EASING THE TRANSITION TO RETIREMENT
- Cindy Perman
- Jan 29
- 6 min read
Local group helps people find answers and activities
By Cindy Perman
L to R: FORT members took a Moroccan cooking class at the Kings Cooking Studio in Short Hills. Photo credit: Alan Levine; FORT members enjoyed a fall bike ride at Duke Farms in Hillsborough. Photo credit: Cindy Perman. FORT members attended a Moth StorySLAM in Brooklyn at Music Hall of Williamsburg, Photo credit: Alan Levine.
Retirement is something most people dream about. No more work! Forty or more hours per week that are yours to do with what you want. You are your own boss. Woohoo!
Then reality sets in: What are you going to do today? Tomorrow? With whom are you going to do it? Do you have enough money to live the life you want?
Figuring out retirement isn’t as easy as just not showing up to a job every day. You may not retire at the same time as your partner, friends and family, so it’s on you to figure out what to do with your time. Do you do fun things alone? Do you clean the garage while you wait for them to get home?
SOMA has services and events for seniors, but many of them tend to skew toward older, less active retirees.
Enter Figuring Out Retirement Together (FORT), a SOMA-based group that is the brainchild of longtime friends Alan Levine and Janet Coviello. They met at a work conference in their 20s and moved to SOMA in their 30s to raise their families. In 2023, 40 years after that first meeting, they found themselves at the end of long careers wondering: Now what? They wondered whether other people in or near retirement were feeling similarly unmoored and asking the same questions.
“Someone would say to us, ‘Oh, did you know that you can audit a class at Rutgers for free?’ ” Coviello says. “Every time we would speak to someone, we learned some other tidbit about what people were doing in retirement.”
So over lunch at Miti Miti in South Orange, FORT was born.
“The name kind of says it all. We don’t have all the answers,” says Levine, a longtime South Orange resident (who, full disclosure, isn’t officially retired yet). “We’re a bunch of diverse people – thinking about retirement, embarking on retirement or recently retired – looking to make the most of their retirement years. We have regular meetings, as well as special events and activities. We’re still figuring it out.”
FORT’s first meeting was in January 2024. There are 215 members, most of whom live in Maplewood or South Orange, though it’s not limited to these two towns. Some couples attend events together, but others join solo. FORT usually has at least one event per month with anywhere from five to 40 people attending.
The group hosts educational meetings and speakers on topics such as financial and estate planning, downsizing, long-term travel abroad, free college courses for seniors, using AI in your daily life and volunteerism. Cultural outings in New Jersey and New York, such as visits to museums, theater and restaurants, offer a chance to socialize while taking in a show or trying out new restaurants. Outdoor activities, such as hikes, walks, bike rides and birding, are a great way to get exercise together and enjoy nature. Some groups meet regularly, such as FORT’s book clubs, movie clubs and cooking groups. They add events based on what members want.
“We had people who had spent two months in Mexico in the winter, another couple who’d been in Spain, and another couple who’d been in South Africa, so they came and talked about what’s involved in literally picking up and moving and staying in one place for months at a time,” Coviello says.
FORT also organized a private tour of Greenwood Gardens, a trip to attend a Moth StorySLAM in Brooklyn, a Moroccan cooking class, an eco-cruise of the Hackensack River, a bike ride at Duke Farms and a tour of BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham, the largest Hindu temple outside of India, which happens to be in Robbinsville, NJ. The group had a holiday party in December with a white elephant gift exchange.
“Some of my close friends had moved away and many of my friends were still working, so I found myself in the situation where I didn’t socialize very much,” says Paula Radding, a single mom in Maplewood. “People were either doing things with their partners or they just weren’t around anymore. So I thought, ‘I need to make a concerted effort to meet new people.’ FORT just came at the right time in my life.”
“I’ve just enjoyed it. The people are smart and interesting. And our programs are interesting. There’s a big variety,” says Radding, who is a member of FORT’s cooking club and book club and on the event planning committee.
Luise Neilson and her partner Betsy Eastwood, who live in Maplewood, recently retired and wasted no time trying to figure it out.
“We both like traveling, cycling and pickleball, so that was easy,” says Neilson.
They took a five-week trip to southeast Asia that included cycling through Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand and a visit to an elephant sanctuary. They also spent four weeks in Greece, with a cycling tour of the Peloponnese and some island hopping. But there are also parts of their retirement they’re exploring on their own. Neilson is taking online classes through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Rutgers University, a program she learned about through FORT, in subjects such as philosophy, drawing and the Supreme Court. She also volunteers at local animal shelters and coaches for Girls on the Run. Eastwood retired a few months before Neilson and decided she wanted to try something new in retirement.
“I was always in science-oriented work in public health. I wanted to pursue my artsy side,” says Eastwood, who is taking music classes at Rutgers University through a different program, NJ’s Senior Citizen Audit Program, which allows NJ residents 62 and older to audit regular classes at public colleges for free, if there is space available in the class. “Not only learning the piano but also getting as involved as I can with learning music, even writing a little music.” That also requires a lot of practice time at home.
Neilson and Eastwood enjoy FORT as a way to find interesting things to do and meet new people. They shared their love of cycling with the group, with Eastwood leading the fall bike ride at Duke Farms. They’ve enjoyed some of the other outings, too.
“I’m a culture [junkie]. FORT has a lot of members who also are, not surprising, given the proximity to New York City,” Eastwood says. FORT has also been helpful for “meeting people I otherwise might not meet and going to places I didn’t know about, such as regional theater
and the Hindu temple.”
“Not only have I met new people, I have reconnected or connected with people who were literally neighbors of mine in Maplewood, who I just never really knew well because our kids’ ages didn’t line up,” Coviello says. “They came to meetings, we started talking and really hit it off. So that’s been great.”
Some of the events are held during the week, because it’s less crowded. But there are also weekend events. Although many events are fun, that isn’t always the goal. Sometimes it’s to create a group for people in the same boat, such as single women or retirees who are supporting their adult children.
A committee of about eight people meets monthly to plan events. They send out surveys to the members to ask what people are interested in doing. They also use chatbots to help generate ideas and find local speakers. Usually someone from the planning committee leads the
events, but if members have ideas to go somewhere and want to lead, they can. This is particularly great as an outlet for people who have managerial skills from a former career.
“I think initially it wasn’t really about taking trips together, it was about trying to figure out this time of life for us. It just felt like there was an unmet need in the community,” Coviello says. “It felt like something bigger we were trying to offer people.”
Finding a new identity can be hard for people in retirement, Levine says. “They have spent much of their life getting their identity through their work or as the parents of their children, who have now flown the nest.
“This can be a really wonderful time of life. We want to make sure that it’s wonderful for us, and we’d like others to also have a great retirement,” Levine adds. “We’ve learned that retirement can mean a million different things to a million different people, but we want to open people up to the possibilities.”
Joining FORT is free. There are no requirements. They don’t even check IDs to make sure you’re over 50. You can just attend events that you’re interested in as often as you like. FORT has a Facebook page, but the best way to find out about upcoming events is through the group’s
email newsletter. To sign up, email Alan Levine at alevine.mustang@gmail.com.
Cindy Perman is a freelance writer, editor and pet sitter, who lives in Maplewood.
She is looking forward to retiring one day – and is taking notes!