Retirement has been top of mind for Warren Ward. Over 23 years, he has helped hundreds of local people plan for their retirements, and more recently he has focused on his own.
“I would encourage people to take the step as soon as they can afford it. You’ll never be younger or healthier than you are today,” the Columbus certified financial planner has said repeatedly to clients. But actually taking the step to retire can be more difficult, as he has learned.
“If you define retirement as doing what you want to do, then it’s all good,” said Ward, 73. “I’m comfortably retired.” Except he is still working.
He goes into the office three days a week, Monday through Wednesday, a contrast to the 50 or 60 hours a week he was putting in as owner of Warren Ward Associates.
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Since age 69, when he began semi-retirement, Ward has been working for someone else — Jalene Hahn, a former associate who purchased his company. She offered him the part-time role at what’s now known as WWA Planning & Investments in Columbus.
Ward and Hahn had worked together for 10 years, after which he concluded that he was a better planner than manager of a planning practice. “It just made sense for everybody,” he said of the change.
These days, he spends more time helping people — in some cases, third-generation clients — understand their financial challenges. “It’s hard to not be part of their lives,” he said.
But by reducing his professional workload and community service commitments, Ward has carved out more time for things he and his wife, Janet, have on their retirement to-do list, such as travel.
With a four-day weekend every single week, day trips and overnight adventures make more sense than long vacations, especially during the COVID-19 environment. So they visit parks and small towns off the beaten path.
They recently returned from Hickory Corners in western Michigan, home of the Gilmore Car Museum, which features more than 300 classic and vintage automobiles, including “three-wheeled cars from way back when,” Ward said.
It’s the type of trip tailor-made for his 2017 British racing green Volkswagen Beetle convertible, purchased last fall. The Wards traded in their two four-door, five-passenger sedans for the sporty Beetle and a Honda CRV sport-utility vehicle used for longer trips.
Ward has owned five VW Beetles and a VW bus over the course of his life, but it had been 50 years since he had one. “Back then, they were open and simple,” he said of the bubble-shaped small cars.
It was easy to change the air filter or do a tune-up yourself, given the ample space that the original Beetles had under the hood, a contrast to today’s models that have more packed in and are harder to work on.
In August 1969, the year before he and Janet were married, they took his 1963 Volkswagen Beetle to the Woodstock Music Festival. They were among a half-million people crammed onto a dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y., for three days of morning-to-night rock concerts, including music by Jefferson Airplane and the Who, a group Ward has seen 10 times.
“We really fell in love at Woodstock,” he recounts Janet saying. “Music has really been part of our lives.”
Referring to himself as a serial entrepreneur, Ward’s early jobs included making screen-printed T-shirts and promoting independent concerts in Indianapolis.
Among the shows he promoted were rock groups Chicago and Led Zeppelin at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum in 1968; a 1950s Rock & Roll Revival tour, including Chuck Berry, Bill Haley & the Comets, Bo Diddley, the Coasters, the Drifters and the Shirelles at the Coliseum in 1970; and the Turtles, Frank Zappa and Alice Cooper at Middle Earth, formerly the Ritz Theatre at 34th and Illinois streets in Indianapolis in 1970.
It was fun, but he couldn’t make a decent living promoting concerts.
Decades later in his spare time, he managed the local band 40 Years of College, consisting of doctor-musicians playing rock music. But after about six years, as part of Ward’s retirement plans, he gave that up.
“I no longer have to get there at 4 p.m. to set the stage up,” he said, which suits him fine. He would rather show up 15 minutes before show time, as he will do next June when the Wards travel to Louisville to see James Taylor and Jackson Browne in a concert rescheduled from this June.
Last summer, they made two musical connections with visits to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the C.F. Martin Co. guitar factory and museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
But they also have interests other than music. One of Janet’s passions is quilting, and the Wards hope to make a return trip soon to the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, having last visited about 10 years ago.
Closer to home, they want to explore the T.C. Steele home in Nashville and the historic river community of Madison — in the Beetle, of course. “When we go out together, we usually go in the convertible with the top down, even if the heater is on, because it’s just fun,” he said.
Although the Wards originally thought they would retire to Valdese, North Carolina, their home from 1978 to 1990 when he owned a large commercial flocking company, “Columbus has a way of growing on you,” he said of their home since 1996.
“People have been so kind. The arts are so well-supported. We have approachable city officials … architecture,” Ward said. “We could never leave.”
So it’s from Columbus where he will continue to write his monthly client newsletter. Recently, he was working on “Frank Sinatra, financial planner,” modifying the lyrics from the late crooner’s 1965 song, “It was a very good year,” focusing on life stages for financial planning. The message will be “Don’t wait until the autumn of your life to come up with a plan.”
In that respect, Ward is following his own retirement advice. With 52 four-day weekends penciled into his 2020 calendar, he’ll tell you it’s been a very good year.
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Warren Ward
Age: 73
Immediate family: Married 50 years to Janet Ward, 71, a social worker
Hometown: Indianapolis
Residence: Columbus since 1996; previously lived in Valdese, North Carolina, and Logansport
Education: Attended IUPUI
Career: Has worked in finance since 1991, first as a stock broker then a financial planner before starting Warren Ward Associates in 1999; sold his business to associate Jalene Hahn in 2016, when it was renamed WWA Planning & Investments. His early career, beginning in 1967, was spent in screen printing, concert promotion and commercial flocking.
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