rechelle's lifelyrics

Today was a special day.

I received my first OPSRP pension benefit check from the State of Oregon as the seal to my early retirement from my work at 4J School District and Lane County over the past 7 years. The monthly benefit that I will continue to receive for the rest of my life is under $200 a month. I can assure you I understand how small that sounds to the average American for a pension, but it is worth 10 times that in my little world, and I’ll tell you why.

When Ray and I got married in 1988, I had been running my own little secretarial service for 3 years. I served 5-6 clients, and lived by myself in a little apartment in Fullerton, California. During our engagement, Ray told me he didn’t want me to continue being self-employed, because he didn’t want me to be “married to my business.” I agreed to notify my clients, and close Rechelle’s Personnel Touch forever.

In our first 8 years of marriage, I had 4 babies. We moved from our two bedroom condominium to our dream home in Corona, California at the end of our oldest daughter’s Kindergarten year. It was during that summer after moving that I began to feel compelled to learn about homeschooling, and made the decision to dive in even though I had no idea how much it would cost financially, physically, mentally, and emotionally. It turned out to be a really good decision for our children in many ways, and I’m very thankful for the organic lifestyle we created as a family because of it.

I’m telling you this to help you understand that I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would have a retirement account of my own, let alone a lifelong pension! I homeschooled my kids for 20 years. I volunteered for multiple organizations, coordinated several construction projects, and worked hard at a variety of things that never earned a paycheck.

When all of our older 4 kids moved out and I started homeschooling our youngest son in 6th grade, I came to the realization things needed to change. He needed to get direction from other adults besides his Mom, and I needed to figure out what to do with myself with no one at home during the day and no direction of what my life was supposed to look like after being so absorbed with homeschooling my kids for so many years.

I started working part time for the school district, and after a couple of years I became a Registrar for one of the 4J Middle Schools. At some point, I found out I had already been vested in PERS and I had already unwittingly garnered a little pension and annuity account.

WOW.

When my husband and I were young, we didn’t think much about our retirement years. He did a lot of things to save money and make ends meet so that I could be at home with our kids. I was equally dedicated to any work I took on regardless of monetary compensation, whether it was for my family or any organization I was committed to helping. I guess that’s why I was just grateful to be getting a paycheck for the work I was doing when my life shifted from Homeschool Mom to AVID Tutor, and eventually to Middle School Registrar.

Today was a special day. I’m receiving the icing on the cake with this little pension that is coming to my mailbox every month for the rest of my life!