LOCATION
Irvine, California
ANNUAL SPENDING
$250,000
For Dr. Henry Hwu, work is part of what makes for a satisfying retirement.
While the Irvine, Calif., surgeon used to put in up to 80 hours a week, he now works part time and around his vacations. “And boy do I like to travel,” Hwu, 72, said.
An immigrant from Taiwan, Hwu said he and his late wife came to the U.S. in 1979. After studying surgery for five years in Chicago and completing a fellowship in colorectal surgery in Michigan in 1986, Hwu moved to Southern California, where he and his wife raised three children.
Before reaching his medical practice’s mandatory retirement age of 65, Hwu started reading books (and, he says, Wall Street Journal articles) about retirement. He took up golf and pickleball and bought a guitar, resurrecting a hobby he had had little time for since medical school.
But after retiring in 2016, he missed work and began accepting assignments at his former practice.
Every morning, he asked himself what he would do that day. “I didn’t like that feeling,” said Hwu, whose wife died just after he retired.
Dr. Henry Hwu officially retired in 2016 but continues to work part-time when he’s not traveling. PHOTO: RYAN YOUNG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Hwu travels up to three months a year, visiting his 98-year-old mother in Taiwan or exploring Scotland, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland, where he once bought so much chocolate for friends his suitcase broke.
Hwu often brings his guitar. While in London recently, he gave a street musician 20 pounds to step aside so he could play “Let It Be Me,” by the Everly Brothers. “I don’t know how people liked it, but there was an audience standing in front of me,” said Hwu.
Hwu still enjoys attending medical conferences and reading medical journals.
At a conference in 2017, he met the only surgeon at a rural hospital in Los Alamos, N.M. Hwu now travels to Los Alamos to relieve the surgeon for a few days most months. There, he enjoys hiking and seeing his son, an accountant in Albuquerque.
When home, Hwu takes guitar lessons and often sees his daughter and baby granddaughter.
His home is worth $1.5 million. He owns a second house, worth $1.2 million, that he rents for $3,500 a month. He owes about $500,000 on each house but isn’t rushing to pay his mortgages off because the interest rates are below 3%.
Hwu invests almost all of the more than $1 million in his retirement accounts in equity funds and individual stocks, including Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia.
He gets $2,700 a month in Social Security benefits, which he started taking at 65. He receives about $130,000 a year in pension payments and earned about $300,000 from his per diem work last year.
Travel is his big splurge, at $100,000 a year. Other expenses come to about $4,000 a month, not counting his mortgage payments.
He also pays $6,800 annually for a long-term-care insurance policy.
“With my mom living to 98, there will be a time when I am not able to take care of myself,” he said. “I want to cut down on the burden on my kids.”
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