Wahluke counselor to retire to sunny, tropical Panama

MATTAWA - Ever wonder how a teacher could retire to a million dollar condominium?

By buying it for $140,000. On the Pacific beach of Panama.

Panama is where Wahluke High School counselor Jan Phillips and her husband Earl plan to enjoy retirement after this school year. Originally from San Diego, Calif., Earl will go surfing, and Jan will take long walks in the sand.

Earl will be retiring from his Union Gap business Phillips Floor Covering. Jan has been the Wahluke counselor 14 years and a counselor a total of 18 years.

"Four years ago, I never would have thought about this," Jan said.

But three years ago, both Phillipses started to think. They had started to deal with the aging of their parents and were alerted to the fact they were headed in that same direction.

"My husband's father went through a brutal two years," Jan said.

He spent the last two years of his life in bed, unable to feed himself. The Phillipses, both 61 now, thought they'd better enjoy retirement before it became too late.

The Phillipses wanted retirement to be a lifestyle comparable to the one they have now, but there wasn't enough money in savings or pensions to make that happen. So Jan started researching the possibility of retiring abroad. She found that the No. 1 country in the world for meeting the retirement needs of Americans was Panama.

Panama's currency is the U.S. dollar, and a condominium that would cost $1 million in San Diego costs only $140,000. The Phillipses bought into one in 2012.

"We went down there the last two summers," Jan said.

The condo residents are American and Canadian, but the Phillipses expect to fit easily into the nearby community of Canoa. They were raised in a city where the streets are called "calles" and "avenidas".

Jan believes the Hispanic dominance of Wahluke's enrollment has allowed her "to learn about another culture." The language flows through the classrooms and hallways every day.

"I've learned a little Spanish," she said. "It's a shame that, as long as I've been here, I don't speak more."

Jan said she won't miss getting up in the morning to go to work, but she will miss the teen-agers of not-so-wealthy Wahluke Slope. She's thankful she got to work with them after four years in the comparatively wealthy West Valley of Yakima.

"Many of them work incredibly hard to overcome unbelievable obstacles," she said.

Jan knows the value of hard work. Counseling was her second career, and it required a return to college. She spent a year at Central Washington University to pick up all the classes she needed for a BA in Psychology and then stayed two more years to get her MS in Counseling Psychology with the ESA School Counselor Certificate.

Jan's first career, professional organist, lasted 25 years. It involved a lot hard work from the time she was a child.

Jan started learning piano in kindergarten. She took private lessons all through college and became quite accomplished. But she admits she was a bit lax for a few years, practicing as little as possible.

"I was a good sight reader. So I could get away with," she said.

In high school things changed. Jan got a new teacher, and he would not take students unless they committed themselves to three hours of practice daily.

"I couldn't fool him. He knew if I had practiced," Jan said.

In her junior year, Jan became a professional musician, playing for an Episcopal church in San Diego. She earned $12 a week.

"I thought I'd hit the big time," she said.

Jan went on to San Diego State University, where she earned a music (performance) degree. She continued her playing career until one year after arriving in Yakima.

Carpel tunnel ended it. For too long she had asked her small hands to do too much.

"I had surgery on both wrists, but that didn't help," she said. "It was time to get a real job."

So Jan got her teaching credentials at Central Washington University and eventually made it to Mattawa.