URS Retirees Share Their Stories | Devin and Chris Calcut
Around the World With URS Benefits
By staying the course with URS Savings Plans, these two URS members retired early and now share adventures across the globe.
“Compound interest is amazing. But, if you started investing early, it really takes off in the last five, 10 years before you retire. That’s when numbers can really start growing to eye-popping levels.”
Both working in IT Departments for the State of Utah, husband and wife Devin and Chris Calcut had been saving for over a decade for their dream of an early and active retirement. Then, the stock market crash of 2008 came along, and their retirement nest egg tanked.
“That was hard to take,” Devin said. “Because by that time we had been invested for 13 years, and it wasn’t an insignificant amount of money that we lost.” At a time when some of their panicked friends and coworkers were fleeing the stock market, Devin and Chris made a fateful decision. They not only stayed the course, they also decided to increase their contributions to URS Savings Plans as much as possible to benefit from “the sale on stocks.”
A decade later, that strategy paid off handsomely. Thanks to their URS pension benefit and savings plan growth, Chris retired in 2015 at age 61 and Devin followed in 2018 at age 55. “Compound interest is amazing,” Devin said. “But, if you started investing early, it really takes off in the last five, 10 years before you retire. That’s when numbers can really start growing to eye-popping levels."
Closer Than It Seems
The Calcuts started saving just $25 a month toward their retirement in the early 1990s. As newlyweds fresh in their careers, the loss of this discretionary income stung. But holding on to a clear vision of their retirement motivated them to increase contributions through the years.
“Your retirement’s gonna be here sooner than you think,” Devin said. “And if you don’t believe that, go out to your Google calendar and pick a date one year to 18 months out from today. Just pick any day and put a reminder that says, ‘This date seems like a really long way away.’ “Hopefully you’ll forget about that, and in 18 months, it’s going to pop up on your calendar, and it’s going be a wake-up call that, wow, time goes faster than I think.”
‘Someday’ is Now
In 2018, the Calcuts sold their Utah home and moved to a condo on a golf course in Northern Idaho. The couple planned to travel extensively in retirement but just hadn’t got around to it yet. But after listening to friends share stories of adventures at sea, they decided it was time. “We said, This isn’t in the future anymore, this is now, this is what we’ve worked for, this is what we planned for, this is what we saved for,” Devin said. Since 2018, the Calcuts have enjoyed 15 cruises and visited 28 countries, including Antarctica in 2023. That’s not including a four-month “around the world” cruise that the Calcuts returned home from in May 2024.
‘Get Rich Slow’
Devin and Chris describe themselves as “normal people,” who made comfortable but ordinary income throughout their lives. In other words, almost anyone can do what they did. “Our philosophy was get rich slow,” Devin said. “Chances are you’re not going to be the next Bitcoin millionaire. Chances are you’re not going to be an influencer with 20 million followers. Most of us are just normal people, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be successful.”
Added Chris, “We didn’t buy a new house every time we got a raise. We didn’t buy coffee from Starbucks every day. We were careful with our money, but we were comfortable.” URS, they said, was there for them every step of the way. “There’s a confidence in the system and the people who work there,” Chris said.
Added Devin, “The people at URS, it’s not like going to an outside investment company where their goal is a make profit and make their CEO rich. URS employees are Utah public employees too. There’s a perspective there that you’re not going to get if you go outside of the system.”
