Charting their future

InvestmentNews last month invited a group of people to our office in New York for a frank discussion about retirement. Our guests — two couples (Bobby and Liz Caggiano; Jim and Susan Kozo) and three individuals (Joanne Barbieri, Fred Porter, Sharon Proctor) — talked at length about their expectations and concerns as they move into this stage of their lives. InvestmentNews deputy editor Evan Cooper and assistant managing editor Robert Hordt served as moderators. Below is part of the discussion. The full transcript can be viewed at InvestmentNews.com/focusgroup.
InvestmentNews: Please introduce yourselves.
Mr. Caggiano: Bob Caggiano. I retired in 2005. I worked for the government for 38 years. I worked for the U.S. Department of State and I was in transportation. Basically what we did was move goods from and to the United States by air and ocean to all the embassies overseas. So basically it was a very interesting job.
InvestmentNews: All the spy equipment you moved over there?
Mr. Caggiano: Yeah, exactly. One of the embassies off in Russia, we sent all the stuff over there. Unfortunately, that embassy took about 14 years to be built when their embassy here only took three years. They found a lot of problems over there. But that was one of my projects, to get them open.
I enjoyed all the time I spent with the government.
InvestmentNews: So you have a federal pension now?
Mr. Caggiano: Yes, I do. I started at an entry level position and all those years I moved up to the deputy director when I retired.
InvestmentNews: Liz, tell us about you.
Mrs. Caggiano: Liz Caggiano. I retired in June of ’08. I taught second grade for 26 years. That’s second grade, never got promoted. That’s where I stayed. Taught for the Archdiocese of New York, so I can live in a box on my pension, and that’s about it.
InvestmentNews: Actually, for our generation, to have a real pension is somewhat more unusual, so that’s good.
Mrs. Kozo: I’m Jim Kozo, and I retired last Sept. 30 from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. I am a licensed surveyor in the State of New Jersey, and when I left the Port Authority I was director of the survey group out of Jersey City. We used to survey all the tunnels and the bridges and the airports and everything that has to do with transportation around the city here and New Jersey. And the new job was up at Stewart Airport. Port Authority just took that over.
And before that I was with the Township of Woodbridge. I was with the public service for a little while, but basically I was a surveyor from the time I got out of high school and college.
InvestmentNews: Susan, tell us about you.
Mrs. Kozo: I’m Susan Kozo and I have two retirements, kind of. I worked in hospital administration for 27 years at [John F. Kennedy Medical Center] in Edison [N.J.] and the medical center in Princeton. Prior to that I taught school, but when I gave birth to my son I stopped working — I volunteered and I became the director for volunteer services for 27 years in two hospitals.
Then I retired from Princeton in 2004 because the commute was getting long and I developed an autoimmune disease so it was getting to me, and I was offered a job as director of a nursery school in Metuchen and I thought, “God has a sense of humor,” because I didn’t know that I had any qualifications for little children, but it was a great proving ground for my two grandchildren.
InvestmentNews: So you practiced on those kids.
Mrs. Kozo: I did. They taught me volumes. And I retired from that position in 2007, and I have been home. And then we can talk a little bit later about what we did do in our leisure, because we don’t have much. But two different retirements.
InvestmentNews: So did you have a conventional pension from any of those places?
Mrs. Kozo: I did from the medical centers. In fact, I’m collecting one from my 12 and a half years at JFK in Edison, and my second pension at Princeton I rolled over to my financial planner. So we will get to that kind of thing. And then I did have a little 403(b) from the nursery school.
InvestmentNews: Joanne, tell us about you.
Ms. Barbieri: I lost my job at the end of August, beginning of September. I have basically been in advertising sales most of my career. Before that I was at another newspaper in Nantucket, and before that I had taken a buyout from The New York Times, where I had been for 22 and a half years. That was in 2006. And I blew through that money in nine months. I had the best nine months of my life.
InvestmentNews: Was that your severance money or your 401 K money?
Ms. Barbieri: That was my severance money. The 401 K money, the last bit of it I spent probably in September.
InvestmentNews: You were using that to live off of?
Ms. Barbieri: Started living off of that when I was in Nantucket. Yeah, I was an idiot, but I’m learning. I belong to the Newspaper Guild. I called them today to find out, you know, if in fact I get a pension and what that is, and I do, and I found out the amount. So then she said yes, we sent that in a letter to you in August of 2006, and of course I’m sure it’s somewhere.
Mrs. Kozo: Lost in the shuffle.
Ms. Barbieri: But she told me the amount, and I’m like, hey, it’s more than unemployment, so I’m happy about that. But of course I need to find another job.
InvestmentNews: That doesn’t start for a while, the pension.
Ms. Barbieri: When I’m 65. I’m 53 and a month now.
InvestmentNews: Fred, tell us a little about you.
Mr. Porter: I worked for [United Parcel Service Inc.] for just under 25 years, as an operations manager down in the building in Tinton Falls [N.J.]. I had about 165, 170 people that worked for me, various drivers and other management folks. If anybody’s followed the news, you know that UPS has had an offer to buy out some middle-level management folks, and because of my age and years of service I fell into that. So I’m technically not retired yet, I’m using up all of my vacation time, but officially, as far as UPS is concerned and my pension is concerned, on May 1 I will be retired.
I do have a second pension coming. I haven’t really looked into it yet because it’s not going to come into play for a little while. But when I got out of school, I worked for 10 years as a department manager for a food chain down in the shore area. But would I have retired? Probably not. But UPS made it very clear that if you didn’t accept what we’re offering, the next paragraphs as you read, the buyout offers got progressively worse, so the writing was, you know, so to speak, on the wall that some of us, especially the older guys with a lot of years, really needed to take a hard look at this and make a decision whether we wanted to stay here or not. So that’s me.