{"id":939,"date":"2023-01-13T18:55:19","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T18:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/?post_type=oi_testimonial&p=939"},"modified":"2023-01-13T18:55:34","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T18:55:34","slug":"retiring-couple-discover-family-roots-in-ireland","status":"publish","type":"oi_testimonial","link":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/testimonials\/retiring-couple-discover-family-roots-in-ireland","title":{"rendered":"Retiring Couple Discover Family Roots in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

John and Angie Hood traveled to Europe together for the first time to celebrate 35 years of marriage and John\u2019s pending retirement. The couple celebrated their anniversary on January 14, and John retired from Northrop Grumman after 36 and a half years on January 17, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause of careful financial planning, saving and deferring gratification through the years, it made this trip possible,\u201d Angie said. \u201cJohn will be a young retiree at age 60. He says he\u2019s not really retiring; he is just not worrying about his paycheck.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2019, they spent two weeks in Ireland and Northern Ireland tracing down John\u2019s Hood family roots \u2014 a trip he had dreamed of taking for years. Their favorite part of the trip was the people. They were able to meet some of John\u2019s distant cousins who own a dairy farm and worship at Clough Presbyterian Church, which is more than 450 years old, and where John\u2019s family were members. The Hoods describe the Irish people as \u201cwarm and welcoming.\u201d They made friends with a couple in County Down \u2014 a pastor and his wife who were from another Clough Presbyterian Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cSix months before our trip, I realized my Internet pen pal for Clough Presbyterian was from another Clough!\u201d Angie said. \u201cThey took us to the manse, the parsonage, on our way north from Dublin, and we attended their church several times. We even went to a church picnic on the east coast of Northern Ireland with them. John also attended two different Masonic Lodges \u2014 one in Clough and one in Ballymena \u2014 and the people there were fantastic to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are looking forward to having more free time to do the things that we are passionate about,\u201d Angie said. \u201cI will still be teaching English and journalism classes part time, as long as it continues to give me joy, and John wants to finally do some \u2018fun engineering\u2019 in entertainment, that he felt he couldn\u2019t gamble on doing while we were raising a family. Who knows, maybe he will become a rock band engineer, planning and designing the rock band stages, or inventing better ways to do audio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the future, the Hoods hope to go on more trips to explore their family heritage, and they would love to return to Northern Ireland, maybe for a month rather than just a week or two. After decades of careful retirement planning, they are glad for the opportunities to travel and enjoy their second half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John and Angie Hood traveled to Europe together for the first time to celebrate 35 years of marriage and John\u2019s pending retirement. The couple celebrated their anniversary on January 14, and John retired from Northrop Grumman after 36 and a half years on January 17, 2020. \u201cBecause of careful financial planning, saving and deferring gratification […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":940,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"post_statement":"","post_description":"","post_cta":"","post_button":"Read More","post_button_url":"","testimonial_date":"","testimonial_name":"","testimonial_position":"","testimonial_location":"","testimonial_stars":"","testimonial_video":"","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/oi_testimonial\/939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/oi_testimonial"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/oi_testimonial"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/oi_testimonial\/939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":943,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/oi_testimonial\/939\/revisions\/943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorwealthstrategies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}