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upworthy

retirement

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The Emperor of the Seas.

Imagine retiring early and spending the rest of your life on a cruise ship visiting exotic locations, meeting interesting people and eating delectable food. It sounds fantastic, but surely it’s a billionaire’s fantasy, right?

Not according to Angelyn Burk, 53, and her husband Richard. They’re living their best life hopping from ship to ship for around $100 a night, depending on the cruise. "Cruise costs vary quite a bit, our goal is to average about $100 per night, for the couple, or less across and entire calendar year," Richard told Upworthy.

The Burks have called cruise ships their home since May 2021 and have no plans to go back to their lives as landlubbers. Angelyn took her first cruise in 1992 and it changed her goals in life forever.

“Our original plan was to stay in different countries for a month at a time and eventually retire to cruise ships as we got older,” Angelyn told 7 News. But a few years back, Angelyn crunched the numbers and realized they could start much sooner than expected.

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Teachers

91-year-old calculus teacher connects with students using tried and true old-school methods

"If I had a wife, she'd probably leave me within a week. I mean I'm sitting there working all night trying to grade papers. Don't have time to run around."

91-year-old teacher is using his knowledge to connect with students.

There are some people who work well beyond retirement simply because they enjoy working. While many people look forward to retiring, not everyone is content sitting at home or spending much time traveling around the world. In fact, my own grandfather was one of those people who worked beyond retirement, ran five miles a day and boxed until he was well into his 70s.

But Lou Kokonis has surpassed people working into their 70s and even 80s. Kokonis is 91 and still working at the same high school in Virginia that he's been teaching at since 1959. We're not talking about coming in for an hour or so a day to teach a class and then going home to nap. The math teacher has a full class load, rolling in every morning before most other teachers arrive and staying up into the night to grade assignments.

Kokonis is the real deal, and while his handwriting may be a little shakier, his mind is still as sharp as ever. What's even more remarkable than his continuing to work into his 90s is the fact that he's able to build genuine connections with his students regardless of the multigenerational age gap.

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Co-workers prank retiring employee by dressing like him.

Well, well, well, if it isn't one of the cutest pranks I've ever seen pulled off. (I know I started that off like I was going to say something negative, but sometimes you've gotta mix it up a little.)

Usually, when you see pranks being pulled, there's a line that can get blurred fairly quickly. Pranks can quickly go from harmless fun to questioning if the prankee is actually being hazed and we are being forced to witness it. But this prank is probably one of the most wholesome pranks ever committed. Kevin Christian was retiring and his co-workers weren't going to let him go quietly into the night.

On his last day at work at Monterey County Probation Department in California, Christian's co-workers decided the best way to send him off was to dress exactly like him—complete with a bald cap, in case he wasn't quite sure who they were all supposed to be, I'm sure. Then they uploaded their shenanigans to TikTok, where the video got over 4 million views.

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Photo by Jeremy Wong on Unsplash

Teen raises $186,000 to help Walmart worker retire.

In America, many people have to work well past the age of retirement to make ends meet. While some of these people choose to work past retirement age because it keeps them active, some older people, like Nola Carpenter, 81, work out of necessity.

Carpenter has been working at Walmart for 20 years, way beyond most people's retirement age just so that she can afford to continue to pay her mortgage. When 19-year-old Devan Bonagura saw the woman looking tired in the break room of the store, he posted a video to his TikTok of Carpenter with a text overlay that said, "Life shouldn't b this hard..." complete with a sad face emoji.

In the video, Carpenter is sitting at a small table looking down and appearing to be exhausted. The caption of the video reads ":/ I feel bad." Turns out, a lot of other people did too, and encouraged the teen to start a GoFundMe, which has since completed.

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