Most people imagine themselves at age 80 enjoying retirement. After decades of work, it is to be expected. However, there are cases in which this withdrawal is not possible due to lack of income, the pension being insufficient to be able to live independently and cover all expenses. This is the case of Kathy Curtis, who continues to work part-time at 81 years old in customer service at a local water supply company.
A California resident, he says he needs to work to make ends meet. A need that, on the other hand, does not weigh on him, affirming to the environment Business Insiderwhere he published an essay, that he has done many things “just to survive.”
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“When I finished high school, women couldn’t do everything I wanted to do, so I never became anything. My mentality was more to take what I could get. I should have gone to college, but I didn’t because at that time you were expected to be a teacher or a nurse,” she explains. Thus, at the age of 15 he started in a department store, since he changed depending on the opportunities that arose.
In fact, after separating from her first husband (with whom she had two children), she even had to work four jobs at the same time, working 7 days a week, “just to be able to keep going, because she had no help.” Among the many jobs she has held throughout her life, there is that of traffic manager for a television station, house preparer for painters or office worker.
“If there was something to do and I could make money with it, I never hesitated. I have always thought that if I don’t know how to do something, I can learn it, and I have been lucky enough to be successful in the things I have decided to learn,” he said in the aforementioned media.
Cancer survivor: “Now if I get sick I just keep going, because that’s what we used to do in the old days”
Kathy Curtis was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009. The following year, she underwent breast cancer treatment, and three years later, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The health problems continued and he had to have hip surgery, plus he had blood clots in both lungs and one leg.
For all these reasons, he was absent for a period and, although between 2011 and 2013 he was looking for work, he was unable to find it. “Now my health is pretty normal. I get out of breath and get tired easily. I don’t usually get sick or get the flu. If I do, I just keep going, because that’s what we used to do in the old days,” he told Business Insider.
“I don’t consider work to be a chore.”
Kathy currently works in the office of a local water utility, doing customer service. He has been in this company for 10 years, working on Fridays and doing substitutions, for a salary of 18 dollars an hour (about 15.50 euros). “We are a small community, so it is a very pleasant job because it allows me to be in contact with people. If I didn’t have this job, I would probably be more of a homebody and wouldn’t do much,” she confesses.
Continuing with the job, he assures that he will work “until I can’t do it anymore or until the company no longer needs me,” confessing that “at this moment, I can’t imagine not working.” Reviewing his career, he indicates that he has never earned a lot of money, but that he has not felt “like a case of poverty,” even though, for much of his life, he has lived “just above the poverty line.”
Likewise, he points out that he has never had the opportunity to save money for the future, since he has always been managing “to make it to the next day.” In fact, he claims that he would never have been able to buy his own house if it had not been for the fact that his father left him a good sum of money when he died. Lastly, on a more philosophical level, he says that, in his opinion, “remorse is a waste of energy.”
“I was lucky to learn along the way to leave behind the things I couldn’t do anything about. It’s nothing more than a question of attitude, and I prefer to be happy and content than to focus on the negative,” she concludes.