recently announced<\/a> she will retire at the end of June.\n<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s hitting me and yet, it\u2019s still all good,\u201d O\u2019Connell said. \u201cIt\u2019s very \u2014 boy, it\u2019s a weird thing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Her grandmother had instilled a \u201cwork-until-you-drop-dead\u201d mentality, she said while laughing. That didn\u2019t seem such a bad idea, O\u2019Connell said, considering she loved her job and what she did.\n <\/p>\n
But she eventually realized that retirement would be more than financially feasible through benefits from her employer, the University of Pennsylvania, and Social Security, which she had been paying into since she was 16.\n<\/p>\n
A changing landscape in public radio has also played a role, O\u2019Connell said. There are also a lot more options and alternatives for children\u2019s educational programming today than there were when she launched \u201cKids Corner\u201d in 1988.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting kids, especially, to do appointment listening for radio, that\u2019s a big ask in 2026,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, maybe the role \u2018Kids Corner\u2019 played, you know, it\u2019s time to move on. It\u2019s time.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Still, she\u2019s leaving in a good place and considers it a privilege to be retiring on her own terms, because she knows that isn\u2019t the case for everyone.\n<\/p>\n
Marianne Roche also found a pathway to retirement after working decades in Philadelphia in disability services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.\n<\/p>\n
She officially retired from her longtime career in 2014, which freed up time for her to study Eastern medicine practices like reflexology and acupressure.\n<\/p>\n
Roche, now 77, continues to work a couple hours a week providing this type of care to people with disabilities. She meets with different clients in the Greater Philadelphia area.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fulfilling in a way that moment to moment you don\u2019t always get in other jobs,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople want you there. We all want to be treated specially, and this is a way of treating someone specially.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
A desire to continue serving others drove her back into the workforce, even to a partial degree. She\u2019s going to continue working for as long as she can.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no intentions of thinking about ending it until a time comes when, like it does for everybody, where I can\u2019t,\u201d Roche said. \u201cBut right now, as long as I can, I\u2019m going to do it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
For people like Nancy Kenny, they are patiently waiting until it\u2019s their turn for retirement. Kenny, 64, who lives in Moorestown, New Jersey, said she estimates she\u2019s about three years away from being able to leave her job as a school assistant behavioral analyst.\n<\/p>\n
She\u2019s looking forward to joining many of her friends and other colleagues who have already retired.\n<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200b\u200bI want to go out to lunch with my friends, I want to enjoy my garden. I want to do all those little things. Little things \u2014 they\u2019re not big things,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n
But Kenny needs the financial pieces to fall into place. She\u2019ll be eligible for a full state pension after she reaches 25 years of service in a couple years. She\u2019ll hit that milestone a bit later than her peers, because she started her career after staying at home for about 11 years to raise three children.\n<\/p>\n
After 65, she\u2019ll also be eligible for Medicare health insurance, which she will need once she loses her employer-based coverage.\n<\/p>\n
Preparing for retirement is like doing a lot of homework, Kenny said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to do math all the time,\u201d she said and laughed.\n<\/p>\n
As she waits, she\u2019ll be busy caring for kindergarteners with intellectual and developmental disabilities. At times, it can be physically taxing.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI am thankful that I can still run after them, I can still catch them. And you know, there\u2019s a lot of bending down, getting down on the floor, changing diapers, I do all that,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I think, \u2018Am I going to do it three years from now? Can I keep doing this?\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n
She also finds it more difficult to relate to her colleagues at work, who are great, she said, but much younger.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I don\u2019t belong there anymore, you know,\u201d Kenny said. \u201cIt\u2019s time for me to move on and I recognize that.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Older residents in Greater Philadelphia on retirement Veteran radio host Kathy O\u2019Connell, 74, never thought she\u2019d live long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,7174],"class_list":{"0":"post-168397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-philadelphia","9":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","10":"tag-philadelphia-news","11":"tag-retirement"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}