The Second Retirement: Why I Walked Away from Work at 67

Miller, a former staff services manager for the California Housing Finance Agency, initially retired in 2017 with $500,000 in savings. The transition quickly soured as rising housing costs in the Sacramento area and general inflation eroded her purchasing power. Driven by the fear of outliving her money, she returned to state employment in 2019, eventually rising to a supervisory role. Despite the financial stability and the growth of her pension, the physical and mental toll of the job became impossible to ignore.

By April, Miller began using leave credits to test a life without the office. The improvement in her well-being was immediate. She abandoned the stress of a commute and the fatigue of management, opting instead to recalculate her expenses and trust in her investment strategy—a 90/10 split of stocks and cash modeled after Warren Buffett. With her pension bolstered by her extra years of service and a more disciplined approach to spending, she realized she had sufficient resources to embrace a lifestyle focused on ballroom dancing, family, and writing a children's book.