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The trend is alive and well among Wharton alums. Take Julie Bick Weed, WG’90 and former
Microsoft manager. Weed, 35, retired five years ago, wrote a bestselling book on Microsoft,
had three sons, and recently published another book on Microsoft. She devotes most of her
free time – and a large chunk of the proceeds from her books – to charitable organizations.
Sehoon Lee, WG’75, recently retired as president and CEO of the HanGlas Group, the largest
glass manufacturer in Korea, at the age of 50. Lee, who spent 20 years working long hours for
HanGlas, says he’s decided to begin a new career – bonding with his young sons and rediscovering
his family.
In the profiles that follow, we continue Judy Page’s story, as well as the stories of three other
alums – some with families, some without – who have each decided to retire young.
“I wasn’t unhappy,” Judy Page says of her decision to retire from AT&T. “I handled stress
well and had always assumed I would continue working until a normal retirement age. But
as my responsibilities grew at work and my own schedule got more hectic and as the kids lives
became more demanding, I started asking myself how I could do all these things.”
Page, 51, and her husband, Alan, PhD’78, had met as PhD students at Wharton. The couple
devoted much of their 20s and 30s to their careers, with Judy at AT&T and Alan at a
New York insurance brokerage. In their mid-to-late 30s, the Pages had sons David, now 15,
and Michael, 13. Judy took six-week maternity leaves with each, then returned to work.
The couple had employed two different live-in nannies, each of whom stayed with the family
for six years and also managed the household cleaning, cooking and laundry. “For 12 years,
I probably cooked dinner about twice a month,” Page laughs. But in 1996, the Pages’ current
nanny announced plans to get married and leave the family.
The couple sat down and talked about what to do next. They could hire another nanny,
or maybe, Judy thought, the time was right to make a change. “Alan and I had already done
financial calculations, so that we knew how much money we needed for one or both of us to
stop working,” Page says. “As an officer of AT&T, there was tremendous financial incentive
to stay with the company for 10 or 15 more years.”
But other considerations nudged the financial incentives aside. “The first and primary
reason was to be able to spend more time raising our children,” Page says. “Although they
got wonderful care with our nanny, it was clear that I didn’t spend that much time with them
other than doing the essentials. I know a lot of moms who really wanted to be home while
their kids were young, with the thought of working when their kids got older, and I guess I
didn’t really have a strong urge to do that. I knew that they were getting good care. I talked
to them; I played with them. But when they became more like adults, that was when I really
wanted to spend more time with them.”
Page also wanted to take better care of her health given the fact that her father had died
at 66 of a heart attack and her mother at 73 of a stroke. An older brother, meanwhile, had
also died of a stroke at age 55. Page saw the genetic writing on the wall and felt strongly that
she needed to exercise and lose weight before she got much older. She also wanted to involve
herself in community activities she enjoyed but had never been able to fit into her schedule.
And so in early 1997, Page announced her intention to take a year off. Almost immediately,
her new work-free schedule was full. “Right from the beginning, I was busy every day,
even before I was all that involved in outside activities,” she says. “I didn’t appreciate how
much it would take to manage the household – just coping with groceries, laundry, cleaning,
fixing the kids’ lunches for school, making sure they got off to school. In the past, I would
see them in the morning, but the nanny
did all of the other things.”
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