#30 – Carving Out A Spooky Retirement: Halloween With Ken Klinker

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Ken Klinker loves carving pumpkins. He started doing it for his kids 30 years ago. He’d come home from work and head straight to the shed—eager to sculpt some groovy orange gourds. His wife spent so much time alone in the house that she started calling herself “The Pumpkin Widow.”

But retirement has given Ken the freedom to turn that passion into a thriving core pursuit that even pays for itself. He switched to foam pumpkins because they didn’t rot and launched his own Etsy shop. Take a spin down his digital aisles to find some terrific work. I never knew I needed to see John Wayne, Beetlejuice, or Barbie in pumpkin form, but it turns out I did.

Ken and I talked about his evolving art, favorite charity, media appearances, and primary collaborator. You’ll be happy to hear how a balanced retirement has allowed him to revoke his wife’s “Pumpkin Widow” status.

So, pour a cup of hot cocoa, put on your Halloween costume, and listen for ways you might be able to carve out your own happy retirement.

Read The Full Transcript From This Episode

(click below to expand and read the full interview)

  • Ken Klinker [00:00:01]:
    Last Halloween, at least, I had a little over 400 pumpkins in my pumpkin display.Ryan Doolittle [00:00:07]:
    Wow.

    Ken Klinker [00:00:08]:
    I have about six layers of pumpkins surrounding my front yard, and people come by every night looking at them, and it’s just a great hobby. I enjoy it a lot, and people seem to enjoy it, and that’s really the big satisfaction, is being able to have people come and kind of be awed by these pumpkins.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:00:27]:
    Ken Clinker loves carving pumpkins. He started doing it for his kids 30 years ago. He’d come home from work and head straight to the shed, eager to sculpt some groovy orange gourds. His wife spent so much time alone in the house that she started calling herself the pumpkin widow. But retirement has given Ken the freedom to turn that passion into a thriving core pursuit that even pays for itself. He switched to foam pumpkins because, well, they don’t rot. And opened his own Etsy shop. Take a spin down his digital aisles, and you’ll find some really terrific work.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:01:04]:
    I never knew that I needed to see John Wayne, Beetlejuice, or Barbie in pumpkin form, but it turns out I did. Ken and I discussed his evolving art, his favorite charity, his media appearances, and his primary collaborator. You’ll be happy to hear how a balanced retirement has allowed him to revoke his wife’s pumpkin widow status. So pour a cup of hot cocoa, put on your Halloween costume, and listen for ways you might be able to carve out your own happy retirement. Do you ever wonder who you’ll be and what you’ll do after your career is over? Wouldn’t it be nice to hear stories from people who figured it out who are thriving in retirement? I’m Ryan Doolittle. After working with the retire sooner team for years and researching and writing about how they structure their lifestyles, I know there’s more to be learned, so I’m going straight to the source and taking you with me. My mission with the Happiest Retirees podcast is to inspire 1 million families to find happiness in retirement. I want to learn how to live an exceptional life from people who do it every day.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:02:13]:
    Let’s get started. Okay. I am here with Ken Clinker for a very special, spooky Halloween episode of the Happy of the Happiest Retirees podcast. Ken, thank you so much for coming on the show.

    Ken Klinker [00:02:28]:
    Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for asking me, of course, yes.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:02:32]:
    So I want to get right into your core pursuit, your passion of carving pumpkins. Tell me all about it.

    Ken Klinker [00:02:40]:
    Okay, well, I’m. I’ve been carving pumpkins for about probably 30 years now. I kind of started out when I was a single father, and I would get a couple of pumpkins and carve them for my kids. And, you know, we’d set them out on Halloween with the little triangle eyes and nose and little smiley face, you know, toothy grin. Then one year, I decided to buy one of those kits that you can buy at almost every grocery store now from pumpkin masters, which have some patterns on them and little saws and a little thing to poke holes in the pumpkin so you can get the pattern. And I decided to carve one of those. Well, I spent a couple hours poking all the holes and carving the pumpkin, and I looked at it and thought, well, that was a big waste of time. That doesn’t look like anything until.

    Ken Klinker [00:03:29]:
    Until I put a light inside it. And as soon as I put the light in, the picture just popped out at me, and I just got hooked on carving these patterns into pumpkins. So from then on, I started carving a few pumpkins every year, and I’d set them out in my front yard, and pretty soon I would be carving, I don’t know, ten or 15 pumpkins, and I’d take them down to the courthouse where I worked and put them up on as a display. And on Halloween. Yeah. And the kids would come to the courthouse and they’d all ooh and awe over these pumpkins that I had set up. And the people at the courthouse wanted me to teach them how to carve pumpkins, so I do pumpkin carving displays with them, you know, and so eventually I got to the point where I was carving, like, 30 or 40 pumpkins every year, and I had to do it within about a week of Halloween so the pumpkins wouldn’t rot. I was getting to a point where I’d found a couple of websites that had pretty elaborate patterns on them.

    Ken Klinker [00:04:32]:
    And, like, I would carve Jack Sparrow, and it take me five or 6 hours to carve this Jack Sparrow pumpkin. And then the next day, I had to throw it away after Halloween.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:04:43]:
    Right, right.

    Ken Klinker [00:04:44]:
    So I thought, well, you know, this is. This is kind of crazy. Well, some of the places that I was finding patterns, people were talking about carving foam pumpkins, and they’re just a hollow pumpkin that looks like a pumpkin, but it’s made out of foam and it’s hollow. And so I thought, well, let me try doing that. There were some tutorials, and I did some experimenting and stuff, and eventually I got to where I was carving 20 or 30 of those every year. But then I was able to keep them.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:05:16]:
    Right.

    Ken Klinker [00:05:17]:
    And, and the next year, then I would start over again. And so eventually my collection built up. Well, at some point I realized that, you know, these pumpkins cost quite a bit. You can get them at Michael’s or Home Depot or Joann’s or different places that sell these foam pumpkins. And I thought maybe, maybe I could sell some of these and help pay for my hobby.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:05:43]:
    Ah, yes.

    Ken Klinker [00:05:44]:
    And knowing that most crafts don’t pay for themselves. You know, people make stuff, but it’s very seldom that they can get their money back out of them. Well, I had a, I carved a few for friends for gifts, and, and occasionally somebody would ask me for one and I would sell it to them. And finally I decided, I’m going to make an Etsy page. So I made the Ken’s pumpkin patch Etsy page, and I put on a bunch of pumpkins that I had carved and tried to sell them that way. And so over the last several years, I’ve sold around a little over 200 pumpkins to people on there, plus the ones that I sell locally, kind of by word of mouth. And so they end up paying for the ones that I carve, that I keep for myself. Right now I’ve got a, or last Halloween at least, I had a little over 400 pumpkins in my pumpkin display.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:06:38]:
    Wow.

    Ken Klinker [00:06:39]:
    And so I’ve built racks out of PvC pipe and shelving, and I have about six layers of pumpkins on surrounding my front yard. And, and, uh, really I, I use, I set those up in my front yard the last couple of years. I’ve had them up since the 1 October through Halloween. And people come by every night looking at them and, and it’s just, it’s just a great hobby. I enjoy it a lot and, and people seem to enjoy it. And that’s really the big satisfaction, is being able to have people come and kind of be awed by these pumpkins.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:07:16]:
    Do you have them up all year or you have them up just around Halloween?

    Ken Klinker [00:07:20]:
    Just, I put them up in the month of October.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:07:22]:
    Oh, I see. Okay. And do you get biggest, like, groups of people coming by?

    Ken Klinker [00:07:27]:
    Yeah, yeah. There’s, there’s times when there’s probably a hundred or more people out there looking at them and then, you know, it kind of ebbs and flows throughout the month. But I’ve got kids in the neighborhood that come by every night. They’re, before they go to bed, they have to come over and look at the pumpkin display before. And their parents say, yeah, every night we bring them over here and look at it.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:07:48]:
    So you’re single handedly keeping kids from their bedtime?

    Ken Klinker [00:07:52]:
    Yeah, there are a few that are like that.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:07:55]:
    Yeah. And I wonder if, yeah, I bet around the, when I was a kid, there was always, you know, people around the neighborhood who, there was like, always a legend, like, did you go by that one house that has the blah, blah, blah? And you’re that house. You’re that.

    Ken Klinker [00:08:08]:
    Yeah. When, when a lot of times if I introduce myself to somebody at church or somebody at school or, and, you know, in the neighborhood, they say, oh, you’re the pumpkin guy. Right. And so they, a lot of people know, they don’t know me personally, but they know where the pumpkin house is.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:08:25]:
    So at this point, is it, are you breaking even so that you aren’t, you know, shelling out your own money to do it?

    Ken Klinker [00:08:34]:
    Yes. Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:08:34]:
    You are.

    Ken Klinker [00:08:35]:
    I can, I can carve enough. I, so far this year, I’ve carved about six or eight pumpkins for customers from on my Etsy page. And, and then I’ve carved four or five that I’m just going to keep for myself and I can pay for the ones that I keep by the ones that I carve for other people.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:08:54]:
    So they’re pretty sweet setup.

    Ken Klinker [00:08:56]:
    Yeah. It’s kind of a nice, having a nice hobby that’ll pay for itself.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:09:00]:
    Yeah. Tell me about some of the designs, some of the most spectacular or weird or scary designs.

    Ken Klinker [00:09:07]:
    Well, one of the most popular ones is Jack Sparrow.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:09:10]:
    Okay.

    Ken Klinker [00:09:10]:
    And I wish I could kind of show you some pictures of some now on this broadcast, but it’s just a picture of Jack Sparrow. And I, some pumpkins I cut through, just cut through everything and then the light shines through some of them. You cut through part of it and you shade part of it. Oh, and, and you can get a lot of detail on the Jack Sparrow one that’s, one that’s cut through and shaded. And he really, I mean, you can instantly recognize that this is Jack Sparrow.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:09:41]:
    From, and for people who don’t know, from Pirates of the Caribbean.

    Ken Klinker [00:09:45]:
    Right.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:09:45]:
    The Johnny Depp character.

    Ken Klinker [00:09:46]:
    Yeah. Right. Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:09:47]:
    Yeah.

    Ken Klinker [00:09:48]:
    So I’ve done quite a few different pumpkin patterns. I’ve got about, oh, 20 or so Harry potter patterns that I’ve done. And I, when I put them on my shelves, I put a white light in all my Harry Potter ones. So that kind of collection of Harry Potter pumpkins kind of stands out by itself.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:10:08]:
    Yes.

    Ken Klinker [00:10:09]:
    I do a lot of Disney characters. I’ve got all the seven dwarfs and Snow White and the evil stepmother and and I’ve got quite a few that are just like typical Halloween characters, like Draculas and Frankensteins and mummies. And I try to do a little bit of something for everything, everybody. You know, I, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the cartoon Bluey.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:10:33]:
    Yes. Yeah.

    Ken Klinker [00:10:34]:
    You know, that’s a, that was popular in the last couple years because Bluey’s become very popular. I did a Barbie one last year when the Barbie movie came out, and I had a zombie Barbie pattern that I did, you know, how did you.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:10:48]:
    How did you do Barbie? How do you do a Barbie pumpkin?

    Ken Klinker [00:10:51]:
    Well, it was just a silhouette of Barbie. Wow. And then the silhouette, the zombie one was a silhouette, but she had kind of, I can’t remember, a gruesome mouth or something. I forget what it was. But anyway, you could tell it was a barbie, but. But she had a gruesome face.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:11:10]:
    Oh, I see. Okay.

    Ken Klinker [00:11:12]:
    Yeah. So I’ve got, there’s a website called stoneykins.com. okay. He’s got over 14,000 pumpkin patterns on there.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:11:23]:
    Wow.

    Ken Klinker [00:11:24]:
    He basically does pumpkin carving for a living. And so, you know, he carves hundreds of pumpkins for people that he sells them to them. But he’s also got this website with all these patterns on it, and then there’s tons of tutorials and people can ask questions, and other people that carve pumpkins will answer, oh, this is the tool I use, or this is how I did this effect or whatever. And so that’s where I get most of my ideas. One of the things that I do that it’s kind of unique is I’ve gone and searched the Internet for optical illusions, and I’ve done several pumpkins that are optical illusions that I don’t see other, many other people doing those.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:12:12]:
    How does that work? What does that mean?

    Ken Klinker [00:12:14]:
    Well, it’s just, oh, there’s like these squares that they’re drawn, so they look kind of like they’re maybe a pyramid with the shading and everything, except that they’re flat, but they look three dimensional.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:12:26]:
    Oh.

    Ken Klinker [00:12:27]:
    And so I’ve been able to figure out how to do that on a pumpkin. And those are very popular. Kids just look at those and go, wow, that’s cool. There’s some that I cut out, just very tiny pieces out of it, but it’s like a snake that twists all around and swirls all around. And it’s just really fun to look at, but it looks like it’s three dimensional kind of coming out at you. So that’s always fun.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:12:54]:
    Yes. In fact, you’ve had several newspaper articles and tv stations come and interview you, I think.

    Ken Klinker [00:13:02]:
    Yep. Yeah, I’ve had some of them come out to the display and have interviewed me. And a couple times I’ve packed up a few pumpkins and taken them into the tv studio and then, you know, do a. It takes about 4 hours to get the whole thing in there and set up and everything. And then there’s like a 32nd piece on the news. I don’t do much of the traveling to the studios anymore. I figure if they want to come and talk to me, then that’s good. But, yeah, I’ve done that several times.

    Ken Klinker [00:13:32]:
    And then I’ve had several feature articles in the newspaper to kind of say where what I do and show some pictures and try to get more people. That’s always my big goal, is to get as many people as I possibly can to come and take a look at the pumpkins that I’ve carved.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:13:49]:
    Yeah, absolutely. Is this the local. So you live in Farmington, Utah, correct?

    Ken Klinker [00:13:55]:
    Right.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:13:56]:
    Is there like a Farmington Gazette or something that. Or who’s interviewing you?

    Ken Klinker [00:14:02]:
    Well, there, I’ve been interviewed by the Salt Lake Tribune, which is the biggest paper there. And then the Davis County Clipper has interviewed me a couple of times. And I guess those are probably the main ones that have actually done articles. I think there’s been probably four or five over the years.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:14:21]:
    And after today, you’ll probably be on the Today show and everything.

    Ken Klinker [00:14:24]:
    Yeah. Well, I’m hoping that one of the funnest things I did, actually, Washington, a couple years ago, Stoney, the guy with stoneykins.com and I were flown out to California to buy Facebook because he started the pumpkin carving group on Facebook.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:14:45]:
    Oh, really?

    Ken Klinker [00:14:46]:
    There’s about 14, 15,000 members of the pumpkin carving group, and we all post our pumpkins that we carve, and people have questions, so we’ll answer the questions about how they, you know, how they do certain things or whatever. But they flew us out there. They rented this old house, and they were doing, doing some commercials on pumpkin related groups on Halloween. Related groups. And Stoney and I did the one on pumpkin carving. And they, I mean, they had the makeup artists there, and they had it catered. There was all this great food, and they had, you know, the sound technicians and, and, I mean, it was a, it was a major production. We were there for two days, and we ended up making this commercial that they played for a while on Facebook about the pumpkin carving group.

    Ken Klinker [00:15:38]:
    And I was, I was kind of the main guy in there. I’m not very good at acting or anything, so they, they had to do a lot of cutting, but they got a little bit out of it and got me carving some pumpkins, and I’m sure. And then I, they had flown out about 30 of the pumpkins from that I shipped from.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:15:57]:
    Oh, my gosh.

    Ken Klinker [00:15:57]:
    And had them all up on the, in the background and everything. And so that was a lot of fun. That was kind of an experience that I’ll probably never have again.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:16:06]:
    Well, maybe not. I mean, if you’re on the Today show, you’re going to be doing this a lot. So did you, were you on the airplane putting your pumpkins in the overhead bin?

    Ken Klinker [00:16:14]:
    No, no, I shipped them all out ahead of time because they’re, they’re pretty bulky. Bumpkins are pretty bulky to ship.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:16:23]:
    Yeah.

    Ken Klinker [00:16:24]:
    Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:16:24]:
    A friend of mine, an artist friend of mine, when he draws too many pumpkins, he says he’s going out of his gourde.

    Ken Klinker [00:16:32]:
    Yeah. But I have to tell you, the true artists in this whole thing are the people that make the patterns.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:16:38]:
    Oh.

    Ken Klinker [00:16:39]:
    To me, it’s this. The, the carving them is like a paint by number.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:16:44]:
    Well, it’s still hard, but I get what you’re saying. Yeah.

    Ken Klinker [00:16:46]:
    And it does take some technique to be able to do what they say to do in the patterns. But the way these guys make patterns, it just amazes me that they can come up with to tell you what, what to cut out and what to shade and how to do it, and then all of a sudden, there you go. There’s the, there’s the picture that they, that they were talking about.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:17:07]:
    Exactly. Yeah. I said, you don’t ever design patterns or do you do that sometimes, too?

    Ken Klinker [00:17:13]:
    I do once in a while. For example, somebody in my neighborhood had a son who was on a mission, and they said, could you do a mission with his missionary tag and the tie that he wears and the name of his mission on it. So I would put something together and figure out what I needed to carve another one that I made. I’ve done a self portrait of myself. Oh, I had to make that pattern. You know, I just took a picture and then I, then I made the pattern off of that. And, and the optical illusion ones are kind of. I have to make that pattern because I’ve got the picture.

    Ken Klinker [00:17:48]:
    But you don’t. I don’t know what to cut out and what not to cut out or what to shade. Not shade. So I do a little bit of pattern making, but I’m not really very good at it. So I’ve had a few people ask me to do a. Do their dog and a few other things like that, and it just takes forever to. To make the pattern. So usually I go to Stoney and I say, here, here’s your $30.

    Ken Klinker [00:18:13]:
    Make me this pattern. And then I charge the person that wanted me to do it that amount of money extra, rather than. But usually I can get a pattern that’s already made. Sports logos. I do a lot of those. Oh, and then I’ve got a lady, over the last several years, has. She works with dentist offices, so she wants to give them something, you know, to try to help get their business. And she’s ordered a bunch of pumpkins for different dentists offices.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:18:41]:
    Wow.

    Ken Klinker [00:18:41]:
    So I have to kind of design. I get their logo, but then I have to figure out how to carve it. The most elaborate one I did was probably one with this moose with a big smile and a little shiny grin, you know, coming off of his bright teeth. And that was a pretty difficult one to do, but it turned out great.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:19:01]:
    And I was wondering if when you carved your self portrait and then you showed it to your wife and she said, wait a minute, you just carved George Clooney and you tried to pawn that off?

    Ken Klinker [00:19:12]:
    No, no, no. It looks a lot like me. And then I carved one of her, but she didn’t like being on a pumpkin, so it was. It was one that blew off and broke. So. So I haven’t carved her another one.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:19:25]:
    And I also wanted to say, so when you have. When people come by your house to check out the pumpkins, I think you put out a basket for food donations to the bountiful food bank.

    Ken Klinker [00:19:37]:
    Right?

    Ryan Doolittle [00:19:37]:
    Tell me a little bit about that.

    Ken Klinker [00:19:38]:
    Well, the last several years, I thought, you know, there’s a lot of people coming by here looking at these, and I don’t charge, you know, for the display or anything like that. And I thought maybe I could figure out a way to help out the bountiful food bank. So I put out a basket, and usually I get at least a trunk full of donations that I can haul over there and. And just donate just to try to help people that, you know, need to use the bountiful food bank.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:20:06]:
    Yeah, I, you know, I was going through your. Your Etsy shop, which is Ken’s pumpkin patch on Etsy. Some of the ones you have are pretty amazing. You have John Wayne, and it looks just like him. I don’t know how you did that. You have, like you said, barbie, you have. Oh, that. I think that is the witch from Snow White?

    Ken Klinker [00:20:25]:
    Yep.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:20:25]:
    You have?

    Ken Klinker [00:20:26]:
    Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:20:26]:
    Lots of cat. Oh, is that the night? Yeah. The nightmare before Christmas. Monsters. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, there’s too many lists, but. But people should really go check it out.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:20:36]:
    It’s really cool.

    Ken Klinker [00:20:37]:
    I try to do a lot, and what’s. What’s really fun is when they’re there, they are looking around and. And they’re saying, well, okay, we better go. And then they say, oh, wait, no, look at that one. And so I’ve got them all spread out just randomly, except for the Harry Potter ones are all together, but everything. And people just keep looking and looking. And, you know, I’ll have Rocky and Bullwinkle. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:21:03]:
    Yeah, yeah.

    Ken Klinker [00:21:04]:
    You know, these older people say, hey, that’s Rocky and Bullwinkle or Boris and Natasha, you know, and a lot of the kids don’t know who they’re talking about, but, yeah, it’s just fun to have such a wide variety of things.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:21:19]:
    I think, even if they don’t know it looks like a fun moose and. And squirrel. Right?

    Ken Klinker [00:21:23]:
    Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if people are interested, I do have a Pinterest page where I’ve got about 500 pumpkins posted on that. And that’s, again, just Ken’s pumpkin patch.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:21:38]:
    Okay.

    Ken Klinker [00:21:39]:
    On Pinterest.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:21:40]:
    Well, okay, so, Ken, we can get back to. And we will get back to pumpkins, but I want to do a quick summary of your primary career so that I can kind of get into how you decided to retire and.

    Ken Klinker [00:21:52]:
    Sure.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:21:52]:
    And that. So I’m just going to quickly tell people. You started as a petroleum engineer.

    Ken Klinker [00:21:57]:
    Right.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:21:57]:
    And then you went to work for the county in Wyoming as their economic development coordinator.

    Ken Klinker [00:22:02]:
    Right.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:22:02]:
    Then you became the economic development person. Then maybe the most important job of all is you met and married your wife, and she was already living in Utah, so you moved there, and you had to commute 84 miles each way to Wyoming for, like, two and a half years, correct?

    Ken Klinker [00:22:20]:
    Yep.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:22:21]:
    Then you found a job in Farmington, Utah.

    Ken Klinker [00:22:23]:
    Right.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:22:24]:
    Working for the city planning department. Yes. Let’s see. Was that the last gig before you?

    Ken Klinker [00:22:30]:
    That was the last job I had before I retired.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:22:32]:
    Okay, and you retired how many years ago?

    Ken Klinker [00:22:36]:
    It’s been almost five years. I think it’ll be five years in October.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:22:40]:
    Okay. And how did you know when it was the right time to retire?

    Ken Klinker [00:22:44]:
    Well, I kind of had a goal to retire at 55 like my dad did, but 55 came and went, and I just kept working and working. And finally, I. I just had a feeling that I’m just. I think I worked about 39 or 40 years once I graduated from college.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:23:06]:
    Okay.

    Ken Klinker [00:23:06]:
    And I just wanted to. I just got tired of getting up and going to work every day. And so I. I gave my. My boss several months notice, you know, in the planning department before I decided to quit. But it was really just kind of a feeling of, I just. I’m just tired of working now. And, of course, we had a financial advisor, and we went through all the evaluation of what would my annual income be and what would my expenses be, and can I afford to do that? And we ended.

    Ken Klinker [00:23:42]:
    We had paid off our house, so we didn’t have the mortgage anymore. And it just seemed like I was still young enough that I could enjoy retirement, and I was financially felt, financially set enough that I could go ahead and retire. And I was getting a little tired of going to work every day, so. So I decided, well, that’s. That’s about time. I better do it.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:24:04]:
    Feels right? Yeah.

    Ken Klinker [00:24:05]:
    Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:24:06]:
    And what does retirement mean to you?

    Ken Klinker [00:24:08]:
    Well, it’s really nice because it just really freed me up to do the things that I enjoy doing and that I wanted to do but really was too tired to do, or I had to go to work every day, so I couldn’t do it. But, you know, things like being able to go to all of our kids, our grandkids, soccer games and. And baseball games and. And that kind of thing, and helping out if. If they need a bait, if our kids need a babysitter for their. For their kids for a few hours in the afternoon and just things like being able to go to the bank while the bank is open or make a doctor’s appointment where I don’t have to take off time to go do it. Or, you know, just be able to lay around for an afternoon and read a book. My wife used to call herself a pumpkin widow because I would come in the month of September and October.

    Ken Klinker [00:25:07]:
    I would come home, eat dinner, and go out and start carving pumpkins all night long. Well, now I can. Now I can carve for an hour in the morning or something and just, you know, at my own pace. And then in the evening, we can go to a play or go to a movie or sit around and watch some tv or anything like that. And she doesn’t have to feel like she’s just being left alone while I’m out in my little shed carving pumpkins.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:25:34]:
    Right.

    Ken Klinker [00:25:35]:
    So, you know, it’s just kind of great to have the freedom to be able to do the things you want to do when you want to do them. Of course, it gives us more time to travel, and we, you know, we like to take cruises. We just got back from a Rhine river cruise in Germany.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:25:53]:
    In Germany, right.

    Ken Klinker [00:25:54]:
    So that. That frees us up to do that kind of stuff.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:25:58]:
    In fact, I. You were probably carving so much that your wife is ready to carve you up. I’m glad that changed.

    Ken Klinker [00:26:06]:
    Yeah, she. She kind of thought I was kind of a fanatic. In fact, one of the first dates we had was up in Wyoming and where she came to my house and my brother was there, and we were carving pumpkins while we were watching the World Series. And, you know. So she knew what she was getting into. Yeah. Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:26:28]:
    There was no bait and switch. She knew.

    Ken Klinker [00:26:30]:
    No, but she’s very supportive, and she just, you know, she loves to see the pumpkins that I carve. She hasn’t. Doesn’t have any interest in doing it herself, but, yeah, she. She likes that I have a nice hobby that I can fall back on.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:26:46]:
    Right. Well, she doesn’t need to do it. She’s living next to the most talented pumpkin carver in the universe, so she’s all set.

    Ken Klinker [00:26:53]:
    I wouldn’t go that far.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:26:55]:
    But you had mentioned you could actually, like, go to the bank or go to the doctor without taking time off. I never really understood that part of the way the system is set up is that we’re all at work during the time that you have to do those things. So, like, how is anyone supposed to do it? Yeah. I’m glad. In retirement, that gets a little easier.

    Ken Klinker [00:27:14]:
    Yeah, it does make it a lot easier.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:27:16]:
    So some of your other core pursuits, because it’s a big focus of this show, is what people kind of like, what gets them out of bed in the morning. And I know for you, pumpkin carving is the biggest, but you also, you love, you have seven grandchildren, so you. You’re as involved as you can be. You love serving at church, traveling, which you mentioned. You just went to the Rhine river in Germany. You play the trumpet, which is a pretty cool thing.

    Ken Klinker [00:27:42]:
    Yeah. You know, I started playing the trumpet when I was in fifth grade, and I played all through high school. And then I considered either becoming a trumpet player or becoming an engineer when I was going to college. And I soon found out I wasn’t a good enough trumpet player to become a trumpet player. But I still continued to play in little group and various groups through college. And, like, I was in the University of Wyoming marching band and stuff like that. Wow. But once I graduated, then I really didn’t have much opportunity to play.

    Ken Klinker [00:28:16]:
    And every once in a while I would pull my horn out and play. And then up in Evanston, Wyoming, where I was living, I had a friend who was a judge who worked at the courthouse with me, and we formed a big band. And so for about ten years I was in the Evanston big band. And we rehearsed on a regular basis. And that was pretty fun. And then he and I started a community band. And we put on concerts on Sunday nights with this community band during the summer. And so that was fun.

    Ken Klinker [00:28:49]:
    But then when I moved Evans or to Farmington, then I kind of didn’t play for a while. I got in one brass band that it was made. Made up of these really old guys. One guy played the tuba, but he had a. He had a oxygen tank hooked up the whole time. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then another guy one day didn’t show up for rehearsal.

    Ken Klinker [00:29:12]:
    He couldn’t play. And they said, oh, yeah, five of his teeth fell out, you know, so. So I was in that for a while. So then two years ago, I saw an advertisement where they were looking for people for a community band in my area. And so I decided I would try that out and went to the first rehearsal, and there were like 80 people there. And some of them were people who hadn’t played their orange for 50 years. But some of them were college students that were music majors. Some of them were band directors.

    Ken Klinker [00:29:46]:
    Some of them were professional musicians. And so I’ve played in that for the last two years, and we rehearse every week. We’re taking a little break right now during the summer. But that has really brought a lot of joy to. To be able to play in a nice, good group on a regular basis.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:30:04]:
    So that’s different than the harmonic winds of Utah, or is that what that is?

    Ken Klinker [00:30:08]:
    Yeah, that’s what that community band is called as the harmonic winds of Utah. Yep.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:30:12]:
    And I do like that idea where you become an engineer, which most people think of as a very skilled and difficult profession, and you’re saying, well, I only did this because the trumpet was too.

    Ken Klinker [00:30:27]:
    Yeah, well, that’s about the way it was.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:30:31]:
    So that says a lot for trumpet players. They would. I’m sure they’d love to hear that. So, okay. On this show, we like to talk about how, you know, the road to a happy retirement. And I know you consider yourself a happy retiree, so you’re on the perfect show, but it doesn’t come without some challenges. And I was really touched by the challenge that you had. And and what you were able to do with it.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:30:56]:
    So you. Well, you got a divorce and you were a single dad for 15 years.

    Ken Klinker [00:31:01]:
    Right.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:31:02]:
    And that was a big challenge, but you made it work. Then when you married your wife, you now had two stepdaughters, and it was a long journey to get them to like you. Right?

    Ken Klinker [00:31:13]:
    Yeah, it was. I. Well, first of all, I dated their mom for a while before they knew about it. Yeah. And so when they did find out about it, I had invited them to go to the Nutcracker ballet here in Salt Lake City. And that’s when they kind of found out that we were dating. And unfortunately, they saw us holding hands from the back seat. And so they were.

    Ken Klinker [00:31:41]:
    They were not really very happy with me doing this with their mom. So, anyway, eventually we got married, but they were not happy with that whole arrangement. And the thing that finally, I think, broke the ice, at least with the youngest one, the oldest daughter, Casey, she was okay. She didn’t mind too much. But Hilary, our youngest daughter, just, you know, really did not want to accept me and. But she was having trouble with math. Wow. I happen to be an engineer.

    Ken Klinker [00:32:18]:
    So the math that she was having. Don’t ask me how to do any calculus anymore, but the algebra and the math that she was doing, I could help her with. So finally, from a very struggling math student in about fifth and 6th grade. In 7th grade, she got the award for the outstanding math student in 7th grade. And I. We credit that to me helping her almost every night. You know, sometimes she got pretty upset because I was. I was kind of tough trying to make her learn this stuff.

    Ken Klinker [00:32:52]:
    But it was kind of after that that she kind of accepted me. And now we’re just closest can be and, you know, just a very loving family. And it all worked out in the long run, but it was a little tough there for the first couple, three years.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:33:06]:
    Well, I can imagine that. It’s just a good thing she didn’t ask you to help her with the trumpet.

    Ken Klinker [00:33:11]:
    Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:33:11]:
    I’m glad it was an engineering related question.

    Ken Klinker [00:33:14]:
    Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:33:16]:
    So I do want to mention, because we have a lot of animal lovers who listen to the show, you own two cats. I don’t know if you like dogs, too, or if you prefer cats, but you own two cats. What are their names?

    Ken Klinker [00:33:28]:
    Gray, who’s a gray cat?

    Ryan Doolittle [00:33:30]:
    Okay.

    Ken Klinker [00:33:31]:
    And Clover, who is one that we inherited from somebody else. And he. She’s also a gray cat. Oh, okay. Yeah. They’ve got their own personalities. And I. I grew up with cats in my family.

    Ken Klinker [00:33:46]:
    And all through college, I had my own cats, and so I’ve always been a cat lover.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:33:51]:
    Yeah. Do. Do either of the cats sit and watch you carve pumpkins?

    Ken Klinker [00:33:55]:
    No, because I’ve got a. I’ve got a big industrial wood vacuum thing to suck up the pumpkin dust. And the dremel that I use is pretty loud, and so they don’t really hang around too much while I’m carving pumpkins.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:34:10]:
    Yeah, that noise. Cats don’t love that. Yeah.

    Ken Klinker [00:34:13]:
    Now when I do, I still carve a few real pumpkins, and I do that in the house. And if I’m sitting there watching tv while I’m carving a pumpkin, at least one of them will jump up and just kind of hang out while I’m doing that.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:34:26]:
    Oh, that’s nice. Okay, so you’re carving a lot of pumpkins, but I want to ask you what a perfect day looks like for you.

    Ken Klinker [00:34:34]:
    Oh, well, I’d say, you know, just kind of get up when I want to get up. My wife and I have e bikes, and so if we want to go for a ride on our e bikes, you know, we can go do that before it gets too hot. And I like to read, so, you know, sometimes I’ll just spend the day reading. During the summer, there’s almost always some kind of a activity that our grandkids are doing that we can participate in.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:35:01]:
    Like going to sports events and that sort of thing.

    Ken Klinker [00:35:04]:
    Right? Yeah. Yeah. They. They play soccer and baseball and just keep pretty busy. In the summer, we can stay up, watch movies. Sometimes we binge watch things and find out that we’re, it’s, you know, two or 03:00 in the morning. We’re watching episode eight of this of the show for that day, you know. So you’re like teenagers.

    Ken Klinker [00:35:27]:
    Well, yeah, we have the freedom because we don’t have to get up and go to work right away. So, yeah, one thing I did want to, my wife was a school teacher for about 2020 years. Okay, well, almost 30 years. So the school that she worked at after I took kind of a year off, and then I thought, well, I’m going to go in there and help her in her classroom. She was a fourth grade teacher, so. So I’d go in, started going in every day and help her for a little while. And mostly I went around and during their math lesson to watch kids, to see how they were doing and try to catch any problems they were have while they were working on it, rather than have them work everything wrong and then. And then not know it, you know, when they turn their paper in.

    Ken Klinker [00:36:13]:
    So that worked really well. And then the principal came up and said, hey, you know, we would pay you to come in and be a teacher’s aide. So for a couple years, I went in and worked three or 4 hours a day as a teacher’s aide. And then when my wife retired, she did that for a year with, and we both did it. And then that was last year. And then this year we decided, no, we don’t want to have that, you know, daily commitment to go in there. But our grandson is in kindergarten now in that school, so we’re going in, we’re going in a couple of days a week into his classroom and helping in that classroom to be kind of teachers aides for an hour a day just to help them out a little bit.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:36:54]:
    So you’re both doing that now, an hour a day?

    Ken Klinker [00:36:57]:
    Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:36:57]:
    Oh, that’s nice. And it’s a little bit of income.

    Ken Klinker [00:37:00]:
    No, we’re just volunteers.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:37:04]:
    Oh, okay.

    Ken Klinker [00:37:05]:
    That’s nice. We knew the kindergarten teacher, and we said, hey, do you want us to come in and volunteer for. It’s only a couple of days a week and for an hour at a time. And so I don’t know how much it’s going to help, but I’d helped her last year as a teacher’s aide with the kids in kindergarten, trying to learn just a very, very basic math. And so that’s what she’s got me doing now, and I really enjoy working on math with kids. So.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:37:32]:
    Yeah. That’s how you got your daughter? That’s how you. Yeah. That’s how you made that happen.

    Ken Klinker [00:37:37]:
    Yeah.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:37:38]:
    Oh, that’s great. What are the things that we, we did a big survey to find out what the happy retirees do. You know, obviously, it’s not 100%, but so many of them are involved with their grandkids or live near at least half of their adult children. So, I mean, it sounds. I don’t know. How many, how many kids do you have?

    Ken Klinker [00:37:58]:
    Well, we’ve got four kids. I had two and she had two, and three of them live in the Salt Lake area. Her two daughters are both within about a mile of us or less. Wow. And they’ve got four kids between them. And then I’ve got a daughter who lives on kind of on the other side of Salt Lake with one child. And then my son lives up in Evanston, and he’s got two children, and he’s a single dad up in Evanston, so they’re all fairly close. We just all got together for one of his kids.

    Ken Klinker [00:38:35]:
    Birthday parties, you know, down here in Salt Lake, and all the grandkids were able to get together and play at a trampoline place. And so that was a lot of fun. But it’s nice to have them close where we can see them on a regular basis.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:38:49]:
    Absolutely. Yeah, that’s, that’s a real benefit. Yeah. Okay. Well, Ken, we’re kind of wrapping up here, so I just wanted to see, is there any other advice you might want to give to someone who is wanting to be a happy retiree or that maybe they’re a little scared to take the leap or maybe they’re retired, but they’re not really enjoying it? Do you have any tips for them?

    Ken Klinker [00:39:09]:
    Well, to me, I think the biggest way to enjoy retirement, and I’ve heard of people that this doesn’t happen for, is that to have things that you, that you’re enthused about and that you really enjoy doing. If you retire and all you do is end up sitting on the couch watching your wife, I don’t know how happy you’re going to be as a retiree, but if you can just get some kind of hobby or, or even if you don’t know how to do something, you know, take some piano lessons and learn how to play the piano, or take an art class and see if you can, if you like art, try different things in the adult learning area so that you can, you know, have something productive to do? For me, I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and that’s a big part of my life. And there are service opportunities there. I’ve got a calling at church where I teach kids, you know, on Sundays. So that’s, there’s just so many opportunities like that that are out there and you just have to search for them a little bit. And the more kind of things that you can get involved with, then I think the happier you’re going to be as a retiree.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:40:24]:
    Oh, that is great, great advice, and it’s worked for you. You’re a happy guy. So I think, listen, they’d be well served to listen to you.

    Ken Klinker [00:40:31]:
    Well, I hope so.

    Ryan Doolittle [00:40:33]:
    Well, Ken Clinker, we’re going to put all of your websites on our show page so that people know where to buy your pumpkins, anything else that you want them to connect to. And I just want to thank you on behalf of the Happiest Retirees podcast and the entire retire sooner network for coming on the show, because it’s been a real pleasure.

    Ken Klinker [00:40:52]:
    Oh, I’ve enjoyed it. I appreciate you asking me?

    Ryan Doolittle [00:40:55]:
    Well, thanks so much, Ken. You have a great day, all right?

    Ken Klinker [00:40:58]:
    You, too. Thanks a lot..

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