.  “I was never bored because we saw so many new syndromes that I had to research,” she said.  “And, we became more involved with helping children with literacy, helping them learn in the classroom.  It was less clinical and more fully integrated.  There were fewer pullout programs, and more direct work with the children in the class, which was less disruptive.”

Satisfying though her job is, one day Carolyn will truly retire, and retire comfortably.  Fortunately for them, she and her husband are careful planners.  “My husband and I did a lot of retirement planning because we were going to lose benefits as well as our life insurance policy when we retired.  We revamped our life insurance policy, got long term healthcare insurance, and figured out what I need to make working part time to ensure a financially comfortable retirement,” she said.  “We planned for our future because we didn’t want to worry about whether we had enough money to retire on!”

With no financial worries for their retirement, Carolyn sees herself discovering new interests and becoming more involved with her church, and helping others through volunteer work.